On 2010-11-21 08:24 +0000, Malcolm Wallace wrote:
If the list were to add a "Reply-To:" header, but only in the case where one was not already present, that would seem to me to be ideal. (None of the internet polemics against Reply-To that I have seen, have considered this modest suggestion.)
This still breaks the reply-to-author feature.
In the past, I have carefully used the Reply-To header to direct responses to a particular mailing list of many (e.g. when cross- posting an announcement). Yet because there is a culture of "Reply- To: is bad", and most MUAs do not have a "ReplyToList" option, most respondents end up pushing "Reply to all", which ignores my setting of "Reply-To:", and spams more people than necessary.
MUAs will honour the Reply-To header when using the reply-to-all function: the problem is that Reply-To does not mean what you think it means. The header indicates where *you* want to receive replies. So the reply-to-all function will reply to *you* (by using the value in Reply-To), and to everyone else by copying the To and Cc lists. There is another header, Mail-Followup-To, which tells MUAs to also drop the To and CC lists. I know several posters to this very list use it. However, it needs to be used with care because it can fragment cross- list discussions and/or prevent non-subscribers from receiving messages. -- Nick Bowler, Elliptic Technologies (http://www.elliptictech.com/)