Am Mittwoch 06 Mai 2009 11:05:05 schrieb Magnus Therning:

On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 7:51 AM, Ashok Gautham

wrote:

...

I feel that the haskell mailing lists must have the reply-to field set, so that a person can reply to the list by just clicking reply.

I am unsure if I am the only one facing this problem.

This is a contentious issue:

http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html http://marc.merlins.org/netrants/reply-to-useful.html

May I add http://woozle.org/~neale/papers/reply-to-still-harmful.html

I personally think mailing-lists shouldn't put themselves in the Reply-To, and that easy replying to the list is something that should be handled in the mail client (I base my choice of mail client on this).

Indeed. I have reply, reply-to-all and reply-to-list one click or one key combination away, and as far as I know those features are present in almost all mail clients since several years, so ease of replying to list shouldn't be an issue. On the other hand, I do not want messages intended to be private communications to end up on the list, which would happen more easily with munged headers. So, count me in the leave-reply-to-alone camp.

What client are you using?

/M

Cheers, Daniel

Hi David,

- Do you use To for the mailing list or for the parent? - Do you ever include the grand-parent in the recipient list? I use whatever my mail client does when I hit "list-reply" :-)

For me (using mutt), that means to include any recipients and senders from the original message (so mailing list, parent and grand-parent in your example), unless the sender of the message I'm replying to has set the Mail-Followup-To header. My client sets the Mail-Followup-To properly to include all recipients and include myself when I am not subscribed to the list, and exclude myself when I am subscribed to the list. This is the only proper solution, since you can't guess from the addresses alone if someone is subscribed to the list and should thus be included or not.

- What's the difference between To and CC? Just a matter of style I guess, functionally they are the same AFAIK.

- If you send to only the mailing list, does it break the message thread? (it seems like sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't) - Does the mailing list do some kind of processing of the email headings sent (I don't get how kmail managed to know your message was in reply to Magnus Therning's message, since you didn't include him as a recipient) These two questions are the same: This is handled by email clients entirely. They set the In-Reply-To header, which refers to the message ID of the replied-to message, for proper threading. Alternatively, some clients (can) use the subject for guessing threads, but the mailing list doesn't handle this in any way (it doesn't have any info that the recipients don't have either).

- Is kmail's mailing list management completely bonkers (eg what is the difference between Reply and Reply to mailing list)? Dunno, but it seems so from your example.

And don't get me started on whether to use html or plain text in messages! (seen both pretty often here) As long as messages have a decent text/plain part, feel free to use anything as far as I'm concerned (flash, anyone? :-p)

Anyway, I can't see why we still use mailing lists when we have reddit, which has all the good parts of mailing lists (nested messages), while it also: Hmm, what's this reddit thing? *googles*

At first glance, the reddit frontpage looks very crowded and incapable of conveying information to me... At second glance, it looks like some kind of giant forum with random topics and links to other forums/news sites/blogs? There's probably some way to organize threads belonging to a single topic that becomes evident when you login?

- is much simpler to use Can't say, never used it... - allows voting up/down of good/inaccurate messages - allows voting up/down of interesting/boring topics That's cool for when you're reading a topic back (ie would be nice on email archives) but not really useful for new questions and messages (which is what our mailing lists are usually about, right?).

- has a good web interface (mail-archive.com doesn't even come close) Nice, but does it have a non-web-interface? The only way I can actually manage all email traffic coming my way from a couple dozen mailing lists, is because mutt is so darn efficient when it comes to reading and processing mail. I would't want to do all that in a webinterface.

- uses markdown (no more html vs plain text problems) That's cool :-) Though you can also just write markdown in plain text email, looks pretty as well :-p

- allows messages to be edited after being sent You can always just reply with corrections. Editing messages after writing them only makes things confusing (since you probably won't be able to edit them before someone has read them...).

- has rss feeds for article comments, and sub reddit topics Aren't RSS feeds just invented to turn the normal "pull" information flow of a website to a sortof "push" flow (or rather, to automate the polling of a website for new info). The cool thing about email is that it's push by design!

- sends notifications when someone replies to one of your comments Like, via email? :-p

Seriously though, I guess something like reddit has some merit, but I see that mostly for archival and/or discussions that have a longer lasting value. A lot of traffic on mailing lists is useful for as long as the question that's asked is unsolved and after that it's done. Also, no webinterface is not a substitute for a decent mail client, especially a heavily customized one. If you're serious about using reddit for haskell discussions, could you perhaps enlighten us with how that would work? I've been browsing a bit more, and reddit really looks like a collection of links to articles and topics, not like an actual discussion medium? Gr. Matthijs

...

Anyway, I can't see why we still use mailing lists when we have reddit, which has all the good parts of mailing lists (nested messages), while it also: Hmm, what's this reddit thing? *googles*

Me too. Seems like this "reddit" thing is nothing but a mail list done wrong. I may be wrong, but it seems that I have to actually CLICK on all links I want to read, instead of just pressing spacebar in my mail client.

Am Mittwoch 06 Mai 2009 16:57:16 schrieb David Miani:

On Wednesday 06 May 2009 20:42:38 Daniel Fischer wrote:

...

Indeed. I have reply, reply-to-all and reply-to-list one click or one key combination away, and as far as I know those features are present in almost all mail clients since several years, so ease of replying to list shouldn't be an issue. On the other hand, I do not want messages intended to be private communications to end up on the list, which would happen more easily with munged headers.

So, count me in the leave-reply-to-alone camp.

There is a lot of combinations that can occur when replying to a message on a mailing list.

**Situation 1**: Parent Message Header: From: parent@email.com To: mailinglist@mailinglist.com

To reply to this, I could either use the following recipients:

Reply method 1 (This happens when I choose "Reply" or "Reply to mailing list" with kmail) To: mailinglist@mailinglist.com

Yes, a bit surprising that "Reply" doesn't include parent@email.com among the recipients. Probably assumes that parent is subscribed to mailinglist. Methods 2 to 4 are "equivalent for all practical purposes, unless you really know their differences and why you would choose any particular one", I'd say (well, except you may have filtering rules which would treat them differently, which probably wouldn't be very useful, because you never know if others would use Reply to mailing list, Reply or Reply to all).

Reply method 2 (Have to set recipients manually with this) To: mailinglist@mailinglist.com To: parent@email.com

Reply method 3 (This happens when I choose "Reply to all" with kmail) To: mailinglist@mailinglist.com CC: parent@email.com

Reply method 4 (Have to set recipients manually with this) To: parent@email.com CC: mailinglist@mailinglist.com

Reply method 5 (This happens when I choose "Reply to author" with kmail) To: parent@email.com

**Situation 2** *Parent Message Header*: From: parent@email.com To: grand-parent@email.com CC: mailinglist@mailinglist.com

And to reply to this, I could use any of the following:

Reply method 1 (This happens when I choose "Reply" or "Reply to mailing list" with kmail) To: mailinglist@mailinglist.com

Again somewhat surprising behaviour of Reply.

Reply method 2 (This happens when I choose "Reply to all" with kmail) To: mailinglist@mailinglist.com CC: parent@email.com CC: grand-parent@email.com

Clear, isn't it?

Reply method 3 (Have to set recipients manually with this) To: parent@email.com CC: mailinglist@mailinglist.com

Reply method 4 (Have to set recipients manually with this) To: parent@email.com To: mailinglist@mailinglist.com

Reply method 5 (Have to set recipients manually with this) To: mailinglist@mailinglist.com CC: parent@email.com

Again I don't know why one would pick any particular of these three, but special choices require individual treatment, I can fully understand that these are not among the default actions of a mail client. If you don't care about To/CC, it's easy in KMail, though, just type a (Reply to All), click delete on the To field with grandparent's address. If you care about To/CC, it's a few more clicks, but still easy.

Reply method 5 (Have to set recipients manually with this) To: parent@email.com CC: mailinglist@mailinglist.com CC: parent@email.com

Hit Reply to all and toggle To/CC if you really care (but again, I don't know why one would care).

Reply method 6 (This happens when I choose "Reply to author" with kmail) To: parent@email.com

Anything else would be a major WTF. Yes, there are many options but if you don't care about the difference between To and CC, all are easily obtained from the default reply modes.

------------------------------------------

I'm not sure about your mail client,

KMail (1.10.3) :-)

but replying to lists doesn't seem that simple to me with kmail.

Just type l (lowercase L) or click Reply to mailing list, and it will send only to the list (as given in the List-ID field). If you want to reply to multiple lists (cafe, ghc- users, beginners), you'd probably have to choose Reply to all and delete other recipients. The case of multiple lists is not incredibly simple, but seems simple enough to me (and I'm emphatically not a power user, as soon as anything internetty is involved).

The only situations I really understand is the reply to author methods (method 5 in situation 1 and method 6 in situation 2). The others I don't really know what difference it makes. Eg: - If you send to only the mailing list, does it break the message thread? (it seems like sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't)

Shouldn't break the thread, can't remember that happening.

- Do you use To for the mailing list or for the parent?

I don't care, the message being delivered to both is what I'm interested in, and that's achieved either way. Whether there are differences in how the message is sent through the tubes, I don't know.

- Do you ever include the grand-parent in the recipient list?

If I choose Reply to all and don't delete it, which would happen if I want grand-parent to receive the message and suspect gp is not suscribed to the list.

- What's the difference between To and CC?

Don't know, don't care :)

- Does the mailing list do some kind of processing of the email headings sent (I don't get how kmail managed to know your message was in reply to Magnus Therning's message, since you didn't include him as a recipient)

I typed l while viewing that message, that's how KMail knew. The From field said it was a message by Magnus Therning.

- Is kmail's mailing list management completely bonkers (eg what is the difference between Reply and Reply to mailing list)?

Definitely somewhat unintuitive. Reply to mailing list needs something it can interpret as a mailing list, it seems it would choose the Reply-To field if that's present, but not a List-ID, if neither is present, it includes no address. What Reply does, I haven't figured out. If a Reply-To field is present, it should pick that, otherwise I'd expect it to use the From field, but it seems to have different ideas :-/

And don't get me started on whether to use html or plain text in messages! (seen both pretty often here)

HTML e-mails are evil, almost as evil as tabs in source code. Never use.

Sometimes I feel I have missed some vital webpage somewhere that answers all this, and I'm just some clueless moron who can't work email yet :(

Me too.

If anyone knows of such a page, could you let me know of it? Google only gives very basic articles when searching for "using mailing lists".

Anyway, I can't see why we still use mailing lists when we have reddit, which has all the good parts of mailing lists (nested messages), while it also: - is much simpler to use

Not for me. I prefer mailing lists every day of the week, much simpler for me.

- uses markdown (no more html vs plain text problems)

That's really a good thing.

- allows messages to be edited after being sent

That's bad, IMO, for high-traffic lists/threads. In a low-traffic environment, you have a chance to check whether a post you replied to was changed and take the appropriate measures, in a high-traffic environment, that's unfeasible, and you end up with egregiously incoherent threads (sometimes).

- sends notifications when someone replies to one of your comments

And a mailing list actually sends the notification in the shape of the reply itself, which is even easier to follow.