Hi Mark, Sorry, I oversaw your post until now. > Funny, how? Just the fact that you usually reply inline and quote cleanly, which I appreciate. That's why I was a bit surprised. Note that I started writing the mail as a personal reply, but later decided it might be good to send it back to the list. Maybe I should have removed that reply when sending back to the list, since it might be misinterpreted. > Only pedantic wannabe net-cops don't recognize that either form has its > place. Which is not what I want to be, although I do appreciate careful quoting (ie extensive stripping) and bottom posting. By the way, I didn't really mind your top posting, just noticed the discrepancy between this off list reply and your on list reply behaviour. > Copying private communication back to a list, on the > other hand, is recognized as being quite rude. I had considered that, that's why I apologized in advance. However, I didn't think the things you wrote to me were of such nature that they would embarrass you if I sent them back to the list. Please accept my apologies if I was wrong. No offense was intended and I did consider whether or not this action was appropriate. Maybe I misjudged. > Lists that set Reply-To: are implementing a *hack*, pure and simple, that > allows most primitive email clients with newbie users 'do the right thing'. > > Reply-To: is *supposed* to be a private response address if, and only if, > the From: address is not the desired contact address. > The current Fedora list setup is a hack, and you will find that many (or > most) mailing lists do *not* implement this hack, as it is *recognized* as > being wrong. > If the mailing list *truly* wished to enforce a protocol whereby it is > expected that all members respond to all other members, via *only* the > list, the *list* administrator should be forcing Mail-Followup-To: to > be set. Again, this might be the preferred setup, but it is hardly used at all (at least in the lists I am subscribed to, the only exception coincidentally being the bind list). Although using reply-to to reply to a mailing list might be a hack the BSD lists I am subscribed to that don't use it don't use mail-followup-to either, making it necessary for me to cut and paste the CC address when I want to reply back to the list. If you consider the list as a separate entity, a kind of chairman, then the reply-to approach is not such a bad solution (hack if you will). Only backdraw I see is that your reply-to address will be overwritten if you post with one set to the list. And I must say I believe subscribing to a mailing list and expecting it to reply to your reply-to address is an unusual setup. All in all you haven't really explained why using reply-to is such a bad thing, apart from the fact that originally mail-followup-to was intended for this use. > It isn't widely used primarily because people refuse to use it. For example, > I point out yourself. To be honest, I never heard of mail-followup-to before ;-) . It doesn't occur very often in the 100,000's of mails in my archive. > > Lost battle. > > Only to those who give up easily... :-) Bye, Leonard. -- mount -t life -o ro /dev/dna /genetic/research
