Subject: RE: Reply-To: Setting
From: Chuq Von Rospach (chuqui@plaidworks.com)
Date: Thu Oct 05 2000 - 12:45:15 MDT
At 11:36 AM -0700 10/5/00, Pete Peters wrote:
>I agree. Reply-to should go the list. If it doesn't go to the list, you
>can't search for answers in the list archives (and we all do that first
>before posting, right? <g>)
opinions are nice, but speaking as someone who does mailing lists for
a living, the facts are that most professional mailing list people
now agree that coercing reply-to on a list is a Bad Thing.
Here's one good piece on the subject:
<http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html>
And in reality, if you survey ALL users of a mail list, as opposed to
listening just to those who complain, you'll almost always find that
for those that care, there are more who don't want reply-to set to
the list than those that do. it's just that the reply-to people tend
to be noisier about it. And from a technical view, setting reply-to
to the list creates problems for the list, making it a lot more
susceptible to really bad mail loops from bogus vacation bots, to
name just one. And the whole problem of the "reply to unsubscribe me
whine" that started this whole fiasco is another.
Fact is, reply-to is a bad thing for a discussion list, and I'm
willing to bet if Dan did a survey of the users, the majority would
ask to have it turned off.
But -- this isn't a list about running mail lists. I suggest we get
to work. But as long as everyone was throwing around opinions, I
thought I'd screw things up by throwing in a few facts into the noise.
-- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com)You seem a decent fellow. I hate to die.
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