Re: mailing list misconfiguration

[Miles Bader <miles@...>]

On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 8:26 AM, Jonathan Castello <twisolar@gmail.com> wrote:
>> from the headers of an earlier lua-l message:
>>    Reply-To: Lua mailing list <lua-l@lists.lua.org>
>> argh... bad mailman, bad!
>
> Forgive my ignorance, but what's bad about that? I'm on another
> mailing list that apparently does something else, and I keep
> accidentally replying to the person instead of the list.

That's because you're used to badly-configured mailing lists... :]

Decent mail readers have a "followup/wide-reply/reply-to-all" button,
and you can just hit that by default for mailing list replies -- it
will work properly on both types of lists (those where the list
manager sets Reply-To, and those which don't).  It _also_ does the
right thing for non-list mail message which are sent to a bunch of
people on the To line, so it's generally a good habit to get into.

Directing all replies to the list is one of those things that seems
like a good idea at first, but causes subtle problems.

Mainly, it makes replying to individuals harder, or even impossible:

WIth a list that _doesn't_ set Reply-To, you have a choice when
replying:  hit "reply" to reply to the sender, or hit
"followup/wide-reply/reply-to-all" to reply to the list (note that
this is just like non-mailing-list messages sent to multiple people).
However, if Reply-To is used to redirect replies to the list, it
_removes_ that choice, and in many cases the only way to reply to an
individual is to copy-and-paste from the From: header.

Moreover, if an individual sender uses Reply-To for his _own_ purposes
(I used to do this, which is why I'm very annoyed at such settings), a
list manager which sets Reply-To will _overwrite_ it, meaning that
even those people who go to the trouble of copying his email address
from the From: header will send their mail to the wrong place!  [The
list manager could opt not to overwrite Reply-To in messages that have
one already, but that would cause an even more confusion for users,
because individual messages would respond differently to "reply"
commands.]

Regardless of what happens with lua-l though, it's a good idea to get
used to "followup/wide-reply/reply-to-all", since doing so will avoid
the problems you've noticed with inconsistency between lists.

-miles

-- 
Cat is power.  Cat is peace.