[TriLUG] About "Private notes"

[Jack Hill]

On Thu, 19 Apr 2012 09:43:53 -0400
Bill Farrow <bill at arrowsreach.com> wrote:

> I'm having a deja vu moment with this discussion thread.  This is
> quite a common topic for LUG mailing lists.
> 
> I am on a number of mailing lists, and a minority of these have
> decided not change the ReplyTo header.  When replying on one of those
> lists, I do a "reply to all", and then I have manually edit the To and
> CC lines to ensure the mail goes back to the list only - by default it
> goes to the list and to the senders email address (not the original
> poster btw).  Not everyone is as conciseness, and I often receive two
> identical reply emails;  one from the list and one sent directly to my
> address.
>
> Please, think of the children^H^H^H^H^H^H Andriod and iPhone users
> with limited user interfaces for dealing with email.

Huh, I didn’t think of this. When I was introduced to mailing lists in
college we had a custom system that was highly integrated with
authorization groups, so the mail system knew that an email was
addressed both to a list and an individual and would only deliver one
copy. This warped my thinking into liking the appear in the to: or cc:
line of replies so that conversations I was a part of appeared more
important. I guess I should get a less sucky MUA that checks the
in-reply-to: header against mails I’ve sent. (Suggestions? I’ve been
thinking about notmuch).

> The number of accidental emails sent back to our list is relatively
> small, and is probably less than the number of emails to our list
> asking to be unsubscribed.  Most people don't read RFC's let alone the
> info appended to the bottom of every TriLUG mailing list email for
> unsubscribing.
> 
> I believe that what we have now works extremely well as a discussion
> list, and I see no reason to change.
> 
> Bill

I’m convinced that the current solution is working well. Perhaps and
even better solution would be to only re-write Reply-to: when it is not
set, but leave it intact if it is. Although, perhaps it’s best to not
make the perfect the enemy of the good (or however that quotation is
supposed to go).

Sorry for beating the dead horse,
Jack
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