On Thursday 29 May 2003 2:08 pm, MJ Ray wrote:
Andrew Savory lists@andrewsavory.com wrote:
How about a little bit of politeness and respect?
Sorry. The message I replied to was a little terse too, not the first time that person had raised this, added nothing new to the topic, and is definitely a FAQ. Is this a better summary for the FAQ maintainer:
You want something new, here is something new. As an experiment I have subscribed at random to three mailing lists hosted by UK Linux User Groups. They host the mailing lists something in the region of 50 UK Linux User Groups.
All three of the groups I subscribed to behaved the way I would expect. Messages appear as From: 'Author' To: mailgroup. Pressing reply sends a message to the group as expected. If I want to reply just to the author I just click on his/her email address. I strongly suspect that all the mail groups hosted by the UK Linux User Groups site behave this way, It is clearly good enough and problem free enough for many other LUGs to have it set up this way. It is clearly the way users expect it to be. I see no compelling reason why our mailing list should be different.
Ian
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Ian Bell ian@redtommo.com writes:
All three of the groups I subscribed to behaved the way I would expect. Messages appear as From: 'Author' To: mailgroup. Pressing reply sends a message to the group as expected. If I want to reply just to the author I just click on his/her email address. I strongly suspect that all the mail groups hosted by the UK Linux User Groups site behave this way, It is clearly good enough and problem free enough for many other LUGs to have it set up this way. It is clearly the way users expect it to be. I see no compelling reason why our mailing list should be different.
The fact that lots of people do something does not imply it is "problem-free".
Answer me this: what do you think Reply-To munging should do to a message that already has a Reply-To field?
On Friday 30 May 2003 9:22 am, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
Ian Bell ian@redtommo.com writes:
All three of the groups I subscribed to behaved the way I would expect. Messages appear as From: 'Author' To: mailgroup. Pressing reply sends a message to the group as expected. If I want to reply just to the author I just click on his/her email address. I strongly suspect that all the mail groups hosted by the UK Linux User Groups site behave this way, It is clearly good enough and problem free enough for many other LUGs to have it set up this way. It is clearly the way users expect it to be. I see no compelling reason why our mailing list should be different.
The fact that lots of people do something does not imply it is "problem-free".
Indeed not and I did not make that implication. However Linux users are a vociferous lot and if there were significant problems with it I am sure we would have heard about it.
Answer me this: what do you think Reply-To munging should do to a message that already has a Reply-To field?
I have no idea. I do not even understand the question What I do know is that I belong to about 20 mail groups of one kind or another, hosted on various sites. Except for ALUG they all work the way I would expect. Not once have I ever had a problem with any of them. Not once has anyone on any group (except ALUG) complained about the way the mailer works or has had a problem with it.
I also looked at the mailer set up instructions for new lugmasters on the UK LInux USER Groups web site. There is an option to set the mailer to work the way I prefer or to set it to work the way our group works. So clearly many lugmasters before have faced this question and chosen differently to ALUG.
Ian
Ian Bell ian@redtommo.com writes:
Richard Kettlewell wrote:
Ian Bell ian@redtommo.com writes:
All three of the groups I subscribed to behaved the way I would expect. Messages appear as From: 'Author' To: mailgroup. Pressing reply sends a message to the group as expected. If I want to reply just to the author I just click on his/her email address. I strongly suspect that all the mail groups hosted by the UK Linux User Groups site behave this way, It is clearly good enough and problem free enough for many other LUGs to have it set up this way. It is clearly the way users expect it to be. I see no compelling reason why our mailing list should be different.
The fact that lots of people do something does not imply it is "problem-free".
Indeed not and I did not make that implication. However Linux users are a vociferous lot and if there were significant problems with it I am sure we would have heard about it.
People complain about Reply-To munging all the time. There are a number of web pages on the subject.
Answer me this: what do you think Reply-To munging should do to a message that already has a Reply-To field?
I have no idea. I do not even understand the question What I do know is that I belong to about 20 mail groups of one kind or another, hosted on various sites. Except for ALUG they all work the way I would expect. Not once have I ever had a problem with any of them. Not once has anyone on any group (except ALUG) complained about the way the mailer works or has had a problem with it.
You seem to want "reply" to send a message to the list, rather than the author.
Reply-To munging, i.e. the list management software inserting a Reply-To field, is the only way a list owner can achieve this behaviour. Obviously individual clients can do their own thing, but that's not what you're asking for.
But:
Firstly, you're asking for mailing list messages to be different from all other kinds of mail messages (and indeed from news messages which aren't quite the same thing but tend to be managed via similar or the same user interfaces); normally "reply" means "reply to just the author" and "followup" means "reply to everyone". You're asking for the "reply" command to have a different meaning depending on which message it applied to.
Secondly you're asking for your preference to be imposed on all users of the list. Nobody cares if you make your mailer do something special for list mail, but if the change is imposed by the list management software then everyone else is inconvenienced by your personal preferences. This is obviously unreasonable.
Thirdly what you're asking for would be impossible to do correctly even if it was a sensible thing to do - what should the list manager do if there is already a Reply-To field on a message sent to the list?
I also looked at the mailer set up instructions for new lugmasters on the UK LInux USER Groups web site. There is an option to set the mailer to work the way I prefer or to set it to work the way our group works. So clearly many lugmasters before have faced this question and chosen differently to ALUG.
Yes. Lots of people misconfigure mailing lists. Numerical superiority doesn't make them right.
On Friday 30 May 2003 5:46 pm, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
snip
You seem to want "reply" to send a message to the list, rather than the author.
Exactly. That's what all the other mail lists that I belong to do.
Reply-To munging, i.e. the list management software inserting a Reply-To field, is the only way a list owner can achieve this behaviour. Obviously individual clients can do their own thing, but that's not what you're asking for.
But:
Firstly, you're asking for mailing list messages to be different from all other kinds of mail messages (and indeed from news messages which aren't quite the same thing but tend to be managed via similar or the same user interfaces); normally "reply" means "reply to just the author" and "followup" means "reply to everyone". You're asking for the "reply" command to have a different meaning depending on which message it applied to.
I am asking for consistency amongst mail groups. I have not burning preference to hit reply rather than reply all. I just want to do the same thing whether I am replying to ALUG or any other mail group. if you can persuade all the others to follow the ALUG way that's fine by me.
Secondly you're asking for your preference to be imposed on all users of the list. Nobody cares if you make your mailer do something special for list mail, but if the change is imposed by the list management software then everyone else is inconvenienced by your personal preferences. This is obviously unreasonable.
It would be unreasonable if that is what I was asking. I have made my preference clear and stated my reasons for it. The only time I asked for ALUG to be changed was qualified by words to the effect 'if the group requested it'. If the majority of the group wants to keep it the way it is then that's fine by me. presumably if the majority of the group wanted it changed that would be fine by you?
Thirdly what you're asking for would be impossible to do correctly even if it was a sensible thing to do - what should the list manager do if there is already a Reply-To field on a message sent to the list?
I do not know, but there are large numbers of mail lists that manage somehow.
I also looked at the mailer set up instructions for new lugmasters on the UK LInux USER Groups web site. There is an option to set the mailer to work the way I prefer or to set it to work the way our group works. So clearly many lugmasters before have faced this question and chosen differently to ALUG.
Yes. Lots of people misconfigure mailing lists. Numerical superiority doesn't make them right.
You are surely not suggesting that if something is 'right' it should be imposed upon the numerical superiority that wants something else?
Ian
Ian Bell ian@redtommo.com wrote:
[...] if you can persuade all the others to follow the ALUG way that's fine by me.
We are not members of all others. You are. Feel free to suggest it to them, but I suspect at least some will suggest editing your mail filters too.
Leaving Reply-To is also not just the ALUG way, but a common way.
[...]
You are surely not suggesting that if something is 'right' it should be imposed upon the numerical superiority that wants something else?
Are you in the camp that believes killing everyone of a given race would be fine by you, as long as there was a majority in favour?
Thread end in 2 moves. Your turn.
On Fri, 30 May 2003, MJ Ray wrote:
Leaving Reply-To is also not just the ALUG way, but a common way.
I think it's already been demonstrated that it's more common for people to misconfigure lists with Reply-To munging than it is to set them up properly. Understandably this has caused confusion, but it's fallacious to make out that leaving Reply-To is the common way.
You are surely not suggesting that if something is 'right' it should be imposed upon the numerical superiority that wants something else?
Are you in the camp that believes killing everyone of a given race would be fine by you, as long as there was a majority in favour?
That's uncalled for. I suggest everyone agrees to disagree, before you get even more acrimonious.
Andrew.
On Saturday 31 May 2003 8:35 am, Andrew Savory wrote:
On Fri, 30 May 2003, MJ Ray wrote:
Are you in the camp that believes killing everyone of a given race would be fine by you, as long as there was a majority in favour?
That's uncalled for. I suggest everyone agrees to disagree, before you get even more acrimonious.
I agree Savs this is a bit a bit strong for a public list a less provocative analogy would suffice.
Cheers, BJ
On 2003-05-31 08:35:51 +0100 Andrew Savory lists@andrewsavory.com wrote:
[...] it's fallacious to make out that leaving Reply-To is the common way.
Now what are you arguing with there? Certainly not against what I wrote. "the" has 3 letters. "a" has one. They mean different things, too.
That's uncalled for. [...]
Well, it was going to happen anyway. http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/legends/godwin/
On Saturday 31 May 2003 8:35 am, Andrew Savory wrote:
On Fri, 30 May 2003, MJ Ray wrote:
snip
Are you in the camp that believes killing everyone of a given race would be fine by you, as long as there was a majority in favour?
That's uncalled for. I suggest everyone agrees to disagree, before you get even more acrimonious.
Andrew.
Thanks for pouring oil on troubled waters Andrew. Here is a copy of a summary of the current situation I recently sent to MArk. I suggest we leave it at that.
To summarise where we are.
The majority of the groups I subscribe to set reply-to to the list The majority of groups you subscribe to do not ALUG mail list *could* be set to make reply-to to the list You would not wish to do this because it is contrary to standards and you have experience of problems it could lead to I would like it changed but only if the majority of the group wanted it so
Ian
Ian Bell ian@redtommo.com writes:
On Friday 30 May 2003 5:46 pm, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
You seem to want "reply" to send a message to the list, rather than the author.
Exactly. That's what all the other mail lists that I belong to do.
But completely unlike any other kind of mail message you receive, and completely unlike news messages.
I am asking for consistency amongst mail groups. I have not burning preference to hit reply rather than reply all. I just want to do the same thing whether I am replying to ALUG or any other mail group.
So always hit "followup" or "reply to all" rather than "reply", and remove any list members from the recipient fields. Easy.
Thirdly what you're asking for would be impossible to do correctly even if it was a sensible thing to do - what should the list manager do if there is already a Reply-To field on a message sent to the list?
I do not know, but there are large numbers of mail lists that manage somehow.
I don't believe you. These lists will screw up whenever a poster uses a Reply-To field because there is no possible correct thing that they can do. If you disagree, just state what it is.
On Saturday 31 May 2003 1:21 pm, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
snip
I am asking for consistency amongst mail groups. I have not burning preference to hit reply rather than reply all. I just want to do the same thing whether I am replying to ALUG or any other mail group.
So always hit "followup" or "reply to all" rather than "reply", and remove any list members from the recipient fields. Easy.
At last a sensible suggestion and one i can actually do. OK it will be a bit awkward to start with but at least I'll be able to do the same thing irrespective of the lst. And after a while it will be second nature. Thanks for that Richard.
Thirdly what you're asking for would be impossible to do correctly even if it was a sensible thing to do - what should the list manager do if there is already a Reply-To field on a message sent to the list?
I do not know, but there are large numbers of mail lists that manage somehow.
I don't believe you. These lists will screw up whenever a poster uses a Reply-To field because there is no possible correct thing that they can do. If you disagree, just state what it is.
OK. I assume lists check the From: field for a valid email address i.e one that is subscribed to the list. So set From: to From. Set to: to recipient and Reply-to: to list and discard the senders Reply-to field.
Ian
** Ian Bell ian@redtommo.com [2003-05-31 22:12]:
I am asking for consistency amongst mail groups. I have not burning preference to hit reply rather than reply all. I just want to do the same thing whether I am replying to ALUG or any other mail group.
So always hit "followup" or "reply to all" rather than "reply", and remove any list members from the recipient fields. Easy.
At last a sensible suggestion and one i can actually do. OK it will be a bit awkward to start with but at least I'll be able to do the same thing irrespective of the lst. And after a while it will be second nature. Thanks for that Richard.
We-hey, go for it :-)
Thirdly what you're asking for would be impossible to do correctly even if it was a sensible thing to do - what should the list manager do if there is already a Reply-To field on a message sent to the list?
I do not know, but there are large numbers of mail lists that manage somehow.
I don't believe you. These lists will screw up whenever a poster uses a Reply-To field because there is no possible correct thing that they can do. If you disagree, just state what it is.
OK. I assume lists check the From: field for a valid email address i.e one that is subscribed to the list. So set From: to From. Set to: to recipient and Reply-to: to list and discard the senders Reply-to field.
Which destroys any information about an alternative address for personal replies - for example, I know of people who have an address subscribed to lists (sometimes an address for each list to aid filing), but would use the reply to field to set their main email address for any personal replies. Not as common now I believe, but not unheard of.
Anyway, and quick survey from the person who sparked this whole debate with an off hand remark (boy will I read what I write in future!)...
I did a quick survey of the lists I'm subscribed to and found that of those 30 (I think I need to trim that a bit!), 20 follow the same practice as the ALUG list, and 10 use the reply-to munging approach. Most of the latter can be accounted for from two server setups - the LowEndMac lists and the LUG lists (7 out of 10), and about a third (7 out of 20) of the former are accounted for off a single server setup - the Debian one. Apart from the 4 Mac lists they are all Linux related - I wonder if there is anything significant about the lack of Windows ones ;-)
** end quote [Ian Bell]
Ian Bell ian@redtommo.com writes:
OK. I assume lists check the From: field for a valid email address i.e one that is subscribed to the list.
Depends on the list, but doing so makes it *more* likely that someone will want to set a different Reply-To field from there From field (since you might want to subscribe with a different address to one ordinary email is sent to).
So set From: to From. Set to: to recipient and Reply-to: to list and discard the senders Reply-to field.
If the sender needs to set a Reply-To for some reason, this policy makes it impossible for anyone to ever reply to them correctly. So that's no good.
** Ian Bell ian@redtommo.com [2003-05-30 08:21]:
On Thursday 29 May 2003 2:08 pm, MJ Ray wrote:
Andrew Savory lists@andrewsavory.com wrote:
How about a little bit of politeness and respect?
Sorry. The message I replied to was a little terse too, not the first time that person had raised this, added nothing new to the topic, and is definitely a FAQ. Is this a better summary for the FAQ maintainer:
You want something new, here is something new. As an experiment I have subscribed at random to three mailing lists hosted by UK Linux User Groups. They host the mailing lists something in the region of 50 UK Linux User Groups.
All three of the groups I subscribed to behaved the way I would expect. Messages appear as From: 'Author' To: mailgroup. Pressing reply sends a message to the group as expected. If I want to reply just to the author I just click on his/her email address. I strongly suspect that all the mail groups hosted by the UK Linux User Groups site behave this way, It is clearly good enough and problem free enough for many other LUGs to have it set up this way. It is clearly the way users expect it to be. I see no compelling reason why our mailing list should be different.
** end quote [Ian Bell]
The same reason that some people give for using Linux - idealism - or a or a desire to do things the 'right' way.
On one hand you have the safety from embarrassment factor. The automatic thing to do is 'reply', and if you want to reply privately (and make a personal or confidential comment) then you want the 'default' action to be the 'safe' one (reply to sender - one person - not the list). By making the 'dangerous' (as in embarrassing or having potential for leaking private information) action one that is different from the norm you reduce the risk. Mistakenly sending a reply to one person who would have seen it anyway is less of an issue than mistakenly sending to lots of people who wouldn't have otherwise seen the mail.
On the other hand you have the fact of avoiding damaging the content of the original mail. Mail clients have the option to set a reply-to field, so that the default return address is where they want replies to come. Reply-to munging (as used on the other lists) deletes this information, so personal replies will go to the wrong address.
There are other reasons iirc, but those immediately spring to mind.
So the real problem is that most mail clients don't support the RFC that has defined headers to be used by mailing lists so that you have a 'reply to list' option. There in lies the real issue - the solution has been defined, but nobody is busting a gut to implement it.
I may get frustrated when I make the odd mistake, but when you think about it, it does make sense IMHO. Most people use IE for web browsing, but does that make it the best solution, and does it encourage people to write websites well? ;-)
On Fri, 30 May 2003 08:08:46 +0100 Ian Bell wrote:
You want something new, here is something new. As an experiment I have subscribed at random to three mailing lists hosted by UK Linux User Groups. They host the mailing lists something in the region of 50 UK Linux User Groups.
Don't they use Majordomo instead of MailMan? If that's the case, Majordomo has a different default set-up than to MailMan. By default, the default Reply-To address is set to the poster. The help system in MailMan states the following reason for setting the default Reply-To address to the Poster as follows:-
"There are many reasons not to introduce or override the Reply-To: header. One is that some posters depend on their own Reply-To: settings to convey their valid return address. Another is that modifying Reply-To: makes it much more difficult to send private replies. See `Reply-To' Munging Considered Harmful for a general discussion of this issue. See Reply-To Munging Considered Useful for a dissenting opinion."
MailMan also has another handy feature (at least in versions 2.1.x and above) that prevent duplicate messages being received by the original poster. For example, if I were to reply to somebody and hit Reply to All, it'd fill the poster's email address and the mailing list address. MailMan will detect that the original poster is receiving a copy and will not send a copy to him/her.
As I have recently set-up MailMan at work to replace the old system of simply using email aliases as a simple form of mailing list, my tests reveal that nobody here suffers from problems replying to the mailing lists we have running on MailMan, and people are using everything between Outlook 97 (and Pegasus Mail) on Windows through to Pine, Mozilla and Sylpheed under IRIX/Linux.
All three of the groups I subscribed to behaved the way I would expect. Messages appear as From: 'Author' To: mailgroup. Pressing reply sends a message to the group as expected. If I want to reply just to the author I just click on his/her email address. I strongly suspect that all the mail groups hosted by the UK Linux User Groups site behave this way, It is clearly good enough and problem free enough for many other LUGs to have it set up this way. It is clearly the way users expect it to be. I see no compelling reason why our mailing list should be different.
They do behave that way, as that's the way the mailing list software works. Whether it was configured that way by the administrators or whether it's the only way the mailing list software copes with Reply-To is another matter. The ALUG mailing list(s) are no different from what I run here at work, and likewise elsewhere that uses MailMan's default setting.
Regards,
Martyn
Martyn Drake martyn@drake.org.uk wrote:
Don't they use Majordomo instead of MailMan? [...]
No, they upgraded last year, I think.
MailMan also has another handy feature (at least in versions 2.1.x and above) that prevent duplicate messages being received by the original poster. [...]
Clever. I'd not noticed that.
Ian Bell:
suspect that all the mail groups hosted by the UK Linux User Groups site behave this way, It is clearly good enough and problem free enough for many other LUGs to have it set up this way. [...]
There are many reasons why ALUG uses its own hosting... Anyway, I'll mention it to lug.org.uk when I get a mo.
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Andrew Savory -
Ian Bell -
John Woodard -
Martyn Drake -
MJ Ray -
Paul Tansom -
Richard Kettlewell