Sorry... Re: And please use a emailclients with working "Reference" Re: gmail users CC'ing

Richard Bennett richard.bennett at skynet.be
Tue Feb 13 15:56:40 CET 2007


On Tuesday 13 February 2007 15:28, hank williams wrote:
> Again, out of 15 lists, this only happens for me on the openmoko list.
> Now I have read that some consider this a feature. And perhaps there
> are benefits I don't understand. but with 25-50% of the tech mailing
> list readers using gmail, having a list "feature" that causes this
> kind of a problem should probably be reconsidered. I do not believe
> this is something that can be worked around in gmail other than by
> manually fixing every send to this list (which I do).
>
> I would ask the openmoko team to consider fixing the mailing list
> parameters in order to fix this problem.

Hi,
It's called 'reply-to munging', and it is as contentious as 'gnu-linux or 
linux', 'Allow proprietary binaries or only OS code', and many other things.
Here's the details:
http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html

Basically all good email clients support mailinglists that abide by the 
protocols, with notable exception of Outlook and Gmail.
So many list managers allow 'reply-to munging' to make life easier on those 
users, while all other users have to cope with the broken protocol as best 
they can, which they usually do pretty well.

Sourceforge mailinglists especially push admins not to allow reply-to munging, 
to encourage to email software to support the protocol correctly, but I have 
seen many a sourceforge list dwindle to a trickle, because replies were not 
arriving at the list anymore, only to the original poster.

It is difficult to promote working to standards, and then setup your email 
list in an non standard fashion, but in the same way we support MP3 as well 
as OGG, it might be better to be pragmatic about this issue, and allow 
reply-to munging, in the spirit of making the list as accessible and 
enjoyable to all its users, and to restrict arguments to important topics, 
not petty list issues.

Cheers,

Richard 















More information about the community mailing list