Fundamental Qi question

[Paul Fertser]

Rask Ingemann Lambertsen <rask at sygehus.dk> writes:
> On Mon, Jun 01, 2009 at 04:07:10PM +0400, Paul Fertser wrote:
>> My MUA is flexible enough to strip _forged_ Reply-To header that this
>> list errorneously adds to every mail. So i'm perfectly aware how this
>> fucking mailing list works and i had to explicitly workaround this
>> stupidity.
>
>    There's a header field for this purpose. Use it:
>
> List-Post: <mailto:community at lists.openmoko.org>
>
>    In mutt, I just hit 'L' - list reply - and it figures it out. Of course,
> if you send a copy to someone directly, that header field is missing and the
> list server doesn't send a duplicate to the directly addressed recipient,
> who then has to manually edit the addresses when replying. So please don't
> put both the list and a person on the list in the To/Cc fields.

Now imagine i see a message from some person, with some ML (i'm
subscribed to Cc'd). Also there's like 5 persons in Cc list, that are
addressed explicitly because they have something to do with the topic
(like they're subsystem maintainers, original authors or something
like that). If i press "g" in mutt my To: header will be set to what
was in Reply-To: (if the sender for some reason decided to set it for
whatever reason) or to the From:. My Cc will be identical to those of
original message. Everybody relevant to the topic will receive the
message and in case some persons from that list were subscribed, they
won't receive it twice because ML software will see them already in To
or Cc and so will avoid sending a dup. But if i press "L" and some of
the Cc'd persons are not subscribed to the list (which is a very
common situation for things involving different areas of interest,
e.g. both alsa and arm) they will not receive my reply which is not
what is intended.

So, basic rules are: 1. lists don't send duplicate mails to those
already present in To or Cc. 2. not every person participating in
conversation is subscribed and it's perfectly legal to post to most
MLs without being subscribed (with proper spam protection in place
(i'd require SPF PASS) it works without much troubles).

My conclusion is: group reply aka reply-all is the right thing to do,
other methods (Reply-To forgery or "list reply") are wrong.

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