[Zope] Re: [Off Topic] [Zope] Reply To:

[Glyph Lefkowitz]

just to elaborate on a few common points that have been brought up on this
list, and covered here: 

> http://www.metasystema.org/reply-to-useful.mhtml

1) "It's against the standard":

Quoting directly from that article:

The first thing to consider is that RFC 822, the document which defines
the standards and usages for email, specifically mentions this usage in
section 4.4.3:

 A somewhat different use may be of some help to "text message
 teleconferencing" groups equipped with automatic distribution
 services:  include the address of that service in the "Reply-
 To" field of all messages submitted to the teleconference;
 then participants can "reply"  to conference submissions to
 guarantee the correct distribution of any submission of their
 own.

It's not "against" the standard.  It may be a quirk of the
standard.  Detractors, please familiarize yourselves before FUDding.

2) "It causes mail loops."

Can someone please direct me to a record of this actually happening?  
It's certainly not common, and I run all of my lists with munging on.  It
doesn't cause problems there.  Several other lists (yes, some of them are
even "real" lists) that I subscribe to use munging and have never seen a
mailloop.

3) "Autoresponders are upset by it."

If you're going to use an autoresponder, configure it responsably!  Better
yet, don't use one at all.  They are annoying.  Mail loops generated here
would happen anyway.

4) "It removes useful information."

If you're using the 'reply-to' header rather than your 'from' header to
encode the address you want responses sent to, I know this is within the
standard, but you're wasting my bandwidth and my time.  I don't need to
know both what machine you sent from and what machine you want me to reply
to.  Just put your own address in the 'from' header.  (This is what most
people do anyway.  I don't know anyone that works otherwise.)

5) "It removes freedom"

This is a crock.  Anyone with a reasonably written mailer can respond to
messages how they please: reply-to munging makes it easier to reply *only
to the list* which is almost always the required functionality.  If you
really can't live without the original reply-to header, maybe you should
consider posting a message to the list asking the person's private email
that you want to get in touch with: you should really be requesting to
take on-topic discussions off the list in the first place anyway.

Speaking of wasting my money / time, if you're going to be a detractor of
reply-to munging, PLEASE be thoughtful enough, at least, to remove the
inevitable list of 18 or 20 recipients that cruft up to threads over time.  
This 'conscientious' behavior, as described by Chip Rosenthal, has gotten
me CC:ed on some messages 2 or 3 times on unmunged mailinglists.  I find
this annoying, but less so than getting flamed for sending out 8 replies
to a single mailing-list message.  And I like to conserve bandwidth.

This is much-repeated stuff, but I hate to think that there's this image
that technically sophistocated people all hate munging and think it's
evil.  Chip's opinion is, as the author of the essay referenced above has
told me, treated as gospel, and there are definitely two views on this
topic.  I strongly adhere to one, obviously. :-)

(Please, no flames, no personal email about this.  I'm not going to be
convinced of anything, this is just a message to make sure that 'newbies'
to list administration don't think that there is one answer to this
question.  It's not really for those of you who seriously consider munging
bad, and I certainly don't hope to get the policy on this list changed by
it; that would only spark more discussion of this, and one extra email
once in a while isn't so bad compared to thousands upon thousands of
messages in this thread... ^_^)

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