[OSM-talk] no replay-to header at talk

[Robert Lister]

On Wed, Jul 11, 2007 at 12:57:01AM +0200, Ulf Lamping wrote:
> Matthew Newton schrieb:
> > Hi,
> >
> > On Tue, Jul 10, 2007 at 02:00:10PM +0200, Raphael Studer wrote:
> >   
> >> I've noticed that on the talk at osm there is no replay-to field in the
> >> header, if an email is sent to the list.
> >> On the german list (talk-de at osm) there is such a field.
> >> I would be happy if it could be added on the talk list also.

It depends if:-

1. The list is a discussion list or another form of list where discussion is 
   not invited, for example an announcement, article or news update list 
   where somebody replying to 6000 recipients with "Thanks." is not good, so 
   Reply-To is not set. It can cause embarassment if a reply goes back to 
   the list that was intended to be private, as not all mail clients prompt 
   the user before using a reply-to header, I know mutt does.
   
   In this case the principle of least surprise should apply. I would sooner
   accidentally not send something to the list than accidentally send
   something confidential to a list.

2. Users cannot cope with hitting reply-all if they want their message to go 
   back to the list, and you want discussion to take place on the list.

I run several lists and there are those subscribers who want to discuss
things on the list, and those subscribers who get irritated by all the
chatter on the list, so you cannot please everybody in one list. Only one
list has Reply-To: set, as experience has shown me it almost always causes
more hassle than it solves except in a few special cases.

I would sooner it not be set, but I can always just configure my filters to
remove these headers if I don't want them to be in there.