[pulseaudio-discuss] Reply-to

[Felipe Contreras]

On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 12:34 PM, Tanu Kaskinen <tanu.kaskinen at digia.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 2011-09-21 at 12:15 +0300, Tanu Kaskinen wrote:
>> On Wed, 2011-09-21 at 11:41 +0300, Maarten Bosmans wrote:
>> > Huh? I clicked on reply-all (in gmail) on Guanqun's message and it put
>> > Colin in the CC. How is that possible?
>>
>> The same happens with Evolution. I'm now responding to your mail with
>> "Reply to All", and you're not in CC, only Colin is. So apparently if
>> Reply-to is set, then "Reply to All" doesn't add the sender to the CC
>> header. I guess the logic is that if the sender uses the Reply-to
>> header, he doesn't want any mail to the address in the From header.
>
> If someone wants to continue discussing whether some change is needed, I
> think these are required reading before doing so:
>
> "Reply-To" Munging Considered Harmful
> http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html
>
> Reply-To Munging Considered Useful
> http://marc.merlins.org/netrants/reply-to-useful.html
>
> "Reply-To" Munging Still Considered Harmful. Really.
> http://woozle.org/~neale/papers/reply-to-still-harmful.html
>
> I'll have to read them myself before saying what my opinion is. FWIW,
> the last time when I read them, in the context of some other list, my
> conclusion was against Reply-To munging, but I don't know if the
> situation is somehow different with pulseaudio-discuss.

Please also read this one, I think I have shut down all the arguments
in favor of Reply-To munging:

Avoid Reply-To munging; mail as mail was meant to be
http://felipec.wordpress.com/2010/08/03/avoid-reply-to-munging-mail-as-mail-was-meant-to-be/

I have some problems with Colin's idea of tricking subscribers of the
mailing list. First of all, that's patronizing, *I* decide how I want
to use this mailing list, and you can't possibly foresee all the
different backgrounds and scenarios people are coming from, so it's
best to let people decide for themselves.

I also find it a bit funny that Colin is pushing for some communal
behavior of reading all the mail (which I have never seen in other
mailing lists), while at the same time arguing that people can forget
to click "Reply all"... Can't they learn to do that?

Yes, they can, as you can see in all the kernel.org mailing lists, and
countless others, people have no problem in clicking "Reply all". Yes,
some people might have been spoiled by other mailing lists, and make a
few mistakes while adjusting, but it's not a big deal, and that's
primarily the fault of other mailing lists that abuse Reply-To munging
for purposes it wasn't intended to (see my post).

Even common people, including grandmothers, know they have to click
"Reply all" if they want their message to arrive to multiple
recipients (e.g. the whole family), and somehow sophisticated geeks
can't? Assuming that clicking "Reply" is OK, is simply a bad habit.

Cheers.

-- 
Felipe Contreras