Re: the most obvious failure in To-NoReply

["Charles Lindsey" <chl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In <4133281A.7040104@xxxxxxxxxx> Keith Moore <moore@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:

>D. J. Bernstein wrote:
>> 
>> I don't want _replies_ to go to ietf-822@xxxxxxxx I want _followups_
>> to go to ietf-822@xxxxxxxx

>"followup" is a Usenet term.  Usenet has two different kinds of 
>addresses - email addresses and newsgroups.

But mail also has two different kinds of addresses or, to put it another
way, mailing lists certainly need two kinds of addresses:

1. From: To: Cc: Bcc: etc.
2. List-Post: Mail-Followup-To: (which not all lists, including this one,
provide :-( )

MUAs then need some form of command for "Reply-To-List", and the obvious
name for that command is "Followup" (or the single letter 'F'). It was
clearly such a facility that Dan was referring to.

>  Responses to the author's 
>email address are replies; responses to newsgroups are followups.

And responses to mailing lists should be followups too.

>  Email 
>does not have visibly different kinds of addresses and does make a 
>distinction between replies and followups.

And that is exactly the root of the problem, which needs to be fixed.

>  Email UAs have "reply" and 
>"reply to all" or similar.  For several reasons including both protocol 
>differences and cultural differences between email and Usenet, email's 
>"reply to all" and Usenet's "followup" are not quite the same thing. 
>And I don't see evidence of any desire among users to make email more 
>like Usenet.  (actually I see plenty of evidence to the contrary.  but I 
>digress.)

On the contrary, in the case of mailing lists I see evidence of this
desire all the time. It is just not clear whether the "proper" way to
respond to a mailing list is "Reply" or "Reply-To-All", since both of them
usually do the Wrong Thing (my usual practice is to do Reply-To-All and
then weed out all the addresses I d not want). The alternative is for list
expanders to force Reply-To: list-address, which I much prefer, but which
usually leads to flame wars when proposed on a list.

Personally, I find it extremely annoying to receive personal replies to
messages I post to a mailing list to which I am already subscribed.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
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