Re: mail-followup-to / mail-copies-to

On Mon, 30 May 2005, Charles Lindsey wrote:

> In <[email protected]> Bruce Lilly 
> <[email protected]> writes:
>
>> As another, not uncommon, example, consider a message posted to a 
>> mailing list with a request by the author to send off-list (only) 
>> responses, to be summarized by the author.  The author could 
>> easily indicate that with Reply-To, and every response that is 
>> directed "where the author suggested" will comply with that.  For 
>> such a mailing list message, your "list context" would send a 
>> doubly wrong response -- it wouldn't go directly to the author (as 
>> requested) and would go to the entire list (contrary to the 
>> request).

Note btw that "list context" isn't my idea, it's simply what a few 
MUAs in the field already /do/. (Indeed, at least one simply ignores 
all cues in the mail being replied to for a "list reply", other than 
MFT).

The problem isn't so much in 'my' "list context", but in the 
problematic /deployed/ MUA functionality.

> That is exactly the sort of situation that MFT is supposed to deal 
> with. In the absence of MFT, then using the List-Post address is 
> the right thing when "Replying-to-List". But if MFT is present, it 
> should override the List-Post. There might even be a 'list' keyword 
> in the MFT header to mean reply to List-Post (to be used in 
> addition to the sender's address if he want replies both to the 
> list and himself).

I'm not sure about MFT, it seems as vague and broad (and hence as 
problematic) as Reply-To is.

It seems to me that supplying information which is as specific and 
indisputably true as possible is better than supplying vague 
"suggestions", which may be too broad in their scope to be able to 
provide . Eg:

"Suggest that Replies go To <a>, <b>, etc.."

and

"Suggest that Follow-ups go To ...."

seem fraught with possibilities of ambigious corner cases to me. 
Compared to things like:

"This mail was sent by <b>"

or

"Please consider copying <a>, <b>, ... on replies"

Seem far clearer and with far limited scope for misinterpretation. 
(whether the information/suggestion is acted on is a different matter 
and in the hands of the respondent). It's nice to have a limited set 
of general cues if it all works out nicely, but not if it fails to 
deal with common usage scenarios. :)

For the MFT case, what constitutes a "Followup" exactly? And didn't 
Keith Moore highlight a few problems in the previous thread? (around 
list exploders, i cant remember - i'll have to go reread again).

regards,
-- 
Paul Jakma	[email protected]	[email protected]	Key ID: 64A2FF6A
Fortune:
You know, the difference between this company and the Titanic is that the
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