Re: *Reply-to* considered harmful (was Re: Understanding response protocols)

On Mon, 6 Jun 2005, Keith Moore wrote:

> Rather, the whole assumption that the author of a message should be 
> able to change the behavior of a recipient's user agent is very 
> much in doubt.

Amen (I have come to realise).

> The only way to make Reply work better is to improve the user 
> interfaces of mail user agents so that recipients of messages are 
> more easily able to explicitly choose where their replies go.  To 
> the next new fields can help this process, they can only do so by 
> providing more information to a recipient to inform that choice.

How about looking at this as two seperate problems:

1. Unhelpful behaviour of many MUAs in presence of Reply-To

2. Desires by sending users for finer-grained means to specify
    preferences for replies

Would it be an idea to start by solving 1 first? Eg via a BCP or some 
other document?

That would help clear-up the scope of 2 also. (Eg, currently the 
desire for 2 is often because of 1 - that's why I initially 
approached this list).

> Keith

regards,
-- 
Paul Jakma	[email protected]	[email protected]	Key ID: 64A2FF6A
Fortune:
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a
simple system that works.