Clarifying addressee roles

It seems that the addressing header fields (To:, From:, Cc:, Sender:,
Reply-To:, Resent-*) are overloaded in meanings to a confusing degree.

I get messages have To: fields containing: my email address, a mailing list
address, a mailing list member's address (usually in a reply from another
mailing list member), or gibberish (usually on spam). The same thing
happens on the other fields.

These fields are inherited from a time when it was thought that e-mail
generally had a source person and a set of destination persons and since
then each new mechanism (auto-responders, mailing lists, forwarders,...)
has tried to shoehorn new conventions into the existing ones which seem to
me to be more appropriate to paper memos.

I think that it would be useful to recognize more roles in the interchange
of e-mail and to further allow for straight-forward addition of new roles
(perhaps even ad hoc).

e.g.: (intentionally ugly example syntax!)

To(list): Next Generation e-Mail <[email protected]>
From(individual): Joe Listmember <[email protected]>

is distributed by Majordomo as:

To(list): Next Generation e-Mail <[email protected]>
From(individual): Joe Listmember <[email protected]>
To(individual): Bill McQuillan <[email protected]>

and then from pobox.com as:

To(list): Next Generation e-Mail <[email protected]>
From(individual): Joe Listmember <[email protected]>
To(individual): Bill McQuillan <[email protected]>
From(forwarder): <[email protected]>
To:(individual): Bill Mcquillan <[email protected]>

Please understand that this is just to give a simple example so that it can
be torn apart.  :-)
-- 
Bill McQuillan <[email protected]>