On Mon, 2006-03-27 at 15:15 -0500, Felix Miata wrote:
On 06/03/27 13:06 Jerry Feldman apparently typed:
Most lists (at least the ones I both use and run) do NOT set the Reply-to.
I'm on upwards of 40 lists, of which about 6 do not set reply-to to the list.
1. Mail loops. Occasionally when a user sets the vacation switch, with reply-to set back to the list, you can get an unending loop of vacation messages where the list admin usually needs to remove that user.
I can't imagine that the listserv software can't be smart enough to prevent these. If I was a list admin, 100% of auto responses would immediately unsubscribe the perpetrator.
2. Many times replies are intended to the poster and not the list. By not setting reply-to, the listserv tends to keep the number of poster specific replies down.
If "many times" were to constitute upwards of 50% this would be a justfication. On discussion lists, intent to reply only to sender happens a small fraction of the time. Not setting reply-to to a list here violates the principle of least surprise. It also causes many people to hit reply-all as a counter measure, causing two posts where, as here, only one was warranted. Then why did you do just that, send two replies out. One to the list and one to Jerry.
-- Ken Schneider UNIX since 1989, linux since 1994, SuSE since 1998