Basil Chupin wrote:

On 14/02/10 22:09, Ed Greshko wrote:

...

As I had mentioned...I'm new to this list. But, I am wondering why the mailing list software isn't configured to add a "Reply-To:" header? Every time I reply I have to remember to "reply all" to get the list as the Cc: and then I feel the need to switch it to "To:" and remove the "To:" for the specific user since I get the feeling most people won't want to get 2 copies of the same message. Along those lines....I wonder how often folks hit "reply" and their message never makes it to the list.

Ed, you are using (from your message Header)-

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.14) Gecko/20080421 Lightning/0.8 Thunderbird/2.0.0.14 Mnenhy/0.7.5.666

Thunderbird is now at v3.0.1, and it has the option to *Reply To List*.

(But if you are using an earlier version of TB - which you are - there is "fix". If you need it, rather than updating to 3.0.1, let me know and I (or someone) will find the answer from past posts.)

It just seems cleaner to me to have the list software put in the "Reply-To" header. Not all mail clients have "reply list" and I don't think it is "user friendly" to ask someone to apply a "fix" since one needs to find a different "fix" for each mail client that lacks the "reply list" feature. So, nice that there is a "fix" for Tbird 2.X but that doesn't really address the question as to why the list software isn't configured for a "Reply-to:". Come to think of it....I probably shouldn't have asked that question here. -- somebody was calculating pi on the server -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Carlos E. R. wrote:

There are several hacks to "solve" it on your side.

Thanks for the pointers. I'll adjust my paradigm accordingly. 新年快乐 to all..... -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Monday, 2010-02-15 at 00:23 +1100, Basil Chupin wrote:

On 14/02/10 23:35, Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

- From the old list faq - retrieved in 2002:

...

Thanks, Carlos, saved me all the time in searching out the links you provided :-) .

(Hell! How many years of posts do you have archived?! :-)

You aren't part of Google or sumti'n? :-D )

ROTFL! I keep at least the subscription email. Mmm... cer@nimrodel:~> du -hc Mail/lists/ 2.1G Mail/lists/_filed 15M Mail/lists/_intrstng/_en 7.7M Mail/lists/_intrstng/_es 24M Mail/lists/_intrstng 35M Mail/lists/_others 3.6G Mail/lists/ 3.6G total Maybe I keep more than the subscription email, after all O:-) - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkt4CNIACgkQtTMYHG2NR9XUPQCcDuEZP+ZdSCSO833jMOoYGEVS OHsAn2YKbg7kSWNV3V1w7qTLva24/NMd =g1z9 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Sunday, 2010-02-14 at 16:56 -0500, Andrew Joakimsen wrote:

On Sun, Feb 14, 2010 at 07:35, Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

There are several hacks to "solve" it on your side.

Yep. Reply-All works well, and if I forget I can can use the "Forward" option to send the mail to the list. But I believe "reply-all" the person I am responding to gets the message twice. I guess if it was a big deal a fuss would have been made about it.

Some people do make a big fuss of it. I filter those copies out, same as I add a reply-to. Gmail filters them as well, you probably only get the personal copy instead of the list one. Blame gmail for poor handling.

Still odd that the list can not be setup correctly, but not everything in life works as it should.... that would be no fun.

The list _is_ set up correctly >:-) - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkt4dU4ACgkQtTMYHG2NR9UvwgCdF9Z0eKhUUuWdEkXJ6s33olSB U2YAoI4ZTazAmapNCbJJ6huOv9NTDU5a =KTCw -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Sun, Feb 14, 2010 at 17:22, Ken Schneider - openSUSE wrote:

On 02/14/2010 04:56 PM, Andrew Joakimsen pecked at the keyboard and wrote:

...

On Sun, Feb 14, 2010 at 07:35, Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

There are several hacks to "solve" it on your side.

Yep. Reply-All works well, and if I forget I can can use the "Forward" option to send the mail to the list. But I believe "reply-all" the person I am responding to gets the message twice. I guess if it was a big deal a fuss would have been made about it.

Still odd that the list can not be setup correctly,

But that is the whole point, the list _is_ setup correctly. A lot of the client software is *_not_* programmed correctly.

...

but not everything in life works as it should.... that would be no fun.

You will notice that email from me has a "Reply-To:" set to the list because of all the people that don't know how to properly use the list. And replying to the list helps keep messages threaded to make it easier to follow a "conversation" in the archives.

Yes, so the list is not setup properly if the default reply is not to the list. Your workaround for the list not being setup seems to work correctly. Hitting reply in my email client the reply is sent to the list! Now instead of every person having to do this it should be setup globally on the list. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On 02/15/2010 02:48 PM, Andrew Joakimsen pecked at the keyboard and wrote:

On Sun, Feb 14, 2010 at 17:22, Ken Schneider - openSUSE wrote:

...

On 02/14/2010 04:56 PM, Andrew Joakimsen pecked at the keyboard and wrote:

You will notice that email from me has a "Reply-To:" set to the list because of all the people that don't know how to properly use the list. And replying to the list helps keep messages threaded to make it easier to follow a "conversation" in the archives.

Yes, so the list is not setup properly if the default reply is not to the list. Your workaround for the list not being setup seems to work correctly. Hitting reply in my email client the reply is sent to the list!

Now instead of every person having to do this it should be setup globally on the list.

I do this only because of the clients that are not programmed correctly and has nothing to do with the correct setup of the list server. People who are uninformed (new to the list and the way it operates), ignorant (are informed as to how the list works but still don't understand) or too lazy (just plane don't give a shit or simply hit reply-to-all) to keep the replies on list is why I do so. -- Ken Schneider SuSe since Version 5.2, June 1998 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Charles Philip Chan wrote:

Andrew Joakimsen writes:

...

Yes, so the list is not setup properly if the default reply is not to the list. Your workaround for the list not being setup seems to work correctly. Hitting reply in my email client the reply is sent to the list!

...

Now instead of every person having to do this it should be setup globally on the list.

Most of us just use "reply to list". It is not our problem that your "broken" email client does not understand RFC 2369 (published in July 1998):

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2369.txt

You might also want to read this:

http://woozle.org/~neale/papers/reply-to-still-harmful.html

Indeed indeed indeed! It should be stapled to dissenting foreheads. -- bkw -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Sun, 2010-02-14 at 09:15 -0500, Felix Miata wrote:

On 2010/02/14 14:11 (GMT+0100) Lars Müller composed:

...

http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html

cf. http://marc.merlins.org/netrants/reply-to-useful.html

Unfortunately this one discards facts in order to make what it claims are points. The harmful artictle points out that if the reply-to is re-written, it can be impossible to reach the author. The value the author put into reply-to may have been the only place that a working address existed. If you re-write it, it's just gone. The not-harmful article claims that reasonable software can overcome this, which is impossible. I happen to administer a bunch of servers that host an application that users use remotely. The application has the ability to send mail. The users have to configure a reply-to address into the app so that they can receive replies to mails they send from the app, because the servers that physically send the mails do not receive mail. Even if these servers did receive mail, they wouldn't relay any of it to any users, and no users have any email clients configured to log in directly to any of these application servers to collect mail. The _only_ way for someone to reach the author of these emails is by referring to the reply-to, which the user supplied and the application wrote into the original mail. Yes the user _might_ have also written a working address in the body of the message. Then again they might not. It's certainly not a requirement. It's almost a requirement _not_ to these days thanks to spammers. If some idiot admin ignores data sanctity and erases what the _author_ wrote to replace it with what they think is cool, they have essentially broken the email system that smarter people than them spend years developing. The field is there for the authors of messages to put what they know they need in there. The field is not there for the letter carrier to scribble over while he's carrying the letter from the authors mailbox to the recipients. Just one example. The general rule of simply don't mess with the data applies without even needing a specific proof example. -- bkw -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Sun, 14 Feb 2010 12:00:00 -0500, you wrote:

I'm completely unsympathetic to the inconvenience of those subscribing to public discussion lists like this having to cut and paste or retype from scratch from the headers of the message being replied to when wishing to reply to the message's author instead of the public list from which the message was received and without which the message would not have been received.

And I'm totally unsympathetic to those that choose to use broken MUAs and not handle that brokeness hemselves by editing header fields. I myself still use a MUA that doesn't offer reply-to-list but I do edit CC and To. Do you see me complaining? Like a German Comedian siad some twenty years ago: "what use is the best artificial intelligence if the natural one is lacking". Philipp -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Felix Miata writes:

So everyone who subscribes to a public discussion list is experienced enough with email and MUAs to tell a broken agent from an unbroken one and choose only the latter? I'm pretty sure that won't happen before M$ offers a Windows license free of charge to everyone who simply asks for one.

I am totally unsympathetic to MUA who doesn't implement standards. After all, RFC 2369 has been with us since July, 1998. I quote from the RFC: ,----[ Excerpt from RFC 2369 ] | The mailing list command specification header fields are a set of | structured fields to be added to email messages sent by email | distribution lists. Each field typically contains a URL (usually mailto | [RFC2368]) locating the relevant information or performing the command | directly. The three core header fields described in this document are | List-Help, List-Subscribe, and List-Unsubscribe. | | There are three other header fields described here which, although not | as widely applicable, will have utility for a sufficient number of | mailing lists to justify their formalization here. These are List-Post, | List-Owner and List-Archive. | | By including these header fields, list servers can make it possible for | mail clients to provide automated tools for users to perform list | functions. This could take the form of a menu item, push button, or | other user interface element. The intent is to simplify the user | experience, providing a common interface to the often cryptic and varied | mailing list manager commands. `---- Charles -- "Computers may be stupid, but they're always obedient. Well, almost always." -- Larry Wall (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)

Hello, On Sun, 14 Feb 2010, Felix Miata wrote:

I'm completely unsympathetic to the inconvenience of those subscribing to public discussion lists like this having to cut and paste or retype from scratch from the headers of the message being replied to when wishing to reply to the message's author instead of the public list from which the message was received and without which the message would not have been received.

Why don't you just shut up and crawl back under your stone? This has been discussed time and again, here and elsewhere. I and others consider reply-to munging harmful. And I'm glad the Admin has the same opinion. And I consider MUAs without list-support as broken (by design). Fix it (via patch/addon) or update or change yer MUA (to one that has it builtin), fer fuck's sake! The means are there. Actually, I don't care a gnat's fart what you use. As long as you keep your mouth shut and don't yammer about the un-munged-reply-to on list. -dnh, recommending mutt as a MUA -- Am I reading this right? You actually *want* to buy a cell phone? You're one sick puppy.... -- James Bialas -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Sunday 14 Feb 2010 20:08:02 Felix Miata wrote:

On 2010/02/14 20:31 (GMT+0100) David Haller composed:

...

Why don't you just shut up and crawl back under your stone?

<pruned> I have to admit as to not being too sure what all this broo haa haaa is about once again but it crops up all to many times . I use Kmail have done for as long as KDE has been around apart from once trying thunderbird (never again it's brain dead) but i have no problems replying to the list and the list only with NO extra personal mails that are not wanted reply to list on KDE is a piece of cake right click on the message you want to reply to pick reply to list 4th selection down click on it hey presto editor open with the message quited ready for you to edit and add your bits now what is hard about that . It really is seriously time the admins put in a filter to can this stuff before it lands that way it wont keep on re running time after time the list works it works well why the heck change it because some mail clients are all screwed up Pete . -- Powered by openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 2 (x86_64) Kernel: 2.6.30-rc6-git3-4- default KDE: 4.2.86 (KDE 4.2.86 (KDE 4.3 >= 20090514)) "release 1" 08:32 up 22 days 23:14, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.05, 0.02

On Sun, Feb 14, 2010 at 23:26, Carlos E. R. wrote:

Just assume for a moment that this list had the reply-to changed to the list. Then assume, as it happens now and then, that a user sets an autoreply on his account to say he is off for the holidays. Now think:

 - You send an email to the list.  - The list sends it to every body, including to the chap on vacation.  - The autoreply on vacation replies, to the list server, that his owner   is on vacation.  - The list server will now send this "on vacation" message to the entire   list.  - This second message will provoke another "on vacation" email from that   chap system, which will be sent to the list again...

You got a loop which can sends thousands of emails to the thousands of subscribers, ie, millions of emails sent per hour, before some admin takes action and kills it.

This is one of the scenarios that mail admins try to avoid by not changing the reply-to header. This is the standard and proper method. If your sofware does not follow the standard, live and suffer. As I do.

You know.. I'm on a LOT of MLs (and I'm a moderator on several right now). Most munge the reply-to (including the ones I moderate)... and I've never, in all the years I've been on MLs, seen this scenario happen... not once. Yet it's always used as an example of how things can go wrong with munged reply-tos This is not to argue the case one way or the other... I don't care.. I can work with either method... but... if this is such a "good" example (and it must be since it's used every single time this discussion comes up), why isn't it, as described, flooding all the MLs I'm on? It doesn't happen in the real world, for whatever reason... well.. I've never seen it happen... ever, and I've seen Vacation autoreplies pop up on every single ML I've subscribed to. C. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Mon, Feb 15, 2010 at 00:06, Charles Philip Chan wrote:

C writes:

...

You know.. I'm on a LOT of MLs (and I'm a moderator on several right now).  Most munge the reply-to (including the ones I moderate)... and I've never, in all the years I've been on MLs, seen this scenario happen... not once.  Yet it's always used as an example of how things can go wrong with munged reply-tos

I am surprised that you haven't encountered it once.  I am on a lot of mailing lists too and I have seen this happening on mailing lists that munge the reply-to header (for example jpilot). The vocation mails and the subsequent complains to have the email address temporarily unsubscribed is annoying.

Hmmm...maybe I'm lucky then... or the ML admins have done something to catch these loops? I do see the initial vacation reply thing, but after that... nothing more.... at least not an endless loop of vacation replies to vacation replies as the scenario indicates should happen. I just checked my own work vacation message thing... and maybe this is the reason why... vacation responders are more intelligent? The options/setup is to respond once to an incoming message, and then not send another vacation reply to the same originator (in this case the ML) for a fixed period.. one week for example. Maybe more vacation responders are set up like that than we realize? C. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

C wrote:

On Sun, Feb 14, 2010 at 23:26, Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

Just assume for a moment that this list had the reply-to changed to the list. Then assume, as it happens now and then, that a user sets an autoreply on his account to say he is off for the holidays. Now think:

- You send an email to the list. - The list sends it to every body, including to the chap on vacation. - The autoreply on vacation replies, to the list server, that his owner is on vacation. - The list server will now send this "on vacation" message to the entire list. - This second message will provoke another "on vacation" email from that chap system, which will be sent to the list again...

You got a loop which can sends thousands of emails to the thousands of subscribers, ie, millions of emails sent per hour, before some admin takes action and kills it.

This is one of the scenarios that mail admins try to avoid by not changing the reply-to header. This is the standard and proper method. If your sofware does not follow the standard, live and suffer. As I do.

You know.. I'm on a LOT of MLs (and I'm a moderator on several right now). Most munge the reply-to (including the ones I moderate)... and I've never, in all the years I've been on MLs, seen this scenario happen... not once. Yet it's always used as an example of how things can go wrong with munged reply-tos

Yep. I'm currently on 34 MLs. It is only this list that doesn't provide a Reply-To. Thus my surprise and what caused me to ask the question. Like you, in my 15 years of being on untold numbers of MLs I've never seen this supposed problem.

This is not to argue the case one way or the other... I don't care.. I can work with either method... but... if this is such a "good" example (and it must be since it's used every single time this discussion comes up), why isn't it, as described, flooding all the MLs I'm on? It doesn't happen in the real world, for whatever reason... well.. I've never seen it happen... ever, and I've seen Vacation autoreplies pop up on every single ML I've subscribed to.

Yep. As I said, I can alter my paradigm even if it is for a single list. Tbird 2.X has an extension for this. I'd be less inclined to wonder about things if people would just claim... "It is set up as we want it set up. It works for us. Deal with it." (Where "we/us" = those in power) since folks will argue infinitum as to what is "right" or "correct". -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Mon, Feb 15, 2010 at 01:15, Ed Greshko wrote:

I'd be less inclined to wonder about things if people would just claim...  "It is set up as we want it set up.  It works for us. Deal with it."  (Where "we/us" = those in power) since folks will argue infinitum as to what is "right" or "correct".

I think that's the best answer here :-) Like Rajko said, there was a poll a few years back.. the current setup won the vote. The way it is works for me (although I voted the other way). Basically as long as the mail list behavior is known... we can work with it. The newest stand alone mail clients like KMail and TBird all behave nicely with Reply-to List features that make the whole issue a non-issue. It's only numpties like me who insist on using mail clients (like GMail) that don't play well with MLs that notice there's something a bit unusual here. C. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Nope, I get autoreplys plenty of times on this list. On Sun, Feb 14, 2010 at 17:26, Carlos E. R. wrote:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1

On Sunday, 2010-02-14 at 12:00 -0500, Felix Miata wrote:

...

I'm completely unsympathetic to the inconvenience of those subscribing to public discussion lists like this having to cut and paste or retype from scratch from the headers of the message being replied to when wishing to reply to the message's author instead of the public list from which the message was received and without which the message would not have been received.

Just assume for a moment that this list had the reply-to changed to the list. Then assume, as it happens now and then, that a user sets an autoreply on his account to say he is off for the holidays. Now think:

 - You send an email to the list.  - The list sends it to every body, including to the chap on vacation.  - The autoreply on vacation replies, to the list server, that his owner   is on vacation.  - The list server will now send this "on vacation" message to the entire   list.  - This second message will provoke another "on vacation" email from that   chap system, which will be sent to the list again...

You got a loop which can sends thousands of emails to the thousands of subscribers, ie, millions of emails sent per hour, before some admin takes action and kills it.

This is one of the scenarios that mail admins try to avoid by not changing the reply-to header. This is the standard and proper method. If your sofware does not follow the standard, live and suffer. As I do.

- -- Cheers,       Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux)

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-- Med Vennlig Hilsen, A. Helge Joakimsen -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org