[wp-hackers] Get rid of Reply-To munging

[Jacob]

Jeremy Visser wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-12-05 at 04:44 -0600, Andy Skelton wrote:
>   
>> The vast majority of replies are intended to be sent to the list.
>> Reply-To makes this the default action on clicking Reply in most email
>> clients.
>>     
>
> It's not making it the "default action", it's simply mangling the
> functionality of the Reply button. You're making the functionality of
> the Reply and Reply All buttons the same, when they were previously
> different.
>
> You're not adding any functionality, you're only removing it, and
> introducing an extra hurdle when you want to specifically reply
> off-list.
>
> I was considering setting up a special email address like a few other
> people do here, like "wordpress(at)jeremy.visser.name", and set up a
> Reply-To header so any offlist replies would go to my main address,
> "jeremy.visser(at)gmail.com", but I can't do that, because the mailing
> list is completely disregarding the address I would like people to reply
> to, and substituting it with its own.
>
> But then again, it may be even more dangerous to change the function of
> an already working list, as not everybody will start hitting Reply All
> magically if you turn off Reply-To munging.
>
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>   

I've found it rather frustrating with mailing lists that reply to the 
sender and not to the entire list (although, it did save my ass a couple 
of times with mail I should rather not have sent in the first place). 
You would forget that when you hit reply, it will send to the person, so 
it loses context when you don't address the person and instead address 
the group. The person receiving the email would be confused as that 
person is an individual and not multiple people. Then after you realize 
the mistake you have to resend to the mailing list.

I rather view mailing lists as an (early) extension of forums. On a web 
forum, when you hit reply, you are not replying to the individual, you 
are replying to the group and the group can join in with the discussion. 
If you wanted to reply to the person, you would send a private message 
(or in this case, an email to the individual). You are in essence 
continuing the thread when you click reply and while it is an 
inconvenience, as with online forums, it does make more sense.

To be honest, I would rather have not replied to this thread as it won't 
make any difference what we think.

Jacob Santos

PS: I do also like the feature where it blocks all emails from addresses 
not part of the list, not only did it save my ass plenty of times, it 
kept my private and personal email address from being harvested. 
Sometimes other people say what I'm thinking better than I can.

-- 

Jacob Santos

http://www.santosj.name - blog
http://wordpress.svn.dragonu.net/unittest/ - unofficial WP unit test suite.

Also known as darkdragon and santosj on WP trac.