[ODE] Suggestion for List admin

[Nate W]

On Fri, 14 Feb 2003 skjold@cistron.nl wrote:

> Also I don't see how it's considered limiting in any way, in fact I
> think it's rather a matter of convenience. As for the functionality, I
> never saw a Reply-To-List-Only option in any mailer, so I would argue
> that it actually adds functionality.

Yep.  The rebuttal to "Reply-To Munging Considered Useful" says that
"list-reply" solves this problem, but it doesn't according to Chip R's
oritinal complaint - it replies to the mailing list AND the original
authors.  "Reply to list only" would be a handy feature, but how common is
it?

Every time I reply to an ODE list message, I tweak the From and CC
headers.  This is because reply-all (Pine's version of 'group reply') is
the only way to get ode@q12.org into the header at all, and becuase I
don't want to pester anyone with multiple copies of replies to their
message.  "Ignore messages with duplicate message-ids" would also be a
nice feature, but how common is it?

IMO, fixing reply-to satisfies the principle of "least pain in the butt."

I've never seen Reply-To used in the way Chip claims is useful.  That's
probably because all the lists I'm on are discussion lists (like this
one), not announcement lists.

"the only one I know is onelist which tries to force as many traffic back
to the list in order to spam you with more messages which each contain a
small add they make money on."

That's crap; I've seen reply-to munging in active use on multiple lists
for longer than onelist has been inexistence.  It's the least-PITA
solution for teleconference-style discussion lists, that's why it's so
widely used.

If anyone wants to talk about this further please contact me off-list (and
note that you'll still be able to do that if reply-to gets munged - it
will be the same work that reply-to-list-only is now, but since it's the
exception rather than the norm I think that the extra work makes sense.)

-- 

Nate Waddoups
Redmond WA USA
http://www.natew.com