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Re: [Gambas-user] MUA "Reply" should not behave as "Reply List" (was Re: M/L replying to users email not the list)

Inline below.

On 3/5/24 14:37, Christof Thalhofer wrote:

Am 05.03.24 um 20:10 schrieb T Lee Davidson:


As I deleted the original email message, here is the reference: https://lists.gambas-basic.org/archive/user/2024-03/0000072.html

'Thunderbird handles correctly "Mail-Reply-To". It makes the "Reply"
button acts like the "Reply to list" button, avoiding the mistake not
to answer the mailing-list.'

I disagree that it is a "mistake" not to answer to the mailing-list
when one uses the "Reply" button, but the opposite. It is a mistake
to reply to the list when one intended to reply privately.

The author of this page,
https://marc.merlins.org/netrants/reply-to-harmful.html (the link to
which was recently sent to me), writes about the "Principle of Least
Surprise" and the "Principle of Least Damage". "Reply" behaving as
"Reply List" goes against both of those principles.

Users of the Thunderbird MUA, at least, should be able to customize
its behavior to their liking. Although old, some of https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Help_Documentation:Mail-Followup-To_and_Mail-Reply-To#Configure_Thunderbird 
may still be applicable. I do not know what the solution would be for
users of the Gmail web interface as I do not use it.


There is no solution for the Gmail interface.

With Mailman2 we deleted the original 'Reply-To:' in a mail and instead inserted 'Reply-To: user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'.

This broke DKIM and some providers interpreted that as a signal that the mail is possibly spam.

But is was the only way to say Gmail, that it should reply to the list when the user hits <Reply>.

Mlmmj makes it now impossible to delete the original 'Reply-To:'-header.

So now we add this header:

'Mail-Reply-To: user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'

thanks to a proposal of D.J. Bernstein.
With that header a lot of MUAs like Thunderbird, Claws and others reply to 'user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx' when the user hits <Reply>.
And, that is what I, and the author of '"Reply-To" Munging Considered Harmful', are saying should not be. So, if Gmail doesn't respect it and it is not a solution for the Gmail web interface, why use it when it makes "Reply" in the MUA behave as it should not? 



Not so Gmail:
The poor guys at Gmail have to live with it that they cannot hit 'Reply' to answer to the list. Instead they have to choose 'Reply to all' with which Gmail would send: 

To: authors_email@domain
CC: list@listserver

Then they have to delete 'authors_email@domain' from 'To:' and move 'list@listserver' to 'To:'.

I tried it out today at my Gmail account. No chance to make it easier there.


What about the Mail-Followup-To header? I wonder if Gmail would respect that in it's "Reply All" function.


--
Lee