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I'm long, and off-topic [was Re: GNU and MzScheme's Internal design]



Brent Fulgham <brent.fulgham@xpsystems.com> writes:

[...]

> Could the mail-masters at PLT modify the rules such that the
> Reply-To: header is always set to PLT-Scheme mailing list?  That
> way we would only receive one copy of any mail, unless someone took
> the time to specifically CC us individually.  That might be a
> simpler solution.

Please, don't!.  This is more a pain than a solution, since it is very
common (at least I do it frequently) to "take" a conversation out of a
list, and if you add one of those obnoxious "Reply-To: list" headers,
care must be taken to avoid sending personal responses to the list,
and, IMHO, that is something MUAs should take care of, not the user.

The following excerpt is due Per Abrahamsen¹ (on the Gnus development
list) that summarizes (nicer?) options to deal with the "multiple
copies" issue:

,--------------------
| > (http://www.newsreaders.com/misc/mail-copies-to.html) says
| >                               
| >   If the header is not present the agent SHOULD NOT set the message to
| >   be both posted and mailed.  
| >                               
| > Please correct me if I interpret this wrong, or stop sending me
| > personal followups.           
|                                 
| The document is irrelevant, as the document in question only covers
| the use of the header on Usenet, not email.  The situation for email
| are very different than Usenet, both for cultural and technical
| reasons.                        
|                                 
| However, while the issue is not covered by any standards, there is the
| much more important question of politeness.  
|                                 
| Of course, in general it is silly to send multiple copies of the same
| message by different paths to the same receiver.  Unfortunately, when
| only using the common headers, there is no machanical way an agent can
| determine whether the receivers of foo@bar.org is a subset of the
| receivers of baz@foobar.net.  Or more specifically, without more
| information there is no way Gnus can know that nagya@inf.elte.hu is a
| member of the mailing list ding@gnus.org.  To be safe, the default
| action have to be to send to both addresses.
|                                 
| There are several solutions to this problem.  Here are some of the
| ones the sender can use:        
|                                 
| 1. He can setup Gnus to sort away duplicates.  This is the one I use,
| and I haven't been bothered by duplicates since that.
|                                 
| 2. He can use "mail-copies-to: nobody", in order to tell the receiver
| that he already read one of the to or cc addresses, so it can ignore
| the from address.               
|                                 
| 3. He can use "mail-followup-to: list@address", to indicate which of
| the adresses in question that is most appropriate for wide replies.
|                                 
| 4. He can try flaming on the list, and hope the receivers will make it
| their problem.  I strongly discourage selecting this option.
|                                 
| The reciecer can also do something, even if he has fewer options.
|                                 
| 1. IF the list is closed, i.e. only subscribers send to it, and IF he
| read it from a Gnus folder, and IF there are no crossmailed messages
| (i.e. messages mailed to multiple lists), he can set the 'to-address'
| group parameter.  I do this for some lists, e.g. ding, but not others
| like auctex (which is open for non-subscribers) or xemacs-beta (which
| has lots of crossmailings).     
|                                 
| 2. The can manually for each message try to guess who is on which
| lists.  I do not recommend this, it is way more unreliable and takes a
| lot more work for the receiver, than it would take for the sender to
| solve the problem from his side.
`--------------------

Now, granted that some of the so called, *sender solutions*, are Gnus
centered, I'm sure your MUA offer similar options you can tweak.

HTH,
--Francisco

Footnotes: 
¹  The full thread on the "mail-{followup,copies}-to on this list",
topic can be found at:

http://www.gnus.org/list-archives/ding/200102/threads.html

this excerpt is part of that thread.

-- 
No one is listening until you make a mistake.