"Reply-To" Munging Considered Harmful (was: Re: [gentoo-user] re: make distclean)

[Tom Wijsman]

On Tue, 17 Dec 2013 09:24:58 -0600
Bruce Hill <daddy@×××××××××××××××××××××.com> wrote:

> From: Bruce Hill <daddy@×××××××××××××××××××××.com>
> To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
> Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] re: make distclean
> Reply-to: gentoo-user@l.g.o
> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15)
>
> On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 11:34:14AM +0200, Thanasis wrote:
> >
> > In my system /lib/modules/`uname -r`/source
> > is a symbolic link to /usr/src/linux-`uname -r`
>
> What does that guys sig say????
>
> - List replies preferred.

Where does it say that? By whom?

Note that the typical way to indicate list replies is to make use of
the Reply-To: header; but because the mailing list administrators munge
this header, people will override this behavior to maintain standards.
Thus, the simple and safe assumption that the person is not subscribed.

Since the only sane way (reading the Reply-To header) to know whether
list replies are preferred by the user or not has now been overridden;
to maintain standards we send it to both e-mail addresses and we rely on
the receiver filtering out duplicate mails with the same message ID.

For that procmail rules exist, which can alternatively also filter
mails that simply list the mailing list in Cc: but not in From: header.

More reading material on this matter:

http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html
http://woozle.org/~neale/papers/reply-to-still-harmful.html

Also note that signatures are often cut off when replying, some even
opt to cut it off on the procmail level; so, note that expectations in
a signature are often not met. I had to explicitly look it up for
example to see what is referred to. It's handy to look up your address,
but because of things like birds, it usually is truncated. (Nice bird!)

> --
> Happy Penguin Computers               >')
> 126 Fenco Drive                       ( \
> Tupelo, MS 38801                       ^^
> support@×××××××××××××××××××××.com
> 662-269-2706 662-205-6424
> http://happypenguincomputers.com/
>
> A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
> Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
> A: Top-posting.
> Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
>
> Don't top-post: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_post#Top-posting

-- 
With kind regards,

Tom Wijsman (TomWij)
Gentoo Developer

E-mail address  : TomWij@g.o
GPG Public Key  : 6D34E57D
GPG Fingerprint : C165 AF18 AB4C 400B C3D2  ABF0 95B2 1FCD 6D34 E57D