Mutt - filepro report processing - Unix

[Bill Campbell]

On Thu, Sep 25, 2014, Jean-Pierre A. Radley wrote:
>Walter D Vaughan Jr propounded (on Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 04:36:36PM -0400):
>| > -----Original Message-----
>| > From: Filepro-list [mailto:filepro-list-
>| > bounces+wvaughan=steelerubber.com at lists.celestial.com] On Behalf Of
>| > Jean-Pierre A. Radley
>| 
>| > Please consider the environment yourself.  I got two copies of your
>| message
>| > because you addressed it both to the fP list and to me.  Why?
>| 
>| I have always thought the headers for this mailing list to
>| counter-intuitive. Every email I reply-to regardless of the client I have
>| used, requires me to remember to erase the address of the person of whose
>| email I am replying and replace it with the mailing list's address.
>| 
>| I'd guess that 98% of all follow-ups are meant for everyone, and are not
>| private answers.
>| 
>| Is there not about a dozen RFC's for headers that would automatically cause
>| a reply to go to the entire mailing list? 

Sure one could have the Reply-To: go to the list, but it's
generally considered a Bad Idea(TM) by responsible mail admins.
One of the primary reasons is that it should require a tiny bit
of thought before sending messages to a few hundred people.
$DEITY knows how many people have been embarassed when they meant
to reply to the sender, particularly if the reply was personal,
rude, or unPC.

See this rather old document explaining why.

	http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html

As this article says, and JP says below, most Mail User Agents
(MUAs) have easy ways to reply to a list.  With Mutt, my
preferred mailer for most things, having the list name in the
$HOME/.muttrc 'subscribe' section allows one to simply hit 'L' to
send to any list which has the appropriate list identification
headers.

Ken Brody pointed out that the messages he's receiving from the
FilePro list have filepro-list at lists.celestial.com in the From:
header instead of the original From: header.  This is the result
of changes made by Yahoo!, hotmail, and some other large email
destinations which won't deliver mail if the system sending the
mail isn't a valid sender for the From: address's domain.  This
resulted in a large number of bounces and automatic unsubscribes
for about 40+ members of the list.

I had to update the Mailman list managament program here to deal
with this.  It now knows which domains do this, and rewrites
headers so the From: is now the list, and Reply-To: the original
sender.

>| Would that not end all these duplicate emails, or private replies that were
>| meant for someone two or three indents earlier to see along with the entire
>| group?
>| http://mailman.celestial.com/mailman/listinfo/filepro-list
>
>Well, Walter, for sure MTAs and MUAs have different logic and capabilities.
>
>My incoming mail is filtered through a classic Unix program called
>"deliver". If it sees that a message has been sent to "*filepro-list*",
>it replaces any Reply-To Header, or adds one if it's lacking, with:
>
>	Reply-To: filepro-list at lists.celestial.com
>
>Then, using mutt to read the mail, if I hit 'r' while reading a message
>from this mailing list, the screen shows:
>
>	Reply to filepro-list at lists.celestial.com? ([yes]/no):
>
>If I hit ENTER, my reply will be sent to the list; otherwise, it will go
>to the poster.
>
>-- 
>JP
>_______________________________________________
>Filepro-list mailing list
>Filepro-list at lists.celestial.com
>Subscribe/Unsubscribe/Subscription Changes
>http://mailman.celestial.com/mailman/listinfo/filepro-list
>

-- 
Bill
-- 
INTERNET:   bill at celestial.com  Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
URL: http://www.celestial.com/  PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way
Voice:          (206) 236-1676  Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820
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People from East Germany have found the West so confusing. It's so much
easier when you have only one party. -- Linus Torvalde, Linux Expo Canada
when asked about confusion over many Linux distributions.