(OT) Care in Replying to list traffic.

[Bill Campbell]

I just spent a couple of hours figuring out how to delete a
message sent to the FilePro list five months ago that the sender
claimed was confidential and should have been sent to an
individual.

Removing a message isn't trivial on a list where the archives go
back to February 2004, contain over 32,000 messages, and almost
150Mb in the main Mailbox file.

This posting went out before the most recent update which changed
the handling so each message now has a Reply-To: header pointing
to the original sender or the original sender's Reply-To: header.
At that time, a user supplied Reply-To: was included, but none
generated in lieu of that.  Since the update, a Reply-To: is
always inserted, leaving the sender's original, or using the
address in the original mails From header. 

Any reasonable email client will always use the Reply-To: header
when the user selects reply as opposed to other list-specific
commands (e.g. mutt's 'L' to reply to list).

I have always refused to set the Reply-To: to point to the list
address when people asked because it's 'easier' that way.  IHMO,
it should always require a little thought before sending a
message to several hundred people.

I'm not sure what would happen if somebody sent a message to the
list with 'Reply-To: filepro-list at lists.celestial.com'.  I am
sure that if I found somebody doing this, I would immediately
unsubscribe them and bar them from ever posting again.

Finally, people should remember that email isn't secure,
particularly when sent to public mailing lists.  Never send
anything you wouldn't want to see on the front page of the New
York Times, Fox News, or other public source.

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
Fax:            (206) 232-9186  Skype: jwccsllc (206) 855-5792

Any time a man has to pay for something he does not want because
of the initiating of force by the government, he is, to that
degree, a slave. -- R.C. Hoiles http://mises.org/daily/4840