[Dovecot] Reply-To header [was: Re: quota warning]

[Mark E. Mallett]

On Sat, Feb 17, 2007 at 12:33:40AM +0200, Timo Sirainen wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-02-16 at 15:16 -0600, Richard Laager wrote:
> > I see you've added a Reply-To header later. The canonical response in
> > this case is for someone to reference:
> > http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html

A canonical response to that is

   http://www.metasystema.net/essays/reply-to.mhtml


> This all could be solved nicely if there was a header that means "don't
> include me in the reply-to-all list".

Active threads tend to pick up contributors: how would you try to
honor all of the preferences of all of the people who might end up in
the cc list?  You can't really trust the existing CC list to have been
properly vetted (for some version of "proper"). 

With regard to reply-to munging and cc preferences you just get into an
unmanageable matrix of conflicting opinions and wishes.  It's just
better to:

  - be deliberate about where you're sending, so you aren't hapharzardly
    at the whim of your tools and environment.  If you make a mistake,
    at least do it on purpose :)

  - manage your own inbox, don't ask others to remember your preferences.

You really can't please everybody.

Incidentally, my approach, for any list where I think discussions ought
to stay on list, is to guarantee a Mail-Followup-To header in message
as it comes into my inbox, and to use a mail reader that looks at it
when I ask it to reply to the list and which conversely ignores it when
I ask it to reply to the sender.  (I've gotten flack for this from
people who for some reason think I'm not allowed to add this header on
my own mail sitting in my own inbox, but naturally I don't agree with
them.)  This gives me the choice of behaviors that I want.  And I still
review the outgoing header before I let it fly.

Hmm, I guess this must be my day for giving bicycle shed opinions.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Avoid_Parkinson's_Bicycle_Shed_Effect

-mm-