Replying to list

[David Woodhouse]

On Fri, 2012-08-03 at 13:38 -0400, Derek J. Balling wrote:
> The "logic" behind the default is that the mail is technically from
> "Joe" and if you reply, there's a CHANCE you want to just reply to
> joe, and might be including information private for joe's eyes.

That's an interesting way of phrasing it.

Your mailer has two reply buttons. One is the 'reply' button that sends
a private reply to the sender, and the other is the 'reply to all'
button which sends a public reply to everyone.

If you hack the Reply-To: header of the list messages to trick people
into doing a *public* reply when they hit the *private* reply button,
that is both pointless (because they already *had* a button to press for
a public reply), and potentially dangerous (because they might post
something in public that they really didn't mean to).

The failure mode when someone accidentally presses the wrong button and
replies privately is fairly harmless. They can reply again, pressing the
*right* button this time, and post to the list. All that happens is that
the original correspondent gets an extra copy of the message.

The failure mode when an evil list admin tricks your mailer into posting
*public* replies when you press your *private* reply button, and private
information or opinions are made public, could be catastrophic.

It's really a no-brainer.

Even those who have to deal with clueless list members, who *think*
they're doing their subscribers a favour by making things "simpler" and
making the private reply button "work" for replying to the list, are
wrong. They're just making things confusing for their users, by blurring
the distinction between the private "Reply" and the public "Reply All"
buttons, and thus they are *contributing* to their users' ignorance. I
understand the temptation, but it's counter-productive and wrong.

-- 
dwmw2
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