Replying to list

[Andy Waddington]

Sometime before sending, David Woodhouse typed (and on Sunday 2012-08-05 sent):

> Your mailer has two reply buttons.

That's an interesting generalisation - it won't apply to everyone.

If I click on a message in the list I get one menu entry for
Reply, leading to four submenu items

* Reply ... (this replies to the list for a mailbox labelled as containing
         a mailing list, or to 'Reply to', fallback the author, otherwise)
* Reply to author
* Reply to all
* Reply to Mailing list

But far more often I won't click on the message in the list, but on an 
email address in the header of the message I am looking at - because
that's a lot less distance to move the mouse and usually achieves the
desired result of only sending the message to one address and, more
to the point, I am looking at the address to which I want to reply, so
I never make the mistake of sending to an individual when I meant to
reply to the list, or vice-versa. It's very simple to add a CC or BCC
later. (But BCC is bad in this context in that that person doesn't see
any subsequent replies, as the readers don't see his address).

If you want religion, then mine is that the Reply-to header should be
set by the sender of the message if he feels that replies should always
be to the list, always private, or, quite possibly, always sent to some
random address - for instance if he has posted from an address to which
replies should not be sent (eg. a work address). The latter is a reason
for avoiding "Reply to all" if and only if the author has set a Reply to
header. The issue here is that there is no "Do not reply to" header for
that situation. If the list software sets Reply to, it overrides individual
choice, either of the author, or the responder, or both and, quite often,
does so opaquely.

The main problem is that list owners (whether by dictat or by consensus of
the list users) set different defaults, so if responders always do the same
thing they may not achieve the same result on different lists...

Andy