Re: setting reply-to header for mailing list
On Wed, Dec 21, 2005 at 12:01:00PM -0500, Derek Martin wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 21, 2005 at 08:48:17AM -0800, William Yardley wrote:
> > On Wed, Dec 21, 2005 at 09:07:01AM -0600, Charles Cazabon wrote:
> > > Eugeny N Dzhurinsky <eugenydzh@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > > Is it possible to automatically add reply-to header with address
> > > > of mailing list when posting message to the mailing list?
> > > That's not what Reply-To: is for. It is, however, what the
> > > Mail-Followup-To: header is for.
> > That's debatable.... M-F-T was never adopted as an official standard
> > and is implemented by only a few MUAs (and not by any popular ones).
> > Reply-To will work for this purpose, and will be honored by more
> > mailers.
> Well, it isn't really debatable that this is not what Reply-To is
> for... Reply-To exists so that the sender can tell the people he is
> corresponding with that the e-mail address which appears on his mail
> may be wrong, and to supply them with the best address at which to
> reach him.
> People use it this way now, but that isn't its purpose,
> and IMNSHO it is a misuse of the feature.
Bullshit.
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc0822.txt
This field provides a general mechanism for indicating
any mailbox(es) to which responses are to be sent. Three
typical uses for this feature can be distinguished. In
the first case, the author(s) may not have regular
machine-based mail- boxes and therefore wish(es) to indicate
an alternate machine address. In the second case, an
author may wish additional persons to be made aware of, or
responsible for, replies. A somewhat different use may
be of some help to "text message teleconferencing" groups
equipped with automatic distribution services: include the
address of that service in the "Reply- To" field of all
messages submitted to the teleconference; then
participants can "reply" to conference submissions to
guarantee the correct distribution of any submission of
their own.
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2822.txt
When the "Reply-To:" field is present, it indicates the
mailbox(es) to which the author of the message suggests that
replies be sent.
This suggests a number of uses for Reply-To - basically, allowing the
sender to determine where he or she feels replies should be sent.
I'm not saying that using an explicit Reply-To is a good idea - I
wouldn't do it personally in most cases. But I don't think doing this is
inconsistent with the purpose of the Reply-To header.
/w