Re: mail-{followup,copies}-to on this list

[dsg@world.std.com (David S. Goldberg)]

> Some of you send followups to mails on this list to the poster, and a
> cc to the list address, unless the sender has put a mail-copies-to:
> never (or similar) header in the original message.  However, the
> mail-copies-to draftq
> (http://www.newsreaders.com/misc/mail-copies-to.html) says

>   If the header is not present the agent SHOULD NOT set the message to
>   be both posted and mailed.

> Please correct me if I interpret this wrong, or stop sending me
> personal followups.

You're not wrong, but I think you are asking too much of Gnus.  In the
case of newsgroups, Gnus does the right thing by default.  That is,
even in the absence of MCT, it only sends followups to the newsgroup,
not the original poster.  If Gnus knows it's dealing with a mailing
list, it also does the right thing.  You'll note there's no duplicate
message from me directly to you on this reply.  That's because I have
told Gnus (by setting to-list) that when I'm reading the group into
which I file all ding@gnus.org traffic, it should treat wide reply in
the same manner as followup in an nntp newsgroup.  But it can't
possibly know that messages to ding@gnus.org should be treated
specially if I don't tell it to do so.

-- 
Dave Goldberg
dsg@world.std.com