Re: Request: ding subscribers' group parameter

[prj@po.cwru.edu (Paul Jarc)]

Karl Kleinpaste <karl@charcoal.com> writes:
> prj@po.cwru.edu (Paul Jarc) writes:
>> Gnus will not copy MFT into followups, which is bad - further
>> followups will not get Cc'ed.  Would you rather trust everyone in
>> the thread to obey the reminder, and to insert another reminder in
>> their own messages to Cc the OP?
> 
> Your expressed use of MFT amounts to an attempt to generalize
> _ongoing_ external participation in a mailing list.

That's one use that it generalizes, yes.

> Non-subscribers may send isolated "please help" or "I've found a bug"
> messages to a mailing list, which can require specific response to the
> originator; but once such a person determines he wants to engage in
> _discussion_ on that list, he can darn well subscribe like the rest of
> us mere mortals, participating as subscribers are intended.

Why?  If we can provide the technology to make it easy for someone to
follow just one thread without subscribing, why is that a bad thing?
Especially when no one is asking you to do any of the work?

> At that point, of course, MFT again becomes unnecessary, since
> the to-address property controls.

to-address says "I'm *guessing* that no one listed in From+To+Cc in
the previous message wants an extra copy, so I'll do them a service by
not sending one"; this requires manual intervention or fails
completely when the guess is wrong.

MCT says "I explicitly declare that I don't (or do) want an extra
copy", and Gnus will respect that preference of the sender, if it is
expressed.

MFT can say everything that MCT says and more, all explicitly, and all
by the person who really knows what their preference is.

MCT and MFT are both already respected by Gnus even if to-address is
set.  This is good: we're taking the real preference over someone
else's guess.

I Gnus were to additionally generating MFT for mailing list messages,
that would mean two things: first, followups from others will
automatically respect my MFT on messages I post - others won't have to
do any extra manual configuration to respect my preference.  This will
work even if they're using Mutt or any other client that supports MFT.
Some of us are subscribed to lists other than this one.

Second, Gnus won't discard similar information about others'
preferences.

Do you find any factual errors in the above?  You may not think that
generating MFT is worth your time, but I'm not asking for your time.
I'm willing to code it myself, as soon as I can figure out how.
Hmm... gnus-msg.el seems to be the place to start...


paul