Re: Request: ding subscribers' group parameter

[Alexandre Oliva <oliva@lsd.ic.unicamp.br>]

On Jul 31, 2001, Karl Kleinpaste <karl@charcoal.com> wrote:

> Could folks who subscribe here prettyplease put this parameter in
> the group you use for the list?

> (to-address . "ding@gnus.org")

> It will prevent generation of private duplicates when `f'ollowing up
> to the list.

I actually prefer to be explicitly Cc:ed even when posting to the
list, because my Score rules will highlight messages addressed to me,
so I don't have to explicitly increase the score of the thread and
hope for the best.

Now, if the other party were to decide for me that I'm a subscriber of
the list so I don't need another copy, I might end up missing the
followup while scanning the hundreds of messages of the dozens of
mailing lists I subscribe.

Fortunately for me, the implied value of Mail-Followups-To is the
complete list of addresses appearing in To: and Cc:, so I don't have
to set Mail-Followups-To.  But if someone decides to change the
implied value of the header, by following your suggestion, they will
be doing me a mis-favor.  Perhaps I should be setting
Mail-Followups-To: in all messages I post, so that my e-mail address
is explicitly listed.  Perhaps not.

IMO, the choice of whether to explicitly receive a copy of a followup
belongs to the poster of the original message, not to the poster of
the followup.  That's why Reply-To: the list is considered harmful,
and that's why people came up with Mail-Followups-To:.

Now, you may argue that the implied value of Mail-Followups-To: is
wrong, but then, you have to convince everybody to change every mail
reader so as to do followups differently.  Or you can retain the good
IMO status quo, and start posting messages with Mail-Followups-To: in
which you collect all To: and Cc: addresses in the original message
except your own e-mail address.  Then, you're clearly stating your
intention of not receiving a copy, without imposing a change of
behavior upon everybody else.

Just my R$0,02.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva   Enjoy Guarana', see http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Red Hat GCC Developer                  aoliva@{cygnus.com, redhat.com}
CS PhD student at IC-Unicamp        oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist    *Please* write to mailing lists, not to me