Not quoting the email address in news/mailing lists followups

Not quoting the email address in news/mailing lists followups

[Sivaram Neelakantan]

How do I configure the news/mailing lists followups and replies to not
quote the reply to address?

On another mailing list, I was asked to configure my mail client to
remove the email address

	Please Configure Your Mailer To Not Quote Raw E-mail Addresses
	In Your Replies. Some mailers include the raw e-mail address
	in the "Joe <joe@example.com> wrote:" line. The web archives
	for the mailing lists are publicly available. Let's not feed
	the spam harvesters!

<http://cygwin.com/acronyms/#PCYMTNQREAIYR> 

I couldn't see anything in the replies and follow ups section in the
manual. 


 sivaram
 -- 

Re: Not quoting the email address in news/mailing lists followups

[Daniel Pittman]

Sivaram Neelakantan <nsivaram.net@gmail.com> writes:

> How do I configure the news/mailing lists followups and replies to not
> quote the reply to address?

    C-h v message-citation-line-function <RET>
    C-h v message-citation-line-format   <RET>

You get to write your own function to mangle the email address as you prefer,
or adjust the formatting preferences.  The later will allow you to omit the
address entirely, though, without having to do more custom work.

> On another mailing list, I was asked to configure my mail client to
> remove the email address
>
> 	Please Configure Your Mailer To Not Quote Raw E-mail Addresses
> 	In Your Replies. Some mailers include the raw e-mail address
> 	in the "Joe <joe@example.com> wrote:" line. The web archives
> 	for the mailing lists are publicly available. Let's not feed
> 	the spam harvesters!
>
> <http://cygwin.com/acronyms/#PCYMTNQREAIYR> 
> I couldn't see anything in the replies and follow ups section in the manual.

Nope.  This is because most mailing lists are not run by people with
... unique ideas about how to improve the world. :)

Well, or they use their archiving tool to detect and mangle the addresses on
the way through, which is the right answer to this, if you believe it is of
value — since it "solves" the problem in one fell swoop.

Not that this is that relevant to your problem, of course.

        Daniel
-- 
✣ Daniel Pittman            ✉ daniel@rimspace.net            ☎ +61 401 155 707
               ♽ made with 100 percent post-consumer electrons

Re: Not quoting the email address in news/mailing lists followups

[Sivaram Neelakantan]

Daniel Pittman <daniel@rimspace.net> writes:

> Sivaram Neelakantan <nsivaram.net@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> How do I configure the news/mailing lists followups and replies to not
>> quote the reply to address?
>
>     C-h v message-citation-line-function <RET>
>     C-h v message-citation-line-format   <RET>
>
> You get to write your own function to mangle the email address as you prefer,
> or adjust the formatting preferences.  The later will allow you to omit the
> address entirely, though, without having to do more custom work.
>
I changed it to

(setq message-citation-line-format "On %a, %b %d %Y,%F %L wrote:\n")

is what I eval'ed and it doesn't seem to have changed the citation to
remove your email address.

What gives?

[snipped 25 lines]


 sivaram
 -- 

Re: Not quoting the email address in news/mailing lists followups

[Daniel Pittman]

Sivaram Neelakantan <nsivaram.net@gmail.com> writes:
> Daniel Pittman <daniel@rimspace.net> writes:
>> Sivaram Neelakantan <nsivaram.net@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> How do I configure the news/mailing lists followups and replies to not
>>> quote the reply to address?
>>
>>     C-h v message-citation-line-function <RET>
>>     C-h v message-citation-line-format   <RET>
>>
>> You get to write your own function to mangle the email address as you prefer,
>> or adjust the formatting preferences.  The later will allow you to omit the
>> address entirely, though, without having to do more custom work.
>>
> I changed it to
>
> (setq message-citation-line-format "On %a, %b %d %Y,%F %L wrote:\n")
>
> is what I eval'ed and it doesn't seem to have changed the citation to
> remove your email address.
>
> What gives?

Ah, nice.  The documentation is obscure; from the changelog in Gnus info:

  * The option `message-citation-line-format' controls the format
    of the "Whomever writes:" line.  You need to set
    `message-citation-line-function' to
    `message-insert-formatted-citation-line' as well.

The default is not clearly spelled out, and could probably do with an explicit
copy of that information in the help for `message-citation-line-format'.

        Daniel

I didn't notice that I have customized that variable some time back, either,
so the default doesn't match my running system. :)
-- 
✣ Daniel Pittman            ✉ daniel@rimspace.net            ☎ +61 401 155 707
               ♽ made with 100 percent post-consumer electrons