Re: replies

[Ed L Cashin <ecashin@coe.uga.edu>]

Berend de Boer <berend@pobox.com> writes:

> Ed L Cashin wrote:
> 
>  
> > Munging the email headers is a kludge to support broken email
> > clients.
> > 
> > An email client should provide a "reply to all" feature which will
> > reply to the author and the list.
> 
> Having to hit a different button depending on broken mailing list
> servers is my idea of a kludge :-)

In one situation, the user is empowered: if all the headers remain
intact, then the user can reply to the author, or reply-to-all.
Hitting different keys to do different things is a natural part of
computing.  

The alternative is to change the headers.  When that happens, if I hit
"reply" in order to reply to the author, then I get the wrong thing,
the list address, in my header.  Lots of embarrassing emails have been
posted to lists because of that.  If the headers are changed, then I
have to delete the wrong header from my outgoing email, go find the
author's real address, and retype it or paste it into the headers.  It
shouldn't be that difficult to reply to the author.  When I reply, it
shouldn't go to the list, because the list didn't write the email.

Regarding the extra copy produced from replying to all, that is normal
and is called a courtesy copy.  If someone doesn't want to receive
courtesy copies, then there is a special header that can be added to
outgoing mail which many mail clients will respect by not sending the
courtesy copy.

-- 
--Ed Cashin                     PGP public key:
  ecashin@coe.uga.edu           http://www.coe.uga.edu/~ecashin/pgp/