The new linux-il - a few tips to get you (re)started

[Oleg Goldshmidt]

Well, this whole topic is almost as old as Linux-IL, but since we are
at it again... IMHO, the "reply-to-all to send to the list" paradigm
is totally broken. If I send a message to a discussion mailing list
such as Linux-IL I expect any responses to be sent to the list,
period. If I reply to a mailing list posting I reply to the list,
unless I have a really good reason to do something else. This has been
the netiquette of group communications since the times of Usenet. By
the way, the semantics means that the list should be in "To", and
anyone else in "Cc", not the other way around. Sophisticated filtering
rules, for instance, may treat different headers differently (see
below).

The current scheme complicates my MUA unnecessarily. Since this has
been the situation for very long I got used to it and I get by, but it
does not make it right.

I do *not* want to be extra careful about the priorities of my
filtering and/or duplicate-handling rules (I use a smart MUA that
handles duplicates very well on its own) to keep a posting in the
Linux-IL folder (where I want it) and not the "Other" folder (where it
might get if I am not careful - so far I don't have such a problem,
but I am forced to be careful). Unlike others, I assign a lower
priority to my "Other" folder (what is called Inbox by other MUAs -
the messages that my filtering rules cannot classify). On the other
hand, I also have folders where I collect emails from/to a few
individuals who happen to be Linux-IL subscribers - I want to
distinguish between personal emails and list postings, and I assign a
higher priority to personal communications. So far I have managed, but
at the expense of quite complicated filtering rules that my MUA allows
me to program, and at the expense of not being able to do everything I
want (e.g., treat To and Cc differently).

Now, what if someone adds a non-list-member to Cc or crossposts to
another list? Reply-to-all will send a message to people I had no
intention of sending anything to and/or to mailing lists I don't know
the etiquette of,  have no permission to post to, whatever. So I have
to go over the To/Cc headers carefully and guess what all those
addresses are... This is a huge problem, potentially.

There are also problems that cannot be solved by configuring one's MUA
or doing manual work at all. E.g., there is an obvious race condition
when someone posts to the list and then unsubscribes for whatever
reason. The current scheme means he/she will keep getting some of the
list communication after unsubscribing. One might argue how serious
the problem is, but it is a clear bug anyway.

The current scheme made me take care to set the Reply-To field in my
Linux-IL postings to the list address which is the only sane thing to
do. I noticed that I am not the only one who does it. However, for
this posting I am not using my MUA but rather a web interface that
does not allow setting Reply-To differently from From. By the way, I
found a posting in the thread with the proper "Reply-To" (set to the
list) much faster than the really carefully hidden reply-to-all menu
option.

The only sane and foolproof method is to have mailman set the Reply-To
field to the list address. This is a fantastically appropriate moment
to do it.

-- 
Oleg Goldshmidt | pub at goldshmidt.org