Subject: Cc: and Reply-To

From: Arthur Snoke <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 20:53:56 -0500 (EST)

Apologies if this point has been made, but ...

I manage a few listservs, and some are "Discussion Lists" where the
default for "Reply" is to the whole list, while others are "Announce
Lists" where the default "Reply" is to the actual sender.  It seems to me
all this Cc: complaining would be solved if this list were handled as a
"Discussion List" so that there would be little temptation to choose the
"all recipients" option when replying.  Or is it more normal for this list
that the reply should just go to the original sender?

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From: Michael Talbot-Wilson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 12:46:57 +1030 (CST)

> that the reply should just go to the original sender?

For Majordomo, at least, that is a complete solution.  Then, you
don't even get the "all recipients" prompt.  I assume that is true
of listserv+pine also.

But with very large lists I can understand that owners would want
the default reply to the sender.  Then (thinking of a million
subscribers), even if a large majority of responses go to "all
recipients", the small proportion that does not represents a
significant mitigation of Net traffic and list server load.  From
the list owner's perspective, the Cc to the originator and
contributers to the thread does not represent significant traffic.

--Mike

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From: "Adam H. Kerman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 22:12:51 -0600 (CST)

>From: Michael Talbot-Wilson <[email-masked]>
>Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 12:46:57 +1030 (CST)

>>Apologies if this point has been made, but ...

We had a thread about this 2 days ago.

>don't even get the "all recipients" prompt.  I assume that is true

You haven't the foggiest idea what you are talking about. Majordomo and
LISTSERV are servers. (The platform this list uses is ListProc.)

Receipients use clients like pine to reply. But pine isn't a client of the list
server but of the mail server on his host or domain. That's several steps
removed from the list server.

A pine user sees prompts from pine that depend on whether his name was on To,
Cc, or Bcc, and whether or not Reply-To was set to the list posting address.
The list server is irrelevant.

---

From: Michael Talbot-Wilson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 16:37:19 +1030 (CST)

On Thu, 29 Oct 1998, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

>...

I assumed that was so.  I even said I assumed it was so.  I made a
more definite statement based on experience with Majordomo.  Why do
you take a microscope to the matter attempting to find an excuse to
send one of your aggressive and unpleasant replies?  Why do you send
such muck to the _list_ for goodness sake?   Trying to impress
someone?

If only you could see through someone else's eyes the impression of
yourself that you convey by these anticks.

---

From: "Robin S. Socha" <[email-masked]>
Date: 30 Oct 1998 07:28:07 +0100

> On Thu, 29 Oct 1998, Arthur Snoke wrote:

[...]
>> It seems to me all this Cc: complaining would be solved if this list
>> were handled as a "Discussion List" so that there would be little
>> temptation to choose the "all recipients" option when replying.  Or
>> is it more normal for this list that the reply should just go to the
>> original sender?

> don't even get the "all recipients" prompt.  I assume that is true
[blabla]

Don't use pine, use mutt:
       r       reply           reply to sender
       g       group-reply     reply to all recipients
       L       list-reply      reply to mailing list address

or use Gnus (I've told it long ago not to Cc: mailing lists). IMO,
pine is not well behaved in this respect, and this is particularly
annoying when you use it as a newsreader.

Apart from that, you still haven't understood what this discussion is
about, have you?

Robin

-- 
The One and Only Robin S. Socha 
<http://www.kens.com/robin/>
Cc: me and I'll kill -9 you

---

From: Michael Talbot-Wilson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 17:13:41 +1030 (CST)

>        L       list-reply      reply to mailing list address

Yes.  The problem with "Reply to all recipients?" is that the
consequences of "No" are not entirely clear.  You need to answer
"Yes" to retain all the addresses, and then (if you remember) you
need to manually delete and move addresses.

I would rather put it like that, say it is an aspect of Pine that
could IMO be improved, than abandon Pine for mutt.

---

From: "Adam H. Kerman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 01:14:41 -0600 (CST)

>Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 16:37:19 +1030 (CST)

>I made a more definite statement based on experience with Majordomo.

Then you should have known better.

>Why do you take a microscope to the matter attempting to find an excuse to
>send one of your aggressive and unpleasant replies?  Why do you send such muck
>to the _list_ for goodness sake?

Apparently for the same reason that you deliberately Cc people when posting to 
the list.

---

From: "Robin S. Socha" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 08:57:45 +0100

> need to manually delete and move addresses.

Which you didn't. I still hate Cc:s for mailing lists. I'm *on this list*.
 
> could IMO be improved, than abandon Pine for mutt.

There are quite a few things that could be improved in Pine (see Sven Guckes'
website for a wishlist) and this one should be somewhere near the top. Maybe
mutt's behaviour needs a little explaining: you define MLs in your muttrc and
then you can reply to the List.

Gnus is written in Lips and runs under XEmacs, so you have far more options to
modify its behaviour. Personally, I've defined strict scoring rules, a
different threading, a different from: address and reply behaviour and all
mails are scanned for new addresses and URLs.

My not-so-humble opinion again: if you read a lot of MLs or generally get a
lot of mail, Pine isn't quite the most obvious choice for an MUA. Although
mutt is harder to configure, it allows for a couple of neat tricks that only
work with dirty hacks or not at all in Pine.

Whatever...

Robin

-- 
Robin S. Socha

---

From: Ian Hall-Beyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 04:10:33 -0700 (MST)

> Apart from that, you still haven't understood what this discussion is

Obviously you haven't either.

---

From: Nancy McGough <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 08:55:52 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)

> Cc, or Bcc, and whether or not Reply-To was set to the list posting address.

And whether or not reply-always-uses-reply-to is set in the pinerc. I do
NOT set this feature because I like to get a heads up from Pine that
Reply-To was set and then I decide whether I want to honor it or not.
Here's how I decide how to reply to discussion group messages (mailing
lists and newsgroups):

If the message I'm responding to is fairly recent, e.g., within the last
week or two, and either I think my response:

 * will be useful to some other people in the group, or
 * will let other people in the group know that the person's gotten
   an answer so they don't need to also respond

Then, I reply to the discussion group ONLY. 

If the message I'm responding to is more than a week or two old, then I
often will cc the author just in case they've stopped following the
discussion (unless it's someone I know is still reading the group or
it's someone I know hates to be cc'd). I also cc the person if he/she
asked to be cc'd. When I cc a person I try to put a "posted & mailed"
note at the bottom of the message so the person will know they're going
to see this msg twice (if they're still reading the group).

I think the key to all this is to educate people about how to
participate in discussion groups and get people to look at (and think
about) the To, Cc, Bcc, and Newsgroups headers before they fire off a
message. Also, creating email clients that make it easy to choose where
your response goes. Maybe Pine needs to change the "Reply to all
recipients" prompt to be "Reply to all, some, or author only?" and then
if "some" is chosen, present the user with a list of addresses that can
be checked off with T (for To), C (for Cc), B (for Bcc), and N (for
Newsgroups). Just an idea...

-- 
Nancy McGough
Infinite Ink
http://www.ii.com

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From: "Robin S. Socha" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 16:10:46 +0100

> > Cc, or Bcc, and whether or not Reply-To was set to the list posting

[useful comments snipped]
> message.

Just to make sure, I checked the docs again, "Getting Started" in this case
(for the record: PBhome.gif is missing in the tarball):

|Replying to a Message
|
|To reply to a message that you have selected at the Folder Index screen or
|that you are viewing:
|                      
|Press R (Reply).
|
|You are asked whether you want to include the original message in your reply.
|Also, if the original message was sent to more than one person, you are asked
|if you want to reply to all recipients. Think carefully before you answer-it
|may be that you do not want your reply to be sent to more than just the author
|of the message.  It is always a good idea to check the list of addresses in
|the To and Cc fields before you send a message to see who will receive it.

I don't think this text is sufficiently clear. Some MLs, for example, have the
reply-to hardcoded. This can lead to extremely embarrasing situations in which
someone goes "hello, Robin, are you female? I'm a 17 year old stud..." and -
apart from receiving a friendly 50MB thank-you-message - has made himself
*big* fool in front of hundreds of people. And since you mention News, it
should be mentioned that unmarked courtesy copies are extremely annoying.
Using Gnus, I kill them off automatically, but it's still BAD to answer a
private mail to see that the question has also been asked in the news.

IIRC, Pine doesn't add this Cc-notice but it should IMO. Something like:

(setq
   message-insert-courtesy-copy t    ; Insert a courtesy message in mail
                                     ; copies of combined messages
   message-courtesy-message          ; inserted at the start of a
                                     ; mailed copy of a posted message
	"Mailed and posted \n")

> Also, creating email clients that make it easy to choose where your response
> goes.

Well, they do exist. As I said, both mutt and Gnus support this feature, and
it's a Good Thing, too.

> Maybe Pine needs to change the "Reply to all recipients" prompt to be
> "Reply to all, some, or author only?" and then if "some" is chosen, present
> the user with a list of addresses that can be checked off with T (for To), C
> (for Cc), B (for Bcc), and N (for Newsgroups). Just an idea...

Absolutely. When can we expect your patches }:->

Otherwise, maybe a less technical "walkthrough" or "hands on guide" for
beginners might be a good idea. I remember someone having a website with an
extremely disgusting cuddly wizard that was far more better suited for
"getting started" without falling asleep, but I forget the URL. Maybe
something like this could be included in the distribution. Dunno...

Robin