Errors-to: owner-drums@CS.UTK.EDU
Message-Id: <199508162042.QAA27222@info.cren.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
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Date: Wed, 16 Aug 1995 16:45:43 +0100
To: Jacob Palme <jpalme@dsv.su.se>, ietf-drums <drums@CS.UTK.EDU>
From: conklin@info.cren.net (Jim Conklin)
Subject: Re: "Reply-To"

At  6:13 PM 8/16/95 +0200, Jacob Palme wrote:
>It was never my intention that mailing list expanders should mess
>with the "Reply-To" or "Wide-Reply-To" or other similar heading field.
>I agree completely with Keith that this heading field should be
>set by the sender and not modified by a list expander.

  Please understand that mailing-list managers (as distinguished from list
expanders) have for years been acting as surrogate senders for message
originators who send their mail to these lists perfectly happy that the
mailing-list manager acts as Sender for their message to the list and, as
Sender, creates a Reply-To header as the participants of the list have
either agreed to or accepted as appropriate for that list.
  That's accepted practice for millions of e-mail discussion-list
subscribers, and it's justified within the language of 822 by the fact that
the list-manager is acting as the surrogate sender of the message, just as
a secretary sending a message for a boss who, for example, dictated an
e-mail message, would set the Reply-To header in accordance with the wishes
of that real originator of the message.
  If you insist on REMOVING that facility because you don't happen to like
it, you'll be setting up a standard that deliberately ignores the needs and
practice of a very large group within the electronic community.  If
standards are to work, they must be designed to meet the needs of those
whom they affect.  Standards which ignore legitimate needs deserve to fail
and generally do in the Internet community.  In this case, if the proposed
redefinition of allowed use of Reply-To did not fail, you'd be removing a
functional capability that a great many people would miss greatly, thereby
inconveniencing them -- for no good reason, in my opinion.  The use of
Reply-To in question is, as I've noted, justifyable within the standards if
the list-manager is accepted to be the sender of the message in behalf of
its originator.  And it breaks nothing.  The only issue is that some people
don't like that behavior for lists, and that's not enough justification to
break a standard!  People who don't like certain behaviors are welcome to
use products that support the behaviors they prefer, but they shouldn't
attempt to force everyone else into their preferred mold.
  I therefore agree with Eric Thomas that adopting the second sentence of
the proposal below for Reply-To would be a terrible mistake.
  The definition, however, is consistent with current practice and with the
existing standards if it is terminated at the end of the first sentence.
  Thanks,

Jim

> ...
>Would the following definition be OK?
>
>- The "Reply-To" heading field can be used if the sender of
>- a message wants to indicate a wish that replies which would
>- otherwise have been sent to the sender are sent somewhere
>- else, such as to a secretary. The field is not meant to
>- be used to redirect replies which would otherwise have
>- been sent to a mailing list or to all recipients of a
>- multi-recipient message, and mailing list expanders
>- should not use this field to redirect replies to the list.