Message-Id: <v04003a09b133ee2dbc7a@[130.237.150.138]>
In-Reply-To: <199803162344.SAA29074@snark.thyrsus.com>
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Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 10:20:19 +0100
To: IETF working group on revision of mail standards <drums@cs.utk.edu>
From: Jacob Palme <jpalme@dsv.su.se>
Subject: 
 Re:

At 00.44 +0100 98-03-17, "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@snark.thyrsus.com> wrote:
> Chris, it's clear we need to we need to avoid having the debate bog down
> until everyone limps away exhausted.  Perhaps another solicitation to
> proposal champions, followed up quickly by another straw poll, would
> be in order.  The last straw poll suggested that we've been suffering
> less from genuine deadlock than from very loud, very small minorities.

A good idea. But before this is done, it would be useful if the
participants of the group are allowed to contribute to short, concise
specifications of which are the meaning of the actual proposals. This
would ensure that (a) all significant proposals are included in the
straw vote, (b) that we know what we mean with the items we vote on.

I would also suggest that the straw vote is not a vote with yes or
no, or where you have to vote on one single alternative, but rather a
vote where voters can, for each alternative, indicate that it is
"very good", "good", "acceptable", "bad" or "very bad". In this way,
we may find that several alternatives are regarded as good by most of
us, then we may actually have rough consensus for any of them.

Here is a first attempt to define the alternatives:

(1) Keep RFC822 definition of Reply-To as it is

(2) Define two headers, "Personal-Reply-To" and "Mail-Followup-To"
    (as defined by separate documents) and phase out "Reply-To" over a
    number of years.

(3) Define one new header, "Mail-Followup-To", plus change the
    definition of "Reply-To" to have the maning of "Personal-Reply-To".

(4) Define one new header, "Reply-Kinds" with a syntax where several
    reply addresses can be given for different uses. Example:

    Reply-Kinds: Personal: John Smith <a@b.c>, Mary Smith <d@e.f>, Group:
        Tropical flowers <trop-flow@g.h>

(5) Define one new header "Reply-To-Meaning" which explains the
    meaning of a separate header "Reply-To".

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jacob Palme <jpalme@dsv.su.se> (Stockholm University and KTH)
for more info see URL: http://www.dsv.su.se/~jpalme