From: p2p-hackers@zgp.org (Sean R. Lynch KG6CVV)
Replying To: Ry4an Brase <p2p-hackers@zgp.org>
Date: Mon Jul 15 09:36:02 2002
Subject: [p2p-hackers] Re: reply-to

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On Mon, 2002-07-15 at 07:10, Ry4an Brase wrote:

> Maybe this:
>=20
>     http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html
>=20
> and this:
>=20
>     http://www.metasystema.org/essays/reply-to-useful.mhtml
>=20
> can help short-cut this discussion.

I especially like the paragraph titled, "Coddling the Brain-Dead,
Penalizing the Conscientious" in the first document.  This pretty much
defines the Internet today, especially when a list of supposed "hackers"
has to coddle the brain dead.

Regarding the second,  the only reason that mailers even *have* the
"reply to from address" feature is because of this stupid munging in the
first place, and the second document uses its existence as an excuse to
do the munging anyway! Of course, it completely ignores the fact that
such munging destroys the original Reply-To, which may have been used
for a legitimate purpose.

Consider this: "Group reply" is *always* useful. "Reply to from address"
is *only* useful in the presense of reply-to munging.  So the author of
the second document is telling mailer authors to add a feature that is
of minimal utility at the same time as his munging is disabling a
feature that is usually of much wider utility.

It's interesting that the author of the second document doesn't consider
breaking mailers that are missing the fairly rare "reply to from 
address" bad (Ximian Evolution doesn't have it), but does consider it
bad to make things more difficult for the even rarer mailers that are
missing the "group reply" features (does someone have a list of these?).
This indicates to me that the author started with his desired outcome
and then just made up arguments to support it, rather than thinking
about the issues for making his plea.=20

If you really want the kind of people who can't handle getting their
replies to the list or who are too lazy to hit a different button when 
replying, go ahead. At least one argument stands in favor of reply-to
munging: the people who will be annoyed by reply-to munging are smart
enough to use procmail, whereas the people who *need* it generally are
not. (Lazy people who just *want* it are not the people I'm talking
about here, so don't get insulted unless you truly *are* an idiot, in
which case you probably won't understand this paragraph.)

Here is one more document for reference:
 
<http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/98dec/I-D/draft-ietf-drums-replyto-persona=
l-00.txt> 



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