[cvsnt] List question

[Tony Hoyle]

On Thu, 27 Mar 2003 13:07:57 -0500, Scott Ford <SFord at RJKTECH.com> wrote:


>I have noticed that when I am lazy and just select respond to messages I get
>from this list that the response goes to the sender and not to the list. Is
>this intentional or is it a problem with my mail client. I am active in
>several other listservs and do not have this problem.
>
This question gets asked every 6 months or so on most lists (The SpamAssassin
list just went through a big flameware after someone came on and *demanded*
that the list be set to reply-to-list, even after the reasons why not had been
patiently explained - the primary one being that it was a sourceforge list and
sourceforge policy is reply-to-sender).

Funnily enough, the reply-to-list mailing lists have exactly the opposite
question asked every few months!  Just goes to show you can't please all of
the people, etc..

It's quite common, actually (indeed I haven't seen a reply-to-list mailing
list in over a year... they're getting scares).  There are good operational
reasons to do it.

1. Sometimes you want to reply off-list, and just being able to hit 'reply' is
a nice convenience (without it you'd have to do a crude cut&paste).
2. Every mailer in existence has a 'reply to all' - the better ones have
'reply to list', too.
3. Mail loops - every now and then some bozo will use a broken autoresponder,
which replies to the message... which causes the list to send the message back
to the user, which replies again...  etc.  this will quickly overload a
mailserver, not to mention generate a lot of bad will with the list members.

See http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html

For the reasons why sourceforge mandated this see:
http://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=6693&group_id=1

If you really hate it there's the cvsnt news server :-)

Tony

btw. thread closed - if you want to rehash the arguments then google for it...
they've all been gone over before & there's no mileage in trying to repeat it
all here.