On Wed, 27 Aug 1997, Kate Dornan wrote:
oooh, a new list :-) so does this mean no more 'missing' posts?! Actually, one question; when I pressed the Reply button, my mail program automatically put David & Katrina in theTo: field instead of sinister@... , this could get quite annoying if it means remembering to substitute the list address every time... are other people getting this? Is it because there isn't a reply-to line giving the list address?
I wasn't going to participate much in this just run it..! Yes, Kate, your keen eyes have spotted a "feature" - the Reply-To: isn't set and the default is to reply back to sender. The main reason is because it is generally seen as bad practice to do this, although it's quite widespread - see for instance http://www.unicom.com/FAQ/reply-to-harmful.html The reason for this isn't petty technical completeness but because it can cause very real problems - only in the last month my mailbox was filled with 900 copies of the same error message caused by a badly constructed mail program at the receiving end by someone on the list - some of the bigger corporations just don't abide by standard Internet mailing rules and their programs send errors back to the Reply-To field, which go back to the list and via the list back to the offending machine and... you can imagine. For people picking up their mail via dial-up I can only imagine the nightmares this would cause. Many people see the Reply-To field as a way of forcing something that people may not want - some people will only *want* to reply to the sender, e.g. can anyone sell me Tigermilk?" :) Also some mail programs will ignore the Reply-To anyway. And others will see more headers and give a choice... So I've made the most conservative choice and the safest one, but it does mean you will have to type the mail address if you want to reply to the *list*. Hope this explains why and doesn't lead to a protracted discussion... Paul ----------------------------------------------------------------------- . This message was brought to you by the Sinister mailing list. . To send to the list please mail "sinister@majordomo.net". . For subscribing, unsubscribing and other list information please see . http://www.majordomo.net/sinister -----------------------------------------------------------------------