Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: the dangers of no reply-to munging; Xouvert update

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

>>>>> "Ganesh" == Ganesh Sittampalam <address@hidden> writes:

    Ganesh> I read (some) lists and personal email in different MUAs
    Ganesh> (and indeed often receive the emails at different
    Ganesh> addresses). Maybe you'll say that's my problem too, but it
    Ganesh> seems like a perfectly reasonable setup to me.

Different MUAs is not a problem.  There are plenty of MUAs that
conform to standards.

Different addresses _is_ a problem, but it is _your_ problem.  Of
course, as usual, Emacs users can help you deal with it -- I used to
have a BBDB set up that would eliminate not only all instances of "me"
from outgoing headers, but duplicates of anybody else.  It wouldn't be
hard to extend that to removing list members' addresses, too.

There is a standard (although not yet RFC-sanctioned) way to deal with
this, too: the Mail-Copies-To header.  (This also regularly causes
correspondents a lot of annoyance, but at least the user himself has
to take responsibility for it.)

That reminds me -- as an XEmacs maintainer, I would _never_ ask my
listmaster to munge for the following reason.  I, and at least two
others of my colleagues, filter duplicates to myself into a higher
priority folder.  At least one of my colleagues _never_ reads the
lists, so you have to reply to him personally as well as to the list.

This is quite convenient when you have a bunch of lists you're
following, and only want to see the threads that you've contributed
to.

This may not apply to arch-users, although I'm starting to wear out on
the traffic (not a complaint, just that I am thinking about switching
into "twice a week" mode, and then it would be useful to get dupes).

    Ganesh> And as others have pointed out, duplicate removal is prone
    Ganesh> to removing the duplicate from the wrong folder.

So use software that doesn't remove dupes, but instead hard-links
them, and marks the message itself as "read", and "list+dupe" when the
list version comes in, etc.  (AFAIK this doesn't exist yet, but it
should be easy to implement in any of the RDBMS-based webmail systems.)

But this kind of improvement won't happen as long as brain-damaged
solutions like Reply-To munging are common.

-- 
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences     http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
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