List header cancer

Chris fj1200 at gmail.com
Thu Oct 18 14:50:57 EDT 2007


On 10/18/07, Chip Marshall <chip at 2bithacker.net> wrote:
> On October 18, 2007, Chris sent me the following:
> > What is actually wrong with having the Reply To: as the list, after
> > all, that is where the message came from. (not originally, but in
> > essence, we all want to send a message to everyone, where is the harm
> > in having the reply go to everyone by default), and only when someone
> > feels that an individual reply is warranted, should they need to
> > change the reply to address?
>
> The argument I usually see is that if the mailing list sofware alters
> the Reply-To header, information is lost. If someone see the message and
> wants to reply to just the author, they don't know what the author's
> original Reply-To was, so they may not be able to actually contact him.
>

That makes some sense, but most mailing lists should reject an invalid
'From' address, because it wouldn't be in the list-member's directory,
IIRC, the only way to sign up to this list is by having a valid email
address from which you originally requested membership, then a
confirmation email was sent to that address, and a reply/confirmation
URL  was expected in return, Only then was the member accepted.


> This assumes that the author's From is not a usable address, which I'm
> sure happens, but not very often in my experience.
>
> --

See above reply :)


-- 
IBA #15631


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