A request from your reviewer

Mark Crispin mrc at CAC.Washington.EDU
Fri Apr 13 17:08:06 CEST 2007


On Fri, 13 Apr 2007, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
> It is not obvious wether the courtesy should be in the original sender
> (who should add a Reply-To or Mail-Followup-To if he does not want to
> filter out duplicates) or in the "replier".

Indeed.

Some people want to get the separate copy; they direct their mailing list 
traffic into an auxillary mailbox for later inspection, but want threads 
in which they have participated to reach their primary mailbox.

Either way, it is a personal preference, and as such properly belongs with 
the person who has that preference.

There are mechanisms in the mail protocols by which headers identify the 
sender's reply preferences.  I consider it arrogant for a sender to be 
unwilling to use (or even learn!) how to set these, yet expect me to 
remember his preferences and manually edit headers in outgoing mail.  I 
don't respond well to being the recipient of such demands.

Put bluntly, I refuse to keep other people's preferences.  I have enough 
trouble keeping my own.

With that said, I would be happy to help Michael configure his MUA to 
indicate his reply-preferences.  It's the difference between teaching a 
man to fish, giving him a fish, and having him demand that I catch fish 
for him for the rest of my life.  The more people who know how to fish, 
the better.

-- Mark --

http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.


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