Reply-To vs. List-Post

[June Tate-Gans]

On Thu, 2005-11-17 at 14:38 -0800, Lyndon Tiu wrote:
> If der.hans makes the same "reply to all" click, then that would be good for everyone : >

That's just it, though. I right-clicked on the message and chose "Reply
To Sender" not "Reply To All" -- I actually took about a second's worth
of time out to think about which one was the one I wanted, which is why
I remember it clearly. Unfortunately, I just assumed that Evolution --
being an email client that gets quite a lot of use on this list -- would
respond properly and didn't bother checking the To field (shame on me
=op).

Isn't the whole purpose of the Reply-To header one of helping email
replies get to an address that is not normally routable from the rest of
the public 'net? If so, why are we using Reply-To instead of just using
List-Post and friends and leaving Reply-To off of the headers (unless
explicitly requested by a poster)?

My intent with this email is not to flame -- I've read enough Reply-To
vs. List-* header flamewars to fill a football stadium -- I'm just
genuinely curious as to why we're doing this sort of thing.

--
June Tate * june at theonelab.com * http://www.theonelab.com