11:59 a.m.
Lo,
Yeah even if there is a 'Reply List'-equivalent function for any
particular mail client, it'd still rely on people using it - or even
knowing about it!
I'm not keen on two versions of each mailing list though. For people
who are new to mailing lists (in this form anyway... a lot of people I
talk to... when they think 'mailing lists'... only think about Sales
e-mails they need to unsubscribe from!)... they find it complicated/new
enough already, I guess that'll be what we get after decades of people
being used to Web Forums instead. Thankfully they can always just use
the web-interface of HyperKitty to start new threads and respond now :)
Plus (as I mentioned before) it wouldn't help Thunderbird users using
'Reply' anyway (see the 3rd entry on this page...
https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/50.0beta/releasenotes/ ).
It'd be interesting to know if Thunderbird was the only mail client to
make a change like this.
I'd considered SPF in my mind when I was thinking about *why* Shrops LUG
had chosen to do it that way... but yeah it'd scupper DKIM too. I'm
tempted to see if there are mailman3 options (not the config option
already spoke about) to do things the Shrops LUG way. At least then
SPF/DKIM would work fine if people have it set *and* the 'Reply'
function would work (Thunderbird or not).
If we were to do it that way... I'm not as worried about people
accidentally sending in private messages, mostly because there would be
3 visual clues... 1) the "Foo Bar via XXX List" name... 2) the actual
address is a @lists.domain.com... 3) and finally the CC would be there
to hint at the real address they should send to.
E-mail isn't dying! It's the new letter! And that survived (past
tense) just fine :P I do wish these mega-corps would hurry up (not in
their interest at the moment, I know) and come together on some
federated standard for instant messaging at least (e.g. XMPP or other).
BTW, I'm still fully intending to make the mailing list available via
NNTP (as well as normal e-mail and web interface). Seems this can be
done with inn2, but I need to find the time to research it a bit more.
If anyone has experience tying inn2 and mailman together let me know.
More old school the better :)
Steven Maddox
Lantizia
On 14/11/2019 21:31, Andy Smith wrote:
> Hi Steven,
>
> On Thu, Nov 14, 2019 at 11:12:10AM +0000, Steven Maddox wrote:
>> *Short version: *Use a "Reply List" button (or similar name, if you
have
>> one), but failing that... using the "Reply All" button should work
too.
>
> My perception is that a lot of mainstream mail clients don't support
> the list headers so don't present a "list reply" option, even though
> they have had decades to do so.
>
> People naturally take the course of least effort and just hit reply.
>
>> If you don't use Thunderbird it'd be helpful to know if your mail client
>> does something similar, maybe people on Gmail may know if that does also?
>
> I use Mutt and it does do the right thing, as do most of the
> actively-developed open source ones.
>
>> Looking back (before the relaunch in August) when the old
>> staffslug(a)staffslug.org.uk mailing list ran on the older Mailman 2...
>> things (in terms of the From: address and headers, etc...) were set up
>> in exactly the same way as they are now. So not sure how much of an
>> issue it was back then, I never heard of it being a problem back then.
>
> I run some mailing lists (using Mailman 2.x still at the moment) and
> one thing I do is run a "-replyto" version of each list. That's a
> list with the same name but with -replyto stuck on the end; it's
> subscribed to the real list so it gets the same posts, but
> crucially it adds a reply-to header when passing them along to its
> own recipients.
>
> That way, people with sensible mail clients can subscribe to the
> proper list, as nature intended, but those with inferior mail
> clients can subscribe to the -replyto version.
>
>> However looking at the way "Shropshire LUG" does it... incoming
messages
>> from the mailing list show up as...
>>
>> From: Steven Madox via Shropshire <shropshire(a)mailman.lug.org.uk>
>> Subject: [Shropshire] Whatever
>> To: shropshire(a)mailman.lug.org.uk
>> CC: s.maddox(a)lantizia.me.uk
>>
>> So when hitting reply... it goes to the list, and instead the original
>> senders e-mail has been clumsily put into the CC section instead
>> (although they don't get two copies of the message) - mostly so you can
>> just see who really sent it.
>
> Thing is, this almost certainly isn't done in order to solve the
> "where replies go" problem. It's most likely done to solve the
"list
> mails fail DKIM", because any mailing list software that tried to
> send email pretending to be lantizia.me.uk is going to break the
> DKIM signatures on there.
>
> If you at lantizia.me.uk had set a strict DMARC policy of reject or
> quarantine then multiple recipient systems would reject the email
> that the mailing list sends, and get themselves unsubscribed for
> bounces.
>
> Amusingly, this happened on the mailop mailing list recently where
> over 100 subscribers were unsubscribed in one day.
>
> By sending email as the list itself, it doesn't break signatures or
> SPF and the sending IP and domnain reputation are aligned with the
> list instead of trying to pretend they are the poster.
>
>> The first option 'No munging' is the one that is strongly recommended by
>> the Mailman 3 team.
>
> It's my preference as well, but I do suspect that the majority of
> email users in the world are using mail clients that don't support
> this.
>
> It's tempting to just add a reply-to back to the list but then an
> accidental personal reply can end up back on the list, and that
> seems far worse to me than mail that was intended for the list
> ending up as a personal reply.
>
> I'd rather people picked better mail clients, but I make the
> -replyto lists available for those who can't/won't, at their own
> risk.
>
> Email is dying anyway, will soon be entirely defined by the 4
> different megacorps that own 99.9% of the mailboxes in the world,
> and we should all just switch to Discourse. Only half joking :(
>
> Cheers,
> Andy
>