[LAU] Goodbye ReplyTo munging...

[Florin Andrei]

Marc-Olivier Barre wrote:
> On 8/14/07, Florin Andrei <florin at andrei.myip.org> wrote:
>> Oh great, now filtering is broken, because I only get one copy of the
>> message, the one sent to my email, while the "list copy" does not get
>> sent to me, so filtering by List-Id (which is default on many email
>> clients, both desktop- and web-based) does not work.
> 
> Right, so deactivating reply-to munging broke  your filter... Of
> course. Did it occur to you that it might just be you filters that are
> broken ?

OK, stay with me for a while and let's reason together.

Filtering based on List-Id is filtering based on something that the 
mailing list server does. It relies on actions taken by the mailing list 
server, which do not depend on what the email client of the sender does. 
Therefore, it is more reliable because it does not change with every 
different email client.

If I set the list to remove duplicates, I only receive the private 
reply, which depends on the email client of the sender, which may or may 
not do the right thing. Therefore, filtering is less reliable, because 
it depends on all those email clients out there to do something.

By forcing a Reply-To header, all messages are forced to go through the 
mailing list server, therefore something (such as setting the List-Id) 
can be done to each message, which allows for reliable and simple 
filtering: only one header, it never changes (unless someone changes the 
settings on the mailing list server).

By de-centralizing the message routing, all that is lost.

-- 
Florin Andrei

http://florin.myip.org/