Received from David M at 7/11/2018 11:14 PM UTC:
I overlooked nothing.
If subscribers to any group - announcement or discussion or whatever - expect replies to go only to the admin... or to the group... or to the poster being replied to... then I think it's improper to allow the admin or a subscriber to direct them elsewhere via embedded "Reply-to:" headers. Granted any party receiving email from the group is capable of redirecting it manually, but I think Groups.io shouldn't become a party to it.
Which is worse? Subscribers replying to the admin when they think they are replying to the person in the Reply-To:, or replying to the person in the Reply-To: when they are thinking they are replying to the admin? In either case, they should really be checking who the message is going to.
Both choices have their own drawbacks. No replies should go anywhere other than the default setting chosen by the admin of the group... unless the person replying chooses to change the To: address in the reply. In that latter case, Groups.io isn't involved in that decision.
Granted because of the world we live in they SHOULD REALLY be checking who any reply is going to - although that does require a modicum of savvy about the games people can play with email in order to know that checking is necessary. I think - via an admittedly strained analogy - that if someone SHOULD REALLY wear a bullet proof vest and doesn't, that doesn't mean others should be enabled to shoot at him.
In my case, no-one has ever wanted to reply to the admin, and I am talking about hundreds/thousands of messages here.
Or in the spirit of "they should really be checking who the message is going to" (your words from above) they should be paying attention to who the message says they should be replying to. And if the admin (whom I gather is the original sender) doesn't want replies, perhaps use a tag that sends replies with that tag to the bit bucket.
Anyone is currently capable of forwarding messages they receive to anyone they want to, and I believe that's how Groups.io should require them to handle the sort of message redirection you're asking for. That also (usually) provides a record of WHO caused the redirect. That's also a good thing.
Great theory for computer literate people. Not useful for people with poor computer skills.
Agreed, but also not needed unless there's a problem with MALICIOUS forwarding... which will be both rare and problematic enough that I'd guess the admin - who I assume is knowledgeable himself or can call on someone who is - would want the ability to determine the cause.
Expanding on my concern... when I left Y!, I left Y! behind. Groups.io is what it is... and what it is is better by far than Y! in more areas than reliability. Groups.io can be improved - the search facility currently being discussed is one example - but I'd rather not see some of the bad aspects of Y! brought to Groups.io just because some found them convenient on Y!.
Mark obviously does not agree. He has fixed the bug already.
David
Mark's service, Mark's rules. I respect that completely... but IMO one "bug" has been traded for another.
When I set up the groups I admin I selected settings to reply to group or reply to poster (the latter to me meaning an email address owned by the original poster) and those settings can now be overridden by individual posters. I call that a bug of the same magnitude as the one that was fixed.
Just saying... and having said, I'm done with it if you are.
Jim H
