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I have a couple of announcement groups where I send out messages from other organisations. I want replies to go directly to the other organisation, not to me as the sender. I do not want to have to forward dozens of messages that could have gone directly to them.

In Yahoo Groups, I could put a Reply-To: header in the message I sent, and when people replied, it would go to that address.

In Groups.io, the Reply-To: seems to be stripped out of the message members get.

Is there any way to get the Yahoo behaviour?

David,

In Yahoo Groups, I could put a Reply-To: header in the message I sent,
and when people replied, it would go to that address.

I thought I knew Y!Groups inside and out, but this is a new one on me. Unless you mean you were able to put that header field in the body of a message and have it work. Which would still surprise me.

In Groups.io, the Reply-To: seems to be stripped out of the message
members get.

Quite the contrary. Groups.io (and Y!Groups) inserts a Reply-To field in the header of every outbound message. The content of that field is determined by the "Reply To" selection you make in the Message Policies section of your group's Settings page.

Is there any way to get the Yahoo behaviour?

I don't think "the Yahoo behavior" exists as you've described it. Maybe if you can give some details that will help me understand what you did and what effect it had.

Shal


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David,

I have a couple of announcement groups where I send out messages from
other organisations.

I belatedly realized there's another interpretation of "where I send out". Do /you/ send these messages to the group's posting address from your email address (or on the web using your Yahoo Account to sign in to the group's pages?

Or do the other organizations send these messages to your group's posting address from their own email addresses, and/or using their own Yahoo Groups sign-in?

In the latter case the setting you're looking for is the one I named: chose "Sender" as your selection in the Reply To option in the Message Policies section of your group's Settings page.

Shal


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I don't think "the Yahoo behavior" exists as you've described it. Maybe if you can give some details that will help me understand what you did and what effect it had.

They do say you learn something new every day, so you have. :-) I have been using this for years in Yahoo, and it is extremely useful for saving the admin from having to forward lots of replies to someone else.

Remember this is an announcement group, as that may make a difference.

I send messages to the group address with my e-mail program. If I put a Reply-To: header in those messages, for Yahoo the message goes out to the group members with that Reply-To: header in it. For groups.io, it does not. But read on....

> In Groups.io, the Reply-To: seems to be stripped out of the message

members get.

Quite the contrary. Groups.io (and Y!Groups) inserts a Reply-To field in the header of every outbound message. The content of that field is determined by the "Reply To" selection you make in the Message Policies section of your group's Settings page.

Have you actually looked at the headers of the messages sent through groups.io or Yahoo? Note that this is as received by a group member, not what Yahoo or groups.io web interface shows.

Let me explain what is happening, starting with Yahoo. Again, remember that this is an announcement group, and that discussion groups may be different.

In the original Yahoo Groups, the sender's e-mail address was in the From: header and there was no Reply-To: header. If you replied to a message, it went to the From: address.

Then at some stage, they changed the From: address to be some convoluted version of the group e-mail address:

From: "Newcastle Club NewcastleClub989@... [Newcastle_Club_Members]" <Newcastle_Club_Members-noreply@...>

At the same time, they added a Reply-To: header for the actual sender's address (or the group address if it had been set up that way):

Reply-To: NewcastleClub989@...

If there was a Reply-To: header in the message received by Groups, that header was used instead of the above default one in the message sent out to group members.


From my investigation of groups.io messages, I think there is normally just the sender's address in the From: header and no Reply-To: header. Again, an announcement group!

However, if there was a Reply-To: header in the message as received by the group, a Reply-To: header is inserted with the sender's address, the same as the From: address. (The group is set up as reply to sender.) The actual address in the incoming message's Reply-To: is lost.

Adding a Reply-To: in this case seems to be unnecessary, since it is just duplicating the From: address.

I suspect this is actually a bug, and that probably the reason the Reply-To: is being added because it is supposed to contain the address from the incoming message's Reply-To:.

If the group is a discussion group, this may all be different, although it does not seem unreasonable in that case too for a Reply-To: header on an incoming message to be included in messages sent to group members.

So does that explain it enough for you? :-)

Cheers

David

David,

They do say you learn something new every day, so you have. :-)
...
Remember this is an announcement group, as that may make a difference.

Indeed. I didn't catch that.

I haven't worked with announcement groups (or at least not recently enough to remember) in either Y!Groups or Groups.io, and didn't anticipate that it would make a difference. But given your more detailed description, it apparently does.

Have you actually looked at the headers of the messages sent through
groups.io or Yahoo?

Yes, extensively. But apparently not from announcement groups.

Then at some stage, they changed the From: address to be some
convoluted version of the group e-mail address:

Yes, that's a DMARC-related change:


You may notice that Groups.io also changes From addresses, but only for certain sending domains (AOL, and Yahoo Mail among them, but not Gmail).
/static/help#dmarc

If there was a Reply-To: header in the message received by Groups,
that header was used instead of the above default one in the message
sent out to group members.

Interesting. I'll have to try that it my test groups (Yahoo and Groups.io). I initially thought you meant that you were using some setting within the group to apply these custom Reply-To fields. This may be the something new I learn.

I suspect this is actually a bug, and that probably the reason the
Reply-To: is being added because it is supposed to contain the address
from the incoming message's Reply-To:.

Sounds plausible.

I had thought the logic in Groups.io was to always insert a Reply-To matching the group's Reply To setting. But if that's not the case in announcement groups, and in particular if it is conditioned on the presence of an inbound Reply-To field then it seems reasonable that it should copy the field content.

I think reporting it to [email protected] would be the way to go with that.

So does that explain it enough for you? :-)

Yes, thank you!

Enough for me to want to go try it out in my test groups. Alas the work week is beginning, so I'm not sure when I'll get around to that. If you report it Mark may have it fixed before the weekend rolls around. ;-)

Shal


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Received from Shal Farley at 7/9/2018 07:33 AM UTC:

David,

In Yahoo Groups, I could put a Reply-To: header in the message I sent, and when people replied, it would go to that address.

I thought I knew Y!Groups inside and out, but this is a new one on me.

I don't know if there may be some combinations of settings that prevents this from working, but it has worked for all my old Y! groups for many years.

It may be useful for those with good intentions, but it's a bad thing because it overrides the settings the Owner/Moderator thought he was making when deciding whether responses should be directed to the group or to the author being replied to. And - as one example - imagine engaging (foolishly) in a "candid" discussion about your boss and then have someone set the boss as the "Reply-to:" address.

I'm glad Groups.io inserts a "Reply-to:" header that I assume overwrites any "Reply-to:" a sender may insert.

Is there any way to get the Yahoo behaviour?

In the context of discussion groups where the Owner is given a setting to determine reply-to behavior, the Yahoo behavior is "broken." I'd hope Groups.io never considers implementing it.

Jim H

David, Seems to me that you are acting as a message relay for your announcement-only group.? So you get an email from some other organization and then post it to your group - but you don't want any replies.

Have you looked at the Email integration feature which would allow you to create a receive-only email address that posts to your group?? You subscribe the receive-only email address to the other org's mail list and Boom! you're out of the relay business...? This would work if you want to relay all emails from the org's mail list to the group and it's okay for the group members to deal with the announcement and contact the other org without doing a reply to the announcement email.? You could put a message in the footer reminding them.

David, Seems to me that you are acting as a message relay for your announcement-only group. So you get an email from some other organization and then post it to your group - but you don't want any replies.

Not at all. I am a person who sends announcements. Some of those announcements relate to other people, and they are the ones who need to see the replies.

Have you looked at the Email integration feature which would allow you to create a receive-only email address that posts to your group? You subscribe the receive-only email address to the other org's mail list and Boom! you're out of the relay business... This would work if you want to relay all emails from the org's mail list to the group and it's okay for the group members to deal with the announcement and contact the other org without doing a reply to the announcement email. You could put a message in the footer reminding them.

What you are proposing is a discussion group afaics, but more complicated. It would also be open to spamming I imagine.

The reason for using Reply-To: is that most of the members just reply to messages, even when the content of the message states to contact someone else. Reply-To: takes it out of their hands.

David

Received from Shal Farley at 7/9/2018 07:33 AM UTC:

David,

In Yahoo Groups, I could put a Reply-To: header in the message I sent, and when people replied, it would go to that address.

I thought I knew Y!Groups inside and out, but this is a new one on me.

I don't know if there may be some combinations of settings that prevents this from working, but it has worked for all my old Y! groups for many years.

It may be useful for those with good intentions, but it's a bad thing because it overrides the settings the Owner/Moderator thought he was making when deciding whether responses should be directed to the group or to the author being replied to. And - as one example - imagine engaging (foolishly) in a "candid" discussion about your boss and then have someone set the boss as the "Reply-to:" address.

You too seem to have overlooked that this is an announcement group. Only the admin can send messages to it, and any replies go only to the admin. If the admin chooses to add a Reply-To: for an individual message, this is a good thing, because it saves him/her having to forward all the incoming replies to someone else.

I'm glad Groups.io inserts a "Reply-to:" header that I assume overwrites any "Reply-to:" a sender may insert.

But it doesn't always! Look at the headers.

In the context of discussion groups where the Owner is given a setting to determine reply-to behavior, the Yahoo behavior is "broken." I'd hope Groups.io never considers implementing it.

As I said, this is an announcement group...

David

Received from David M at 7/10/2018 09:10 AM UTC:

The reason for using Reply-To: is that most of the members just reply to messages, even when the content of the message states to contact someone else. Reply-To: takes it out of their hands.

David

In that EXACT situation --- responders being clearly told in every message to reply to Person X, and only Person X's email address is in this "Reply-to:" that you want to add --- the "Reply-to:" you want wouldn't be a problem.

HOWEVER... a potential problem arises when Groups.io makes this facility available to people who don't make it clear that a response won't go to the location that responders expect it to go. That creates the potential for abuse. There's no need to create this potential when there are other ways ---
admittedly less convenient --- to forward this email. Or perhaps Person X could send the announcements in the first place and you could set the group to reply only to the OP (Person X).

Was this abused on Y!? I can say from personal experience that abuse was attempted, but failed due to the responders being situationally aware.

Jim H

Received from David M at 7/10/2018 09:05 AM UTC:

It may be useful for those with good intentions, but it's a bad thing because it overrides the settings the Owner/Moderator thought he was making when deciding whether responses should be directed to the group or to the author being replied to. And - as one example - imagine engaging (foolishly) in a "candid" discussion about your boss and then have someone set the boss as the "Reply-to:" address.

You too seem to have overlooked that this is an announcement group. Only the admin can send messages to it, and any replies go only to the admin. If the admin chooses to add a Reply-To: for an individual message, this is a good thing, because it saves him/her having to forward all the incoming replies to someone else.

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.

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.

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!.

Jim H

The reason for using Reply-To: is that most of the members just reply
to messages, even when the content of the message states to contact
someone else. Reply-To: takes it out of their hands.

Yes, you might be changing the reply default, however although I have my groups set up to “Reply to Sender”, many people do what they have to in order to reply to the group instead.

That said, I agree that your best bet is still to have your group set to “Reply to Sender”, and have the person who wants the replies send the message.

What is the protection that a third party Reply-To email address wants the replies?
Why would Groups.io want to enable such a SPAMMING prone tool?

David,

What you are proposing is a discussion group afaics, but more
complicated. It would also be open to spamming I imagine.

The messages coming in through the integration can be moderated to prevent spamming; just as ordinary group messages can be.

For the other people it is simpler than a discussion group: they didn't have to join anything nor deal with extraneous messages (announcements about others). And it isn't that much more complicated for you - set up the integration and after that the group operates in a normal fashion.

The key distinction, over what you're doing, is that the others initiate the messages - which may be a bad thing if you prefer acting as curator and author of the announcements.

Shal


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I have a couple of announcement groups where I send out messages from other organisations. I want replies to go directly to the other organisation, not to me as the sender. I do not want to have to forward dozens of messages that could have gone directly to them.

In Yahoo Groups, I could put a Reply-To: header in the message I sent, and when people replied, it would go to that address.

In Groups.io, the Reply-To: seems to be stripped out of the message members get.

This appears to be a bug which has been fixed. In announcement groups, a Reply-To: on an incoming message will now be carried over to the message being sent out to group members.

David

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.

In my case, no-one has ever wanted to reply to the admin, and I am talking about hundreds/thousands of messages here.

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.

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

> The reason for using Reply-To: is that most of the members just reply

to messages, even when the content of the message states to contact
someone else. Reply-To: takes it out of their hands.

Yes, you might be changing the reply default, however although I have my groups set up to "Reply to Sender", many people do what they have to in order to reply to the group instead.

That said, I agree that your best bet is still to have your group set to "Reply to Sender", and have the person who wants the replies send the message.

So what if the person who needs to see the replies is not a member of the group?

What is the protection that a third party Reply-To email address wants the replies?
Why would Groups.io want to enable such a SPAMMING prone tool?

I refer you to my earlier comments that this is an announcement group.

David

David,

What you are proposing is a discussion group afaics, but more
complicated. It would also be open to spamming I imagine.

The messages coming in through the integration can be moderated to prevent spamming; just as ordinary group messages can be.

For the other people it is simpler than a discussion group: they didn't have to join anything nor deal with extraneous messages (announcements about others). And it isn't that much more complicated for you - set up the integration and after that the group operates in a normal fashion.

The key distinction, over what you're doing, is that the others initiate the messages - which may be a bad thing if you prefer acting as curator and author of the announcements.

The issue is that the others are not specific people who do it regularly. They would not have a clue what this is about, and I would have to explain it to them in detail each time it needed to be done.

I do it as a convenience feature and to minimise the amount of forwarding I have to do. It works well. Anything else would be overkill and take more of my time.

Simple is often the best.

David

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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