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Why no List-Post: header?

 

Is there a reason why Groups.io does not use a List-Post header in group messages? That header makes it a lot easier to reply privately to someone's From address rather than to the group Reply-to address. At least in Thunderbird... messages with a List-Post header causes Thunderbird to provide "Reply" as well as "Reply-to-List" options. Without the header the only option is replying to the group, or copy and pasting the From address.

Drew
 

Drew,

Is there a reason why Groups.io does not use a List-Post header in
group messages?
Possibly Mark is unaware of it, or unaware of its benefits?

I'd not heard of it, but found it in RFC 2369. From the abstract:
"There are three other header fields described here which, although
not as widely applicable, will have utility for a sufficient number
of mailing lists to justify their formalization here. These are
List-Post, List-Owner and List-Archive."


I recommend posting this a suggestion to beta@, including the above citation for the benefit of other readers.

Without the header the only option is replying to the group, or copy
and pasting the From address.
That's assuming the group's Reply To setting is "Group". It may take some testing to determine if List-Post is appropriate if the group is set to Sender, Moderators, or Group and Sender.

Shal
Arno Martens
 

Mon, 11 Dec 2017 23:39:04 -0800, "Shal Farley" <shals2nd@...>,
wrote:

Without the header the only option is replying to the group, or copy
and pasting the From address.
That's assuming the group's Reply To setting is "Group". It may take
some testing to determine if List-Post is appropriate if the group is
set to Sender, Moderators, or Group and Sender.

Shal

I am quite all right with the reply to "Group" setting, as it is posted
in a group after all.
If I am replying to an individual OFF LIST, I am enduring the hardship
of cutting and pasting the address and add the OFF LIST comment.

I am not very pleased when I see the demand "Send a reply to me directly
as I do not check the group very often."

Arno
 

If this is added, I think it should be a per group option.? There are groups that discourage off-list contact.? If/when the anonymous groups feature is added, this would need to be off for them.

Duane
 

Thanks, Shal- I will make the suggestion.

Drew

On 12/12/17 02:39, Shal Farley wrote:
Drew,

> Is there a reason why Groups.io does not use a List-Post header in
> group messages?
Possibly Mark is unaware of it, or unaware of its benefits?
I'd not heard of it, but found it in RFC 2369. From the abstract:
"There are three other header fields described here which, although
?not as widely applicable, will have utility for a sufficient number
?of mailing lists to justify their formalization here. These are
?List-Post, List-Owner and List-Archive."

I recommend posting this a suggestion to beta@, including the above citation for the benefit of other readers.

> Without the header the only option is replying to the group, or copy
> and pasting the From address.
That's assuming the group's Reply To setting is "Group". It may take some testing to determine if List-Post is appropriate if the group is set to Sender, Moderators, or Group and Sender.
Shal
 
Edited

The problem is, at least with the popular Thunderbird email program, it is very easy to mistakenly send a privately intended message to the entire group. Especially for users who subscribe to other mailing lists that do include List-Post in the message headers. Sending a private message to the group generally has negative consequences, as you can imagine.

Drew

On 12/12/17 08:29, Arno Martens wrote:
I am quite all right with the reply to "Group" setting, as it is posted
in a group after all.
If I am replying to an individual OFF LIST, I am enduring the hardship
of cutting and pasting the address and add the OFF LIST comment.
I am not very pleased when I see the demand "Send a reply to me directly
as I do not check the group very often."
Arno
[Excess quote trimmed by moderator]
 

I actually went and read the RFC, so need to amend my previous comment.? For anonymous groups, when/if added, it wouldn't be needed since it would duplicate the only option available, but shouldn't hurt anything.? On those type groups, messages via email would never contain the original posters email address.? If that possible future mechanism were an option that could be implemented in groups that discourage direct contact, it would solve both problems.

Duane
 

All,

Any Thunderbird users out there? Anyone else notice a change in the behavior of "Reply" when responding via email to messages in discussion groups?

I'm sure most of you are readers of beta@, so for you this is old news. Mark took Drew's suggestion and added the List-Post field to message headers sent by Groups.io.


So my question is: has anyone else noticed a change, and have any comment on it?

Gmail's web interface does not seem to do anything differently. My guess is that most other webmail interfaces won't either. It may only be email client applications that make use of this header field.

Shal
 

Yes, I use Thunderbird, and I get a "Reply List" with a dropdown, which offers, in addition to "Reply List", "Reply All" and "Reply".? The last one, "Reply" addresses only the sender.

Cacky

On 12/15/2017 5:33 PM, Shal Farley wrote:
All,

Any Thunderbird users out there? Anyone else notice a change in the behavior of "Reply" when responding via email to messages in discussion groups?

I'm sure most of you are readers of beta@, so for you this is old news. Mark took Drew's suggestion and added the List-Post field to message headers sent by Groups.io.


So my question is: has anyone else noticed a change, and have any comment on it?

Gmail's web interface does not seem to do anything differently. My guess is that most other webmail interfaces won't either. It may only be email client applications that make use of this header field.

Shal
 

Now that you mention it it appears that a simple Reply, as I and I suspect nearly everyone on my lists do, replies only to the sender. You have to select Reply List to actually send to the whole list. This seems to be an incorrect action when the group is set to Reply to Group. The default to should be to reply to the whole list and reply to individual sender only when an extra action is taken. When did this change take place? I don't think I noticed it before. I think this will be a problem with some of my groups. It will effectively kill, or at least greatly reduce discussion, having replies to a group message go only to the original sender. Is there a way to work around this other than try to train everyone to select Reply List?

Jonathan

On 12/15/2017 5:33 PM, Shal Farley wrote:
All,
Any Thunderbird users out there? Anyone else notice a change in the behavior of "Reply" when responding via email to messages in discussion groups?
I'm sure most of you are readers of beta@, so for you this is old news. Mark took Drew's suggestion and added the List-Post field to message headers sent by Groups.io.

So my question is: has anyone else noticed a change, and have any comment on it?
Gmail's web interface does not seem to do anything differently. My guess is that most other webmail interfaces won't either. It may only be email client applications that make use of this header field.
Shal
 

On Fri, Dec 15, 2017 at 07:12 pm, Jonathan Sivier wrote:
When did this change take place?
It was changed Dec 14 at about noon CST as noted in the thread that Shal referred to, /g/GroupManagersForum/message/3008.? If I were you, I'd post your 'complaint' there so Mark can consider reversing his decision to add this.

Duane
 

I'm not a member of that group and don't really feel the need to be involved in the development of the program. However, I think this change is not a good one for my lists, and I suspect they way most people use their email. That is when you reply to a message from a list you assume it will go to the list. Other lists that I'm on that don't behave this way have greatly reduced discussions because few, if any, replies go to the list as a whole. That is fine if the purpose of the list is just for announcements, but if it is meant to be a discussion list then that seems counterproductive.

Would it be appropriate to send my observation to [email protected] or is there some other more appropriate place to do so?

Jonathan

On 12/15/2017 9:18 PM, Duane wrote:
On Fri, Dec 15, 2017 at 07:12 pm, Jonathan Sivier wrote:
When did this change take place?
It was changed Dec 14 at about noon CST as noted in the thread that Shal referred to, /g/GroupManagersForum/message/3008.? If I were you, I'd post your 'complaint' there so Mark can consider reversing his decision to add this.
Duane
 

Jonathan,

I think this
will be a problem with some of my groups. It will effectively kill, or
at least greatly reduce discussion, having replies to a group message go
only to the original sender.?
As far as I know, only Thunderbird implements this Reply to List "feature". So the overall impact to your group might be minimal.

Shal
 

¿ªÔÆÌåÓý

On 16/12/2017 2:12 pm, [email protected] wrote:
Any Thunderbird users out there? Anyone else notice a change in the behavior of "Reply" when responding via email to messages in discussion groups?

I'm sure most of you are readers of beta@, so for you this is old news. Mark took Drew's suggestion and added the List-Post field to message headers sent by Groups.io.

I'm a Thunderbird user Shal and have only read the thread on beta@ a couple of hours ago.

It wasn't until some members of my group emailed me privately to let me know that my replies to their messages were not being sent to the Group that I became aware of the problem.

Initially I thought it was a Thunderbird issue and began looking for upgrade history to see what they had done.

I did see the "Reply List" button and just wondered why it was there because I wrongly assumed that the "Reply" button would do what is had done ever since I joined some Yahoo groups decades ago. How wrong I was.

Because our group does have a few Thunderbird users I sent out a notice to alert them to the change and it transpired that a few of them had been caught like I was.

I agree with Jonathan Sivier that "It will effectively kill, or at least greatly reduce discussion, having replies to a group message go only to the original sender."

I haven't heard back from any other users of my group about the behaviour of other email clients except for one who uses Gmail's web interface. His experience on that platform is the same as yours.

As I understand it, the reason for this change is that a Thunderbird user did not like the fact that it wasn't simple on the Thunderbird platform to respond to the original sender of a message and suggested a change which Mark implemented.

My personal experience with discussion groups is that I wish to respond to the entire group 99% of the time and maybe contact a member privately the other 1%. Now I have to alter my ingrained behaviour to make what was the exception, become the rule.

This is one "improvement" that I'm strongly not in favour of.

John P
 

John,

As I understand it, the reason for this change is that a Thunderbird
user did not like the fact that it wasn't simple on the Thunderbird
platform to respond to the original sender of a message and suggested
a change which Mark implemented.
There's a little more to it than that. Part of the user's motivation was to make Groups.io's behavior the same as mailman's. Mailman is a reasonably popular program for self-hosted email lists, at least in software communities.


In fact at work I'm on a handful of lists distributed by Mailman, so I'll be facing this issue regardless of Groups.io's ultimate decision. I hadn't yet noticed though, because I haven't replied on those lists since work switched to Thunderbird a few months ago.

My personal experience with discussion groups is that I wish to
respond to the entire group 99% of the time and maybe contact a member
privately the other 1%. Now I have to alter my ingrained behaviour to
make what was the exception, become the rule.
I certainly hear you there. In fact I had to change the To of this message because I had started by typing Ctrl+R (Reply) - so I'm going to have to be ever vigilant about this in my Groups.io groups until either Groups.io undoes this or Thunderbird fixes their poor choice. And with Thunderbird, unless you have the time and talent to take on the fix yourself (I have neither) there's scant chance of getting it taken care of absent a huge community response.

Shal
 

Jonathan,

Would it be appropriate to send my observation to [email protected]
or is there some other more appropriate place to do so?
As the official "suggestion box", beta@ is really the appropriate place. Especially so in this case since the change was initiated there and there is an active discussion about it.

I'm not a member of that group and don't really feel the need to be
involved in the development of the program.
You don't have to remain a member any longer than it takes to post your concerns. Or you can use your Advanced subscription settings in that group to subscribe to that one topic only, so as to see any replies to your comments.

Shal
 

On Sat, Dec 16, 2017 at 02:14 pm, Shal Farley wrote:
I certainly hear you there. In fact I had to change the To of this message because I had started by typing Ctrl+R (Reply) - so I'm going to have to be ever vigilant about this in my Groups.io groups until either Groups.io undoes this or Thunderbird fixes their poor choice. And with Thunderbird, unless you have the time and talent to take on the fix yourself (I have neither) there's scant chance of getting it taken care of absent a huge community response.

Shal
Your longstanding reflex reaction when replying is exactly what I am enduring Shal. I'm almost 68 years of age with over 30 years sitting in front of computers and old habits die really hard for me.

Your comments about Thunderbird behaviour being likely to persist for some time is enough to make me reach for a glass of red wine.

:-)
John P
 

John,

Your comments about Thunderbird behaviour being likely to persist for
some time is enough to make me reach for a glass of red wine.
There's been a patch to restore the old behavior of Reply, but you have to configure it in your copy of Tbird:
"I implemented a preference mail.override_list_reply_to in bug 1392371.
When set to false (default: true) this will restore the TB 45
behaviour. This will ship in TB 52.4 ..."


That works, but restores Drew's original complaint: there's no button to reply to sender rather than to group - one has to copy/paste the sender address. Instead both Reply List and Reply reply to list, which for his issue is not an improvement and is arguably worse since one would rationally infer that they would differ.

The rest of that Bugzilla item states that the new default behavior (ignore Reply-To when List-Post is present) won't be changed. There's quite a bit of push-back on that, but I'm not sure where that will go. Myself I think the obvious and simple answer has been missed: in the presence of List-Post add both a Reply Sender and a Reply List button, and leave the traditional behavior of Reply alone.

Shal
 

My version of Thunderbird allows me to "Reply" which goes to sender, or use the dropdown labeled "Reply List" which gives me both options.? I'm confused that others with T'bird don't have the same options.

Cacky

On 12/16/2017 6:05 PM, Shal Farley wrote:
John,

Your comments about Thunderbird behaviour being likely to persist for
some time is enough to make me reach for a glass of red wine.
There's been a patch to restore the old behavior of Reply, but you have to configure it in your copy of Tbird:
"I implemented a preference mail.override_list_reply_to in bug 1392371.
?When set to false (default: true) this will restore the TB 45
?behaviour. This will ship in TB 52.4 ..."


That works, but restores Drew's original complaint: there's no button to reply to sender rather than to group - one has to copy/paste the sender address. Instead both Reply List and Reply reply to list, which for his issue is not an improvement and is arguably worse since one would rationally infer that they would differ.

The rest of that Bugzilla item states that the new default behavior (ignore Reply-To when List-Post is present) won't be changed. There's quite a bit of push-back on that, but I'm not sure where that will go. Myself I think the obvious and simple answer has been missed: in the presence of List-Post add both a Reply Sender and a Reply List button, and leave the traditional behavior of Reply alone.

Shal
 

Cacky,

My version of Thunderbird allows me to "Reply" which goes to sender,
or use the dropdown labeled "Reply List" which gives me both options.
I'm confused that others with T'bird don't have the same options.
I had those same options.

My complaint is that the behavior of Reply changed from "Reply to Group" - which it was up until Mark added the List-Post header field - to "Reply to Sender". That unexpected change caused me to accidentally send many messages off-list on groups (such as beta and GMF) where the default is supposed to be "to the group".

I've used the config option to eliminate the new "feature", so I'm back to normal now. But that doesn't solve Drew's original complaint.

Shal

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