[Haskell-cafe] Reply to

[Daniel Fischer]

Am Mittwoch 06 Mai 2009 16:57:16 schrieb David Miani:
> On Wednesday 06 May 2009 20:42:38 Daniel Fischer wrote:
> > Indeed. I have reply, reply-to-all and reply-to-list one click or one key
> > combination away, and as far as I know those features are present in
> > almost all mail clients since several years, so ease of replying to list
> > shouldn't be an issue.
> > On the other hand, I do not want messages intended to be private
> > communications to end up on the list, which would happen more easily with
> > munged headers.
> >
> > So, count me in the leave-reply-to-alone camp.
>
> There is a lot of combinations that can occur when replying to a message on
> a mailing list.
>
> **Situation 1**:
> Parent Message Header:
> From: parent at email.com
> To: mailinglist at mailinglist.com
>
> To reply to this, I could either use the following recipients:
>
> Reply method 1
> (This happens when I choose "Reply" or "Reply to mailing list" with kmail)
> To: mailinglist at mailinglist.com

Yes, a bit surprising that "Reply" doesn't include parent at email.com among the recipients. 
Probably assumes that parent is subscribed to mailinglist.

Methods 2 to 4 are "equivalent for all practical purposes, unless you really know their 
differences and why you would choose any particular one", I'd say (well, except you may 
have filtering rules which would treat them differently, which probably wouldn't be very 
useful, because you never know if others would use Reply to mailing list, Reply or Reply 
to all).

>
> Reply method 2
> (Have to set recipients manually with this)
> To: mailinglist at mailinglist.com
> To: parent at email.com
>
> Reply method 3
> (This happens when I choose "Reply to all" with kmail)
> To: mailinglist at mailinglist.com
> CC: parent at email.com
>
> Reply method 4
> (Have to set recipients manually with this)
> To: parent at email.com
> CC: mailinglist at mailinglist.com
>
> Reply method 5
> (This happens when I choose "Reply to author" with kmail)
> To: parent at email.com
>
> **Situation 2**
> *Parent Message Header*:
> From: parent at email.com
> To: grand-parent at email.com
> CC: mailinglist at mailinglist.com
>
> And to reply to this, I could use any of the following:
>
> Reply method 1
> (This happens when I choose "Reply" or "Reply to mailing list" with kmail)
> To: mailinglist at mailinglist.com

Again somewhat surprising behaviour of Reply.

>
> Reply method 2
> (This happens when I choose "Reply to all" with kmail)
> To: mailinglist at mailinglist.com
> CC: parent at email.com
> CC: grand-parent at email.com

Clear, isn't it?

>
> Reply method 3
> (Have to set recipients manually with this)
> To: parent at email.com
> CC: mailinglist at mailinglist.com
>
> Reply method 4
> (Have to set recipients manually with this)
> To: parent at email.com
> To: mailinglist at mailinglist.com
>
> Reply method 5
> (Have to set recipients manually with this)
> To: mailinglist at mailinglist.com
> CC: parent at email.com

Again I don't know why one would pick any particular of these three, but special choices 
require individual treatment, I can fully understand that these are not among the default 
actions of a mail client.
If you don't care about To/CC, it's easy in KMail, though, just type a (Reply to All), 
click delete on the To field with grandparent's address. If you care about To/CC, it's a 
few more clicks, but still easy.

>
> Reply method 5
> (Have to set recipients manually with this)
> To: parent at email.com
> CC: mailinglist at mailinglist.com
> CC: parent at email.com

Hit Reply to all and toggle To/CC if you really care (but again, I don't know why one 
would care).

>
> Reply method 6
> (This happens when I choose "Reply to author" with kmail)
> To: parent at email.com

Anything else would be a major WTF.

Yes, there are many options but if you don't care about the difference between To and CC, 
all are easily obtained from the default reply modes.

>
>
> ------------------------------------------
>
> I'm not sure about your mail client,

KMail (1.10.3) :-)

> but replying to lists doesn't seem that simple to me with kmail.

Just type l (lowercase L) or click Reply to mailing list, and it will send only to the 
list (as given in the List-ID field).  If you want to reply to multiple lists (cafe, ghc-
users, beginners), you'd probably have to choose Reply to all and delete other recipients.
The case of multiple lists is not incredibly simple, but seems simple enough to me (and 
I'm emphatically not a power user, as soon as anything internetty is involved).

> The only situations I really understand is
> the reply to author methods (method 5 in situation 1 and method 6 in
> situation 2). The others I don't really know what difference it makes. Eg:
> - If you send to only the mailing list, does it break the message thread?
> (it seems like sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't)

Shouldn't break the thread, can't remember that happening.

> - Do you use To for the mailing list or for the parent?

I don't care, the message being delivered to both is what I'm interested in, and that's 
achieved either way. Whether there are differences in how the message is sent through the 
tubes, I don't know.

> - Do you ever include the grand-parent in the recipient list?

If I choose Reply to all and don't delete it, which would happen if I want grand-parent to 
receive the message and suspect gp is not suscribed to the list.

> - What's the difference between To and CC?

Don't know, don't care :)

> - Does the mailing list do some kind of processing of the email headings
> sent (I don't get how kmail managed to know your message was in reply to
> Magnus Therning's message, since you didn't include him as a recipient)

I typed l while viewing that message, that's how KMail knew. The From field said it was a 
message by Magnus Therning.

> - Is kmail's mailing list management completely bonkers (eg what is the
> difference between Reply and Reply to mailing list)?

Definitely somewhat unintuitive.
Reply to mailing list needs something it can interpret as a mailing list, it seems it 
would choose the Reply-To field if that's present, but not a List-ID, if neither is 
present, it includes no address.
What Reply does, I haven't figured out. If a Reply-To field is present, it should pick 
that, otherwise I'd expect it to use the From field, but it seems to have different ideas 
:-/ 

>
> And don't get me started on whether to use html or plain text in messages!
> (seen both pretty often here)

HTML e-mails are evil, almost as evil as tabs in source code. Never use.

>
> Sometimes I feel I have missed some vital webpage somewhere that answers
> all this, and I'm just some clueless moron who can't work email yet :(

Me too.

> If anyone knows of such a page, could you let me know of it? Google only gives
> very basic articles when searching for "using mailing lists".
>
> Anyway, I can't see why we still use mailing lists when we have reddit,
> which has all the good parts of mailing lists (nested messages), while it
> also: - is much simpler to use

Not for me. I prefer mailing lists every day of the week, much simpler for me.

> - uses markdown (no more html vs plain text problems)

That's really a good thing.

> - allows messages to be edited after being sent

That's bad, IMO, for high-traffic lists/threads. In a low-traffic environment, you have a 
chance to check whether a post you replied to was changed and take the appropriate 
measures, in a high-traffic environment, that's unfeasible, and you end up with 
egregiously incoherent threads (sometimes).

> - sends notifications when someone replies to one of your comments

And a mailing list actually sends the notification in the shape of the reply itself, which 
is even easier to follow.