[Haskell-cafe] Does web-based email harm mailman lists?

[Francesco Ariis]

On Fri, Aug 01, 2014 at 04:46:14PM +0700, Kim-Ee Yeoh wrote:
> The convention, say with a google-groups based mailing list, is that
> conversations in mailing list are public by default. With some manual C&P,
> you can email responses in private.
> 
> For cafe participants using web-based email, the situation is reversed,
> through no fault of their own.

Sorry if I am slow, but are you (in so many words), proposing Reply-To
munging?

That is indeed standard in google-groups (and I discover now, on haskell
beginners); it left me quite surprised when I first experienced it.
Mutt handles munging quite elegantly (when From and Reply-To are not the same,
it asks for confirmation), but are other clients so gracious?

Yes, I am worried about private replies broadcast to the world (and archived
on gmane, etc.). ^Reply-To Munging Considered Useful^ [1] is quite patronising
on the matter and doesn't convince me:

> This is simply not the responsibility of the administrator. People are
> responsible for their own mistakes. If someone is sending a private email
> which is derogatory, or otherwise embarrassing were it to be made public,
> they should probably be sending it directly, rather than as a reply to a
> public message. They should also pause and think about whether they should
> be sending it at all. This pause should be quite sufficient for a
> conscientious person using a reasonable mailer to catch any mistake that
> they might be about to make.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20110305025338/http://www.metasystema.org/essays/reply-to-useful.html