[Mailman-Users] Big discussion on filtering

[Dave Sherohman]

On Wed, Oct 30, 2002 at 03:13:42AM -0400, Bob Puff at NLE wrote:
> Wouldn't it be easy to filter mail based on the subject?  Most lists
> (including ones here) add [listname] to the subject... So you could key in on
> that, no?  Yes, you would get the occasional direct reply from someone on the
> list, but that should be part of your list folder anyways, right?

Uh...  Wrong.

If I get a direct reply to a list posting, it is either an offlist reply
to me only (in which case putting it in the list folder is bad because
the list didn't handle it) or it is something which the sender wanted
me, for whatever reason, to see more urgently than other list members
(in which case it should go into my main inbox so I'll see it sooner
and it will stand out from the other list messages).

Or at least that would be the case if I didn't send out my messages with
a Mail-Reply-To: header indicating that I want all replies to my list
messages to be Cc:ed to me, because (like in the second case above)
I want to see replies to my list posts immediately, in my main inbox,
instead of trying to sift them out of the list mailbox whenever I get
around to reading the list again.

You may want offlist replies and Cc:s of onlist replies to go into your
list mailbox, but that preference is by no means universal.

-- 
When we reduce our own liberties to stop terrorism, the terrorists
have already won. - reverius

Innocence is no protection when governments go bad. - Tom Swiss