[Mailman-Users] Help

[Mark.A.Lombardo]

I must be coming across as really thick and stupid. If I have set the tag to
reply to poster, and I hit reply, then there is no way of mailman knowing
which email address that came from

So in simple terms, if I put up a subject on the mailing list and I don't
want people to reply, it is better to put the email address in the bcc
field.

How do I set that the reply only comes to the person that posted the mail,
and not the list, I thought setting the reply to poster it would only send
the mal to the person who posted, and not the rest of the list. Is this not
correct?

If this is not correct, then I am confused, because that is the way it
reads.

If I set reply is sent to an explicit email address (ie mine), then if
someone replies to an email I have sent to the list, it will send the reply
to me.

So what happens if someone wants to reply to the whole list, and not just
me, and I have the explicit email address set.

It must seems as though I am totally thick.

Mark

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Sapiro [mailto:msapiro at value.net] 
Sent: 28 October 2005 19:07
To: Mark.A.Lombardo
Cc: mailman-users at python.org
Subject: RE: [Mailman-Users] Help

Mark.A.Lombardo wrote:
>
>I am totally confused, can you explain this please?
>
>
>Where are replies to list messages directed? Poster is strongly recommended
>for most mailing lists.
>
>
>Poster
>
>This list
>
>Explicit address
>
>
> 
>
> 
>
> 
>
>Please can you explain this bit, for me, if this is set to poster, why does
>everyone get the reply.


When a user tells his/her MUA (mail reader, email client) to 'reply' to
the current message, the MUA is supposed to direct the reply to the
address(es) in the Reply-To: header if any or to the address in From:
if there is no Reply-To:.

If the above is set to 'poster', Mailman makes no change to the From:
or Reply-To: header of the message.

If the above is set to 'this list' Mailman adds the list posting
address to the addresses in the existing Reply-To: header if any and
if first_strip_reply_to is No. Otherwise it just makes a Reply-To:
with the list posting address.

If the above is set to 'explicit address', it works like 'this list'
except the address used is the address in reply_to_address instead of
the list posting address.

So, if the user tells the MUA to 'reply', it will generally work as you
expect for any of the three cases.

However, if the user tells the MUA to 'reply all', the MUA normally
directs the reply as in the 'reply' case, but also adds every address
in the To: and Cc: headers of the current message to the recipients of
the 'reply all'

Thus, if a user does 'reply all' to a post and the list posting address
is in the To: or Cc: of the post, the reply will be sent to the list
posting address as well as the poster and other addressees of the
original message.

If you don't want this, and you DO want to allow list members in
general to post, then you have to arrange for the list posting address
to NOT appear in the To: or Cc: headers of the posts which you CAN NOT
do. I said in a prior post that Full Personalization, if you can
enable it, can do this by replacing the To: address with the
recipient's address, BUT this won't do for you because it also puts
the list posting address in Cc: in order to falicate the ability to
reply to the list if the user wants to.

If you really do not want users to have the ability to reply to the
list at all, as opposed to just when they do a simple 'reply' you have
to set up the list as a one-way/announcement/newsletter list as
described in the FAQ.

You basically have two choices:

1) set reply_goes_to_list to Poster and teach your list members to use
'reply' to reply to the poster and 'reply all' to reply to the poster
and the list.

2) prevent your list members from posting at all by setting up the list
as described in the FAQ.

At the risk of flogging a dead horse, you can't PREVENT your users from
addressing replies to the list, you can only try to teach them not to
or set up the list to not accept any posts from general list members.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <msapiro at value.net>       The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan