[Mailman-Users] The "right" way to reply to a mailing list

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Richard Damon writes:

 > Thunderbird isn't quite like that, but when I reply to a message from 
 > the list I am given 3 options:
 > 
 > Reply
 > Reply All
 > Reply to List
 > 
 > The Reply to List option is made available by the List-Post header I 
 > believe.

I don't understand why they do it this way.  If I were writing an MUA,
I'd make each addressee a button which replies to them only.[1]  For the
explicit reply button, I'd automatically put the list-post and author
in To:, provide an obvious delete button on each (as Gmail does), and
provide an "add other addressees" button in Cc:.

As it happens, on XEmacs lists about half the people who are most
likely to end up in "reply-all" cc lists *want* to be cc'd because
their filters put general list traffic in a folder they read much less
frequently, but replies to their own posts they want to read
immediately, so I've never coded it.

It's a very difficult UI/UX problem, I think.


Footnotes: 
[1]  The alternative use for active regions over an addressee would be
to provide contact list information, but I would do that in a tooltip.