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From: stef@uci-icsa.ARPA (Einar Stefferud)
Newsgroups: net.mail.headers
Subject: Re: Subject: Ambiguity with the REPLY-TO field
Message-ID: <11581@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 15-Jul-85 12:01:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.11581
Posted: Mon Jul 15 12:01:50 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 17-Jul-85 21:11:48 EDT
Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA
Lines: 43

Rich Wales has it right!  

REPLY-TO is a replacement for FROM (and SENDER), if REPLY-TO exists,
and then "personal reply" should use whatever is in REPLY-TO "as
requested by the originator", no matter what REPLY-TO contains.

Jacob's use to direct replies to whomever he (as the conference chair)
wants replies to go to is technically correct, though perhaps he may be
overusing it.  But this is a social question of good chairmanship.

I would tend to be less demanding of recipients who might very well
want to make personal replies, and find themselves either thwarted, or
bothered by the need to manually edit the address fields of a reply to
achieve their desires.  However, at times I like to force replies to a
whole group by putting the groupname in a REPLY-TO field.

I think it is customary in the Internet for recipients who want to
reply to all addressees to not use the "personal reply" form of the
reply command, and thus they will reply to the whole collection of
REPLY-TO/FROM/SENDER, TO, and CC addressees.  However, I know a number
people who frustrate me continually by (unconciously?) omitting other
addreessees, which forces me to manually relay to them when I am trying
to promote a group discussion.  I wish they would cooperate more.

In a way, Jacob's use suggests that he may not trust recipients to use
the "group reply" when they should.  If a Conference Chair does not
trust recipients, then it may be correct to force the issue on them.
If the Chair does trust them, then they should really be trusted, by
not forcing the issue with such intractable REPLY-TO fields.

Please do not take these comments as personally directed.  As I see it,
we are caught among varying semantic interpretations and social
customs, and it will take us a while to get things sorted out.

Jacob is trying to cope with a blend of Structured Conference services
and Unstructured Internet Mail services to conduct conferences.  I
don't know anyone else who is even trying this, so I am interested in
helping Jacob to understand the Internet side of things (even if I have
to shout from time).  We really do need to be able to accomodate COM
type User Agents in our growing Mail Internet.  The trick is to get
them to behave in concert with other practices in other contexts.

Peace - Stef