[plt-scheme] [OT] duplicate email

From: Anton van Straaten (anton at appsolutions.com)
Date: Wed Mar 24 17:01:15 EST 2004

Eli Barzilay wrote:

> On Mar 24, Doug Orleans wrote:
> >
> > Bradd W. Szonye writes:
> >  > By the way, please do not Cc: me when you reply. I already get a
> >  > perfectly good copy of the e-mail from the list software.
> >
> > Didn't mail alias software used to do the right thing here, and not
> > send copies to addresses that appeared elsewhere in the To:/Cc:/Bcc:
> > headers?
>
> There is no way to do that.  The email I'm now sending will be sent to
> two different places, and the list server can not assume that you had
> one delivered already.

That's not quite the whole story.  The reason people tend to cc these
messages by default is that the list software is sending out the original
messages without setting the "Reply To" address in the header.  So, when you
select Reply in your email client, the reply goes to the "From" address,
i.e. the author of the message, not to the list; and if you select the
"Reply to All" option or equivalent, the reply goes to the list and every
To: or Cc: recipient.

I run a list using LISTSERV software, and it automatically sets the Reply To
address if it doesn't already exist.  On such messages, whether you select
Reply or Reply All, the reply goes only to the list.

This reduces the frequency of directly cc'd messages significantly.  It
still happens, though, if someone is sending out email with the "Reply To"
address set - for whatever reason, LISTSERV doesn't override the Reply To
address in that situation, at least not by default (that behavior may be
configurable, but I haven't looked into it).

In short, if Mailman offers an option to set the Reply To address in the
headers of messages it sends out, that'd be worth a try if you want to
reduce the number of messages cc'd by default.

I've always assumed some people like it the way it is, since it can alert
you to list messages intended specifically for you (depending on how your
mail filtering is set).

Anton



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