Subject: [arch-d] Mail Etiquette

From: Vincent Truchseß <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2020 14:05:40 +0200

Hi there,

I am new on this list but I wonder if it is generally the case here that
people send their replies not only to the list's bounces-address but
also directly to the author as well.

I'm just asking because some people might find it harder to sort their
mail fully automated when the to-header behaves inconsistently while
some do prefer their replies directed to the author and manually create
filters for every list they've subscribed.

Sorry if it sounds like I'm tipping on someones toess here; that's not
my intention.

YT, VT.

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From: Jared Mauch <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2020 08:58:07 -0400

> On Apr 10, 2020, at 8:05 AM, Vincent Truchseß <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> Hi there,
> 

Much of this is due to the history of how e-mail has worked, etc.

It’s often unknown who is behind an alias and then participants in the thread will get copied on replies.  This can often lead to them seeing the reply before the list runs and gets data out to the others.

Mailing list software also has the option to disable people getting the e-mail who send it (eg: mailman it’s called the [metoo] setting).  

People like myself tend to run procmail on the server side which filter/weed out duplicates so I don’t see two copies.  Your mail client may also silently suppress them as well.

It’s also helpful to know that your message did make it to the list vs being silently held out there.  (Think of e-mail back in the UUCP days, when it may take 8-24h to have something flow through and a bit more to flow-back).

- Jared

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From: Toerless Eckert <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2020 15:20:03 +0200

There is also now on hopefully all IETF mailing lists that you can
send to a list without being member to the list, if you are
at least member of one other IETF mailing list (global whitelist
concept), for example when you are not normally active on a
particular list, but want help on an issue for it.

This means that it is highly desirable for followup replies to
mails to go back to not only the list, but also individuals on the
To/Cc lines, because otherwise you would not reach those off-list
participants in a communication.

Procmail with duplicate elimination is what i use too.

Toerless

On Fri, Apr 10, 2020 at 08:58:07AM -0400, Jared Mauch wrote:
> It???s often unknown who is behind an alias and then participants in the thread will get copied on replies.  This can often lead to them seeing the reply before the list runs and gets data out to the others.
> 
> Mailing list software also has the option to disable people getting the e-mail who send it (eg: mailman it???s called the [metoo] setting).  
> 
> People like myself tend to run procmail on the server side which filter/weed out duplicates so I don???t see two copies.  Your mail client may also silently suppress them as well.
> 
> It???s also helpful to know that your message did make it to the list vs being silently held out there.  (Think of e-mail back in the UUCP days, when it may take 8-24h to have something flow through and a bit more to flow-back).
> 
> - Jared
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Architecture-discuss mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/architecture-discuss

-- 
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[email-masked]

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From: Vincent Truchseß <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2020 16:57:11 +0200

Hi,

> It’s also helpful to know that your message did make it to the list vs being silently held out there.  (Think of e-mail back in the UUCP days, when it may take 8-24h to have something flow through…

Automated sorting becomes a pain if the list's address is sometimes in
To, sometimes in Cc and whatnot. Also, those duplicates like to appear
in different folders making it difficult to track threats.

Anything against simply replying to the list instead?
It makes subscribing to a list without manually editing sieve-filters
much more pleasurable.

YT, VT.

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From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2020 13:16:53 -0400

--On Friday, April 10, 2020 16:57 +0200 Vincent Truchseß
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> Automated sorting becomes a pain if the list's address is
> sometimes in To, sometimes in Cc and whatnot. Also, those
> duplicates like to appear in different folders making it
> difficult to track threats.

Vincent, these are really local problems of how things are
filtered and organized, not ones that are easy to solve, or even
make recommendations about, globally.  FWIW, even if you don't
copy the sender, similar problems occur when, for good reason,
something is cross-posted to multiple lists.

> It makes subscribing to a list without manually editing
> sieve-filters much more pleasurable.

I think the first of these has already been mentioned:

(1) The IETF allows IETF participants who are not subscribers to
post to a particular list.  This, and copying more than one
list, are particularly important during IETF Last Calls or WG
tentative decisions are announced on the IETF list in the hope
of getting cross-area review.  In some of those cases, the
author or a response may not actual be on the relevant list.  If
you respond to such a comment/response, the author of that
response, unless copied explicitly, may never see what you had
to say.

(2) When we get very busy, some (certainly not all) of us may
prioritize reading messages addressed to us (in either "To:" or
"Cc:" header fields) over messages addressed only to one or more
mailing lists.  So, again, if you want your comments on a
message to be seen as soon as possible by the author of the one
to which you are responding, it may be in your interest to go
ahead and explicitly include that author among the addressees.

That said, the reality is that different of us follow different
conventions, sometimes not even being consistent about that on a
given day.  You will see the same thing with decisions as to
whether to write responses inline with a copy of the original
message or to make one's comments at the top.   There is no
fixed rule and people seem to do what they thing best and
everyone just learns to cope. 

welcome to the IETF.
   john

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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2020 08:32:23 +1200

Vincent,

I tend to use Reply All by default to avoid interested recipients
being missed. A lot of IETF discussions end up cross-posted to
multiple WGs or even being switched to a different WG, so those
extra CCs can be important.

There's a catch in Reply All though: if you forget to delete
(say) [email-masked], that's a guaranteed annoying bounce
message.

With mailman lists, you can suppress duplicates in your personal
config, with the "Avoid duplicate copies of messages?" option:

"When you are listed explicitly in the To: or Cc: headers of a list message, you can opt to not receive another copy from the mailing list. Select Yes to avoid receiving copies from the mailing list; select No to receive copies." 

There's also the "Receive your own posts to the list?" option.

On 11-Apr-20 05:16, John C Klensin wrote:
...
> everyone just learns to cope.

Indeed. Wrapped text or hard returns? With hard returns, line
length? Worst of all, HTML instead of text/plain. Sometimes,
not even charset=utf-8. Different quoting and commenting methods;
some people even rely on colour (which they probably spell "color").

It would be a brave person who tried to write down the best practice.

> welcome to the IETF.

+1

Stay well,
     Brian

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From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 10 Apr 2020 16:36:38 -0400

>in different folders making it difficult to track threats.

Messages sent through IETF lists all have a List-ID header.  That's
what you sort on.  Works great.

>Anything against simply replying to the list instead?

As John K said, there's a great deal of history here and reasons that
people do what they do.  It's not that hard to adjust your mail
handling to match what we all do, and rather quixotic to expect people
to change 30 years of practice across hundreds of lists.

R's,
John

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From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2020 14:40:24 -0700

> In article <[email-masked]> you write:

thanks for demonstrating another feature of leaving the OP in the reply
header

randy

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From: Vincent Truchseß <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2020 23:48:16 +0200

> what you sort on.  Works great.

Thanks for the tip.

And sorry if my initial mail sounded like a complaint. I was just about
the local customs.

- Vincent