Subject: Reply-To on IETF mailing lists

From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 12:09:41 -0400

I've recently found (I don't know whether it's a recent phenomenon)
that the IETF mailing lists appear to be stripping Reply-To mail
headers from messages, *even when the mailing list is not configured
to do so*.  Mailman has at least three settings that will affect the
handling of existing Reply-To addresses:

anonymous_list -- If this is "yes", Mailman will remove From, Sender
and Reply-To, and set a new From to the list address.

first_strip_reply_to -- If this is "yes", Mailman will remove Reply-To.

reply_goes_to_list -- If this is "poster", Mailman will make no
changes to Reply-To.  This can also be set to "this list", or
"explicit address", in which case Mailman will replace any existing
Reply-To or insert a new one, with either the list address or an
address specified in the "reply_to_address" item.

Mailman has this to say in its help for these options:
> There are many reasons not to introduce or override the Reply-To: header.
> One is that some posters depend on their own Reply-To: settings to convey
> their valid return address.

...and that's exactly the problem I've been having.  But it is a
religious thing, and I don't take issue if a mailing list owner futzes
with these settings intentionally.

The problem is that the lists I've checked that are hosted at ietf.org
have not been futzed with: they all have anonymous_list and
first_strip_reply_to set to "no", and reply_goes_to_list set to
"poster", which are the defaults... and yet they are stripping
Reply-To.  The DKIM list, which uses Mailman but is not at ietf.org,
does *not* do this.  I think it's a bug in Mailman as installed at
ietf.org.

I've raised the issue with Glen, but he's understandably reluctant to
change anything without some consensus.  On the other hand, if it *is*
a bug (or error in the way Mailman was installed/configured), I don't
think consensus is needed to fix that.

Has anyone intentionally played with these settings on your WG's
mailing lists?  Does anyone else have problems with this situation?
Does anyone have an opinion about getting this fixed?

Barry Leiba
(chair: dkim, marf, morg, vwrap)

---

From: "Dan Wing" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 09:47:03 -0700

> Does anyone have an opinion about getting this fixed?

I agree Reply-To should be passed through.  On some lists I know it 
works (BEHAVE, for example).  It is useful to help re-direct followup
discussions to a single list rather than spraying the followups across
3-4 lists.

-d

---

From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 01:27:01 -0400

> to do so*.

Thanks, Dan Wing, for debugging this with me.  I'm not certain yet,
but I now *think* this is an intermittent problem on my end, wherein
the Reply-To is sometimes not included.  I'll work on figuring out
what's what, but I no longer think this is a Mailman problem.  (Thanks
also to Glen for your earlier off-list responses.)

Barry