[Users] Default CC for mailing lists

[Barry Warsaw]

On Jul 31, 2012, at 05:50 PM, Sitaram Chamarty wrote:

>The git ML is one such list (as is the lkml, I think).  I'm
>subscribed, and I don't remember ever seeing a duplicate message on
>mails where I'm in the to/cc so the ML software must be eliminating
>duplicates before it does its thing.
>
>Either that or gmail is doing it on the receive side based on
>message-id.  This is less likely.

This is a surprisingly complex and controversial issue, but one of the things
I really like about Claws is that it tries to do the right thing, and usually
gets it right.

In general, if you receive a message via the mailing list, and that mailing
list supports RFC 2369, it will have a List-Post header containing the proper
email address to send replies to.  In Claws, you should be able to "Reply To
Mailing List" (Ctrl-L by default I believe) to reply just to the list, with
the To header properly set and no CC to the original author.

Of course, GNU Mailman by default sets up the headers correctly, but because
there is some controversy in this area, it does give list owners some knobs to
twiddle, and some do choose what I consider to be bad defaults.  In those
cases, you have to complain to the list owners because Claws *can't* do the
right thing.

There are two other cases to mention.  In Mailman's case, individual list
members have the option to not receive list copies of messages which they are
also explicit recipients on.  While this can reduce the duplicates you
receive, it does mean that you will not get the copy of the message with the
List-Post header, so Reply to Mailing List can't work.  If you think about it
for a second, you'll see why Mailman can't do what you really want, which is
to suppress the copy of the message you receive off-list, i.e. so you would
receive the List-Post copy.

This can get tricky if you don't have "suppress duplicates" enabled.  You'll
get two copies, the one with List-Post and the off-list one without the
header.  In that case, you need to be a little careful which one you Reply To
Mailing List on, because one will DTRT and one will not.  I've gotten in the
habit of including List-Post (and a few others) in the default set of headers
I see on messages in Claws, so it makes it easier to decide which one to reply
to.

Gmail is also the odd ball here in so many ways.  IMHO, it just doesn't play
nice with other clients and MLMs.  For example, you never see the copy of
messages you send to mailing lists reflected back through the list, because
Gmail does duplicate Message-ID suppression.  This is a Mailman FAQ.

I think Gmail also doesn't support a Reply To Mailing List function, so I can
always tell when I get replies from Gmail users because I'll be in the CC
list, which kind of sucks.

Gmail also does really weird, funky quoting which tends to give desktop
clients such as Claws fits.  I know I'm talking to a Gmail user when I see a
reply that is nearly impossible to follow.

Don't get me started about Gmail. :)

Cheers,
-Barry
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