NNTP client configuration

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Tuesday, February 20, 2018 19:51:54 Brad Roberts via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On 2/20/2018 7:43 PM, Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> > On Tuesday, February 20, 2018 19:20:27 Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d
> >
> > wrote:
> >> On 2/20/2018 4:26 PM, Manu wrote:
> >>> I shouldn't have your email
> >>> address in the reply-to header (as Jonathan has noted multiple times).
> >>
> >> I do that deliberately as a service to those who wish to contact me
> >> privately about something I posted, which happens now and then.
> >
> > I think that it's also pretty common for the e-mail address of posters
> > to
> > end up being visible somewhere for mailing lists - enough so that using
> > an e-mail address that you don't want to be public is risky.
> >
> > Either way, having the poster's e-mail address in the Reply-To header is
> > a problem, because that's going to tell the e-mail client to send a
> > reply there. So, if the poster's e-mail address is going to be
> > somewhere in the headers, it needs to be in a different header (e.g.
> > the From header).
> >
> > Looking back at e-mails from the mailing list from the last few years,
> > it
> > looks like it used to be the case that the From header listed the user's
> > name but with the mailing list's address (just like it does now), and
> > the
> > Reply-To header just listed the mailing list's address (whereas now, it
> > lists the mailing list's e-mail address _and_ the poster's e-mail
> > address). So, prior to the last update that Brad did, I don't think
> > that the poster's e-mail address was available anywhere in messages
> > from the mailing list.
> >
> > However, if I look at messages from several years ago, it used to be
> > that
> > the From field listed the poster's name and e-mail address (not the
> > mailing lists's), and the Reply-To header listed the mailing list's
> > address.
> >
> > So, if we want to try to hide the poster's e-mail address, the behavior
> > that mailman had a few months ago would be best, whereas if we want
> > that information to be available, then it's behavior from several years
> > ago would be best. Either way, having Reply-To include the poster's
> > e-mail address is going to result in a lot of unnecessary e-mails going
> > directly to folks in addition to the mailing list.
>
> We cannot go back to several years ago unless you can convince the world
> to also roll back dmarc.  That travesty of justice really screwed up
> mailing lists in general.  It was designed and implemented fairly
> ignorant of the ways in which lists work.  So that's off the table.
>
> For the moment, we're back to the posters email is nowhere to be found,
> which is bad for some use cases.  There really is no one correct answer
> here.  Reasonable people are going to disagree.

All I'm asking for is that the Reply-To header just include the mailing list
e-mail address, because having it include the poster's e-mail address
results in folks e-mailing posters directly by accident (I've had to get in
the habit of constantly removing it when replying to the mailing list). I
have no clue how configurable mailman is for any of this. I've never used
mailing man, just mailing lists that use it.

In some respects the behavior from several years ago was better, and in some
respects the behavior from several months ago was better, and if it's
trivial for you to pick one or the other then it's debatable as to which we
should go with, and a decision could be made, but if it's not trivial, then
I see no reason to worry particularly about whether the poster's e-mail
address is in the From header or not. It's not worth you spending a ton of
time trying to figure it out. However, the Reply-To header is actively
causing problems as things stand, so if possible, it should be fixed.

- Jonathan M Davis