[tdf-discuss] Reply settings on this list have changed

Hello,

this is to inform you that the reply settings on this list have changed 
(so-called "Reply to mangling" has been disabled).

So far, e-mails had set a reply-to the mailing list address. In other 
words, with any e-mail client, replies to e-mails on the list were 
automatically sent directly to the list.

In the past, this lead to two major problems:

1. Several times, people have sent direct replies to the public list, 
where deleting them is nearly impossible. I remember at least one case 
where confidential information has been sent out that caused lots of 
worries for the sender and his employer. This happened because people 
hit "reply" and thought it would reply to the sender only.

2. I have heard complaints in the past from people, stating that working 
with the non-developer lists of LibreOffice is a pain for them, because 
of reply-to mangling, resulting in a lack of communication. This also 
led to the fact that numerous tasks were done by the same people, who 
needed to spend more and more time, instead of sharing the work burden 
with others. While I do not fully believe this argument, there's just 
one way to find out...

Therefore, I have applied a change:

Replies to e-mails from the list now only go to the original sender. You 
either need to use the "reply to all" feature of your e-mail program, or 
- preferably - the "reply to list"/"reply to group" feature, which will 
direct replies directly to the list.

This is common practice on most mailing lists, and even the default 
setting for our mailing list software, so we did not re-invent the wheel 
here. Those seeking for details should have a look at 
http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html

I know we had numerous discussions on this topic in the past, but the 
outcome was that roughly 50% were for this change, and 50% refused it, 
so I am really sitting between two chairs here, for which I beg for your 
understanding. On the one hand, those complaining the lists are unusable 
with reply-to mangling, on the other hand, those complaining the lists 
are unusable without reply-to mangling. Unfortunately, combining those 
two, even on a per-recipient basis, is not possible, so they are 
mutually exclusive to each other.

In order to find out the real impact, I simply changed the setting, and 
again, I beg for your understanding.

Do not worry: The mailing lists are for the community, so it's the 
community deciding how they should work. What I'd like to ask all of you 
is to try out for a few days if that change is good for each list or 
not. Should we find out it is more harmful than it helps, I will 
immediately switch back to the old behaviour.

Sorry for this short notice, and I beg for your understanding that I'm 
somehow sitting between two chairs here.

Florian

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Florian Effenberger, Chairman of the Board (Vorstandsvorsitzender)
Tel: +49 8341 99660880 | Mobile: +49 151 14424108
The Document Foundation, Zimmerstr. 69, 10117 Berlin, Germany
Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts
Legal details: http://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint

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