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