[mythtv-users] Replying to mailing lists

Simon Hobson linux at thehobsons.co.uk
Tue Nov 12 11:06:39 UTC 2013


Joseph Fry wrote:
>I wish the RFC would have just specified that mail clients must detect
>when munging is used and confirm the users intent with a message
>saying "this reply will be sent to the entire "Discussion about
>Mythtv" list, send or cancel".  The client can then have a checkbox
>that says "always for this list".

It would be nice if all servers and clients actually followed the RFCs in the first place !

I run some customer-facing mail servers at work, and I've had a number of conversations where I have to explain that actually our mail servers are just fine (and RFC compliant) - but their client is broken. A typical one is someone has built them a website with a mail function - but didn't make it function as a client (capable of SASL authentication) or as an MTA (capable of queue and retry). Explaining that even if we didn't do greylisting their end should still be capable of handling transient errors doesn't seem to go down too well.

Expecting all mail clients to "do the right thing" is just wishful thinking - it's never going to happen. Given that 99.99%+ of users (make up figure) neither know about nor care about standards, there's no pressure on vendors to fix that.


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