[PLUG-TALK] A question on mail list behavior

wes plug at the-wes.com
Wed Oct 7 21:17:25 UTC 2020


On Wed, Oct 7, 2020 at 1:46 PM Rich Shepard <rshepard at appl-ecosys.com>
wrote:

>
> Is this because it's the default behavior of GUI MUAs?
>


This exactly.

However, I do think there are logical reasons for this, even if they aren't
employed. For one, MUAs can treat incoming emails with different addresses
in the To and CC fields differently. If someone replies to my email sent to
a mailing list, and includes my own address in either field, I get an extra
indicator in the list of emails waiting for me to sort through. I could use
this info to sort into folders, or forward on to another address
conditionally, etc. In the old days, when this would cause 2 copies of such
a reply to show up in my inbox, the fact that there were 2 copies acted as
my indicator.

I always press reply-all, because I can't trust the software to pick the
correct address to send the reply to. I still retain the habit of modifying
the To/CC fields to prevent unnecessary duplicates.

-wes



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