Re: missing posts

Christina wrote:

> (btw i sent this with the "reply to" feature and it didn't go thru--perhaps
> because that address had the lower case "L"?)

That should not affect internet addressing, unless it was really an
uppercase I or the numeral 1. Upper and lowercase letters are the same to
internet servers (or at least they should be).

Here's one thing to check: different lists put different things in the
headers, and different e-mail clients (the programs we use to read and send
e-mails) have different ways of treating headers. This list puts the
posting address in the "To:" header and also in the "Reply-to:" header. I
believe the "To:" header is just copied from the incoming message -- in
Christina's post it was <alt-photo-process-L@usask.ca>, which is, I think,
the address to which she sent her mail -- as is the "From:" header, which
still shows Christina's e-mail address. The address in the "Reply-to:"
header is added when the list distributes the message, and is
<alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca>.

As a check of the above reasoning, I think this message will show up with
<alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca> in both the "From:" and "Reply-to:"
headers, because my outgoing e-mail is addressed that way.

What does this all mean? Different e-mail programs do different things
when you hit "Reply to." Additionally, many can be configured to do
different things with menu choices. Most e-mail clients send "Replies" to
the "Reply-to:" address, if there is one. Some, however, go straight for
the "From:" header. So, if I expected my e-mail client to Reply to the
list, but it (or its present settings) Reply to the "From:" address
instead, my e-mail will go to Christina and not to the list, and I'll be
wondering what happened.

So, some of the missing e-mails may have gone only to the person that was
replied to, off-list rather than on-list.

Moral of the story: always check the "To:" address before you hit "Send"!

Oh, yeah -- it's actually more complicated than that. Most e-mail clients
have a hierarchy of headers they will use when you hit "Reply to." Because
incoming messages to the usask.ca server were created with all sorts of
e-mail clients, the particular headers they have will be different.
Because the list server passes most of them through, the distributed
messages we receive have all kinds of header structures, and your client
may react differently when you reply to different posters. [This has long
been a point of controversy among list administrators. Some say a list
server should strip or reassign all of the common headers ("From:", for
example), and some think they should be passed through.] Lastly, what the
usask.ca server does may depend on what headers are present on each
incoming piece of mail.

Once again: Don't assume you'll get what you expect when you hit "Reply
to" to a message from this (or any other) list. Always check the actual
outgoing "To:" address before you hit "Send"!

Best regards,

etienne
Received on Wed Feb 15 21:42:05 2006