Date   : Sat, 07 Nov 2009 22:35:00 +0000
From   : kevin@... (Kevin Bracey)
Subject: Who the message is from...

Rick Murray wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I know this has been gone over before - although I am wondering if there 
> is any *technical* reason why the "From" attribution in this mailing 
> list is not the mailing list itself?
>   
Hello folks,

I've just joined the list today, and it looks perfectly configured to 
me. So admins - please don't mess with it!

* The From and Reply-To fields are the real ones from the person sending 
the list, as they should be.
* There's a List-Id header which lets you filter accurately.
* And there's a List-Post header which tells a good list-aware e-mail 
client where to send replies to the list.

This sort of thing comes up periodically on mailing lists from people 
who are having troubles with their e-mail client, but all the 
alternatives to this correct configuration are worse. Your suggestion, 
in particular, would make it hard to send private replies, and probably 
cause embarrassing cock-ups.

A good e-mail client like Messenger Pro will present a mailing list 
pretty much exactly as a Usenet newsgroup, and it functions like one. 
But that relies on the list not mucking around with From and Reply-To 
headers. Thunderbird, which I'm currently using, isn't that good, but 
works adequately filtering on List-Id and using Reply-to-all.

Here's a web page on the topic of mailing list configuration:

http://woozle.org/~neale/papers/reply-to-still-harmful.html

Kevin