1470271 - mail.override_list_reply_to should default to false...

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, enhancement)

Description

[Fred Stluka]

This is not a report of an accidental bug.  It is a request to 
reverse a design decision that you made intentionally.

In version 52.4.0, the release notes say:

- https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/52.4.0/releasenotes/

  In Thunderbird 52 a new behavior was introduced for replies to 
  mailing list posts: "When replying to a mailing list, reply will 
  be sent to address in From header ignoring Reply-to header". 
  A new preference mail.override_list_reply_to allows to restore 
  the previous behavior.

I allowed Thunderbird to update itself to this version a while 
back, but didn't take the time to read all of the release notes.
So, this change in behavior caught me by surprise.  Over time,
I noticed a pattern of people not responding to my replies to 
mailings lists, and eventually noticed that my replies were 
going only to the From address, not to the Reply-To address 
(the mailing list).  

I have now fixed this by using the Config Editor to set
"mail.override_list_reply_to"="false".

My question is:

   Why was this default changed to "true" in 52.4.0?  Isn't 
   Reply-To a standard mail header for the past 30 or more 
   years?  Why change the default behavior?  Was it causing 
   some problem that this change fixed?

My request is:

   Please change the default back to "false", unless there's 
   some compelling reason not to.

Thanks again for the incredible product!  I'm a huge fan of 
Thunderbird, and I donate money every year to you folks who 
support it.

I've been using Thunderbird since 2005 or.  Before that I had 
used Netscape since 1996.  In all that time, I've had very 
few problems, and still can't find any other email product 
that even comes close to the features, speed and reliability 
of Thunderbird.  Please continue the great work!

And please change this setting to default to "false".

Thanks!
--Fred Stluka

Comment 1

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

Thanks for the kind words. There has been a huge and very heated discussion about this feature. That's why we, in fact, I introduced the preference at a later stage to, well, undo the damage as some would call it.

I don't think you can find a majority for reverting the preference, Magnus?

Comment 2

[Fred Stluka]

Jorg and Magnus (and other interested parties),

I really appreciate the ability to set the preference to "true"
to restore the previous behavior of Thunderbird.  That solves the 
problem for me personally.  Thanks!

But, I'd still love to hear what the arguments were for making 
the change in the 1st place.

It seems to me that it violates the intent of the Reply-To
header, which has been in effect and widely honored among all 
email clients that I know of since 1977.  See RFC's 724, then 
733, then 822, then 2822 and now finally RFC 5322.

Why change after 41 years?  I'm assuming there must have been 
some serious problem that this change fixed.  True?

For me (and probably for many others), this was a subtle change
that caused communication problems in my normal workflow.

I read a question that was posted to a mailing list, hit Ctrl-R 
as usual to reply with an answer, didn't notice that the To 
field was only the original poster instead of the whole list, 
sent my message, and vaguely wondered why no one responded.

When I later saw a reply from someone else, giving the same 
answer I had given, I got curious.  So, I checked the archives 
of the mailing list and saw that my reply was missing.  Then I
checked my Sent folder and realized it had not gone to the list.
Then I checked my other recent replies to this and other mailing
lists and and saw that many of them over the past couple months 
had also not gone to the list.  Huh??!?!  Seemed like a bug, and 
subtle one at that.  With no warning or error message, my TBird
email was not going where I expected it to.

So I Googled a bit, found people saying that TBird had changed 
its behavior.  I found and installed a TBird add-on that fixed
it:
- https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/stop-ignoring-reply-to/
Then, I learned about the simpler TBird config setting that fixes 
it and realized it was not a bug, but an intentional change.

As a software engineer for the past 36 years, I've always been 
careful to avoid breaking backward compatibility, and it seems
to me that the Thunderbird team is also careful about that.

Can you tell me why the change was made, or perhaps point me to
the discussion that Jorg mentioned?

Thanks again!
--Fred Stluka

Comment 3

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

(In reply to Fred Stluka from comment #2)
> But, I'd still love to hear what the arguments were for making 
> the change in the 1st place.
Please no more discussion on this, you're far too late to join the discussion.

Read bug 1392371 comment #0 and then read the two bugs referenced there and their 18 duplicates in total, 10 supporting the initial bug and 8 supporting its reversal.

You cannot convince me. I got burned once, a personal reply intended to go to the author when to the entire list. If you wish to reply to the list, simply use "reply list".

Personally I also don't think we want to reverse the preference value, but Magnus can have the last word on that.

Comment 4

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Agreed we don't want to change the default. In the end, an error makes less damage when the default is to have messages to to sender rather than the list, for applicable situations.