275154 - Does not respect Mail-Copies-To: nobody

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(MailNews Core :: Composition, enhancement)

Description

[Jan Ingvoldstad]

How to reproduce:

 - Find (or produce) a message in a newsgroup where "Mail-Copies-To: nobody" is set.
 - Select the message, hit "Reply All".

The result should be that the sender is removed from the message recipients.

Comment 1

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

I don't see an RFC for the Mail-Copies-To header -- do you have a reference?

Comment 2

[Jan Ingvoldstad]

This is one of those de facto standards that *formally* only exist in draft form.

There is no RFC for the Usenet article format since 1987, and that has been
considered outdated since at least 1993.

But in any case, it's been considered bad netiquette to send responses to both
poster and group since well before 1993.

If you want to regress to RFC 1036, this is what that one says on the topic
of followups:

2.2.3.  Followup-To

    This line has the same format as "Newsgroups".  If present, follow-
    up messages are to be posted to the newsgroup or newsgroups listed
    here.  If this line is not present, follow-ups are posted to the
    newsgroup or newsgroups listed in the "Newsgroups" line.

If you want to go by what used to be the de facto standard, son-of-rfc1036
(http://folk.uio.no/jani/Usenet/son-of-rfc1036.txt if you need a copy), the
following section is quite clear:

          6.1. Followup-To

          The Followup-To header contents specify  which  newsgroup(s)
          followups should be posted to:

               Followup-To-content = Newsgroups-content / "poster"

          The  syntax  is  the same as that of the Newsgroups content,
          with the exception that the magic word "poster"  means  that
          followups  should  be  mailed to the article's reply address
          rather than posted.  In  the  absence  of  Followup-To,  the
          default  newsgroup(s)  for a followup are those in the News-
          groups header.

So it would be wrong (both according to RFC 1036 and by the former de
facto standard) to allow a "reply all" that goes to both poster and
newsgroup in the absence of this header specifying it.


That in itself should be reason enough to change Thunderbird's behaviour.

But since this was already a problem in 1995, the idea of the Mail-Copies-To
header was launched in
http://groups.google.no/groups?q=mail-copies-to&start=180&hl=en&lr=&group=news.software.readers&safe=off&scoring=d&selm=19951106233333693387%40stk.berlin.snafu.de&rnum=183,
and in 1996, Gnus 5.2 respected that header.

It isn't as if this is a brand spanking new thing I'm asking for here.

Comment 3

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Adding dependency on bug 37028 "Support Mail-Copies-To header".

So what this means is:  "Reply all" to a message with "mail-copies-to: nobody" 
has the same effect as just "reply".  This provides the original poster with a 
mechanism preventing responses to his post arriving in email when the Mozilla-
using replier did not intend that.

This is hardly a "major" bug -- it is, in fact, a request for enhancement.  From 
the TB user's (that is, the replier's) point of view, the failure to support the 
header isn't that big of a deal because if she cares about preventing the mail 
message, she can simply hit Reply instead of Reply All, or remove the poster's 
address from the fields before sending.

Also, moving to Core:MailNews:Composition -- maybe not the best component, but 
that's the one 37028 is under.

Incidentally,  Followup-to: poster  is already explicitly supported.

Comment 4

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

See also bug 204339 which has an in-progress patch -- not the same thing as this 
bug, but related.

Comment 5

[Jan Ingvoldstad]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Adding dependency on bug 37028 "Support Mail-Copies-To header".
> 
> So what this means is:  "Reply all" to a message with "mail-copies-to: nobody" 
> has the same effect as just "reply".  This provides the original poster with a 
> mechanism preventing responses to his post arriving in email when the Mozilla-
> using replier did not intend that.

Actually, it prevents such responses even when the Mozilla-using replier
did intend that.

The actual text in the standard draft is "SHOULD NOT", which in RFC terms
means, "unless there is a very good technical reason to do so anyway".

That the user mistakingly wanted to do something else is not a very good
technical reason.

If the user *really* wants to send a copy anyway, he or she should add the
address to the recipients manually, when that header is present.


> This is hardly a "major" bug -- it is, in fact, a request for enhancement.

I wouldn't call something that is about standards compliance an "enhancement",
but as maintainer, you're of course allowed to set any priority you wish.

But maybe (since you pointed to bug 37028) it should be a bit higher on the
list of priorities, since it's been practically ignored for four and a half
years while in the Bugzilla system, and nearly five years before that.


> From 
> the TB user's (that is, the replier's) point of view, the failure to support the 
> header isn't that big of a deal because if she cares about preventing the mail 
> message, she can simply hit Reply instead of Reply All, or remove the poster's 
> address from the fields before sending.

The Mail-Copies-To header was introduced to remove the problems with users
having software like Netscape/Mozilla MailNews or Thunderbird, where there
was a vaguely-named "reply all" button that users preferred to use rather
than selecting where to send responses themselves.

It's there to protect both the unwitting user agent's user as well as the
hapless recipients (such as myself) of unnecessary email messages.


> Also, moving to Core:MailNews:Composition -- maybe not the best component, but 
> that's the one 37028 is under.

That seems like a good dependency.  It didn't show up while searching for
Thunderbird bigs, of course, otherwise I'd just have posted a comment there,
I suppose.

> Incidentally,  Followup-to: poster  is already explicitly supported.

Good, but that one isn't in any RFC.  ;)


For future standards compliance, I suggest you have a look at the current
standards drafts for Usenet, available here:

http://www.ietf.org/ids.by.wg/usefor.html

I'm actually a bit surprised that you weren't already looking at it, or
participating in the working group, since that's where the news format
is debated and developed according to current best practice/de facto
standards.

Comment 6

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
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you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
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If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
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Thank you for your help in this matter.

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Comment 7

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This bug has been automatically resolved after a period of inactivity (see above
comment). If anyone thinks this is incorrect, they should feel free to reopen it.