925756 - "Reply All" on a mailing list message only replies to the mailing list, not to the sender

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 77304

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, defect)

Description

[Marco A.G.Pinto [:marcoagpinto]]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; WOW64; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/24.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20130910160258

Steps to reproduce:

I received an e-mail from a Mailing List, bogus example:
From: Alex <[e-mail]>
To: Mozilla ML <l10n@blah blah>

I went to the combobox "Reply List" and selected "Reply All".


Actual results:

It only replied to the ML.

No "Alex <alex@blah blah>"



Expected results:

We should also have: "Alex <[e-mail]" in the "TO:"

I noticed that if there was no name before the e-mail address, it seems to work.

For example, if Alex only used [e-mail] it would work.

I also noticed that if there is a name + ML + newsgroup, the 3 appear with the "Reply All".

Thanks!

Kind regards,
       >Marco A.G.Pinto
         ---------------

Comment 1

[Sebastian Hengst [:aryx] (needinfo me if it's about an intermittent or backout)]

Thunderbird 24.0.1 on Windows XP SP3 32 bit

Clicking the "Reply All" button on a message sent via a mailing list only puts the mailing list address in the list of recipients, but the real sender of the message you are replying to is missing.

Comment 2

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

This works fine for me (using a message from tb-planning).

Comment 3

[Marco A.G.Pinto [:marcoagpinto]]

@Jim: It only works okay if the e-mail address of the person doesn't have a name before the address.

For example:
1) Marco <[e-mail]>
2) [e-mail]

Only the 2) would work.

Comment 4

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

The test I did was with an address like (1). Here are the relevant headers:

  From: M___ C___ <[e-mail]>
  To: [e-mail]
  ...
  List-Post: <mailto:[e-mail]>

This works both on 24.0.1 and a recent nightly build. Maybe it's an add-on issue? I'm just using Lightning and Mail Summaries.

Comment 5

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

Oh, and I don't expect it matters, but I tested 24.0.1 on Windows 7 and the nightly on Linux.

Comment 6

[Sebastian Hengst [:aryx] (needinfo me if it's about an intermittent or backout)]

Attachment: testcase, mbox file

If you import this mbox file and "Reply All", the mailing list is the only recipient.

Comment 7

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

(In reply to Archaeopteryx [:aryx] from comment #6)
> Created attachment 820547 [details]
> testcase, mbox file
> 
> If you import this mbox file and "Reply All", the mailing list is the only
> recipient.

That's because the Reply-To header is the same as the To (and List-Post) headers. If Mozilla is seriously publishing a mailing list that munges the Reply-To header (in violation of RFC 2822, I might add), we need to change that.

From RFC 2822:

   When the "Reply-To:" field is present, it indicates the mailbox(es) to which
   the author of the message suggests that replies be sent.  In the absence of
   the "Reply-To:" field, replies SHOULD by default be sent to the mailbox(es)
   specified in the "From:" field unless otherwise specified by the person
   composing the reply.

Note that 1) it says the *author* (i.e. the person who sent the message to the list) is responsible for setting the Reply-To header, not the *sender* (i.e. the list relaying the message to everyone else); that's the RFC 2822 violation I was talking about above.

It also says that replies should prefer the Reply-To header over the From header, which is what we're doing. The "unless otherwise specified" is vague, but I don't think "Reply All" would fall under that. Imagine if the author of the message really wanted direct replies to go to another address. We should respect that. Now, granted, we could ignore the Reply-To if it's the same as the List-Post, although that still breaks the case where the *author* set the Reply-To that way because they don't want to receive direct mail.

I guess now's as good a time as any to post this rant: http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html

Comment 8

[Sebastian Hengst [:aryx] (needinfo me if it's about an intermittent or backout)]

I have filed bug 930415 for the issue with the mailing list community-german. Because I can't reproduce with the steps from comment 3, I am resetting this bug to unconfirmed.

Comment 9

[Marco A.G.Pinto [:marcoagpinto]]

Attachment: In this e-mail the "Reply All" only replies to one

Hello!

I have found a good example of the bug.

In this e-mail, it is from:
[e-mail]

to:
[e-mail]

I did a "Reply all" and it only replied to:
[e-mail]

Can this help spotting and fixing the bug?

Thanks!

Comment 10

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

(In reply to Marco A.G.Pinto from comment #9)
> Created attachment 821588 [details]
> In this e-mail the "Reply All" only replies to one

This is exactly the same issue as comment 6. Complain to your list administrator.

Comment 11

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

I was thinking about this. Perhaps the solution is to update mailing list managers to have a per-user setting to enable/disable Reply-To munging. That would let people on well-behaved clients like Thunderbird choose between replying to the list and replying to the author, while also letting people on broken clients like Gmail's web interface have an easy way of replying to the list.

Comment 12

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

(In reply to Jim Porter (:squib) from comment #7)
> We should respect that. Now, granted, we could ignore the Reply-To if it's
> the same as the List-Post, although that still breaks the case where the
> *author* set the Reply-To that way because they don't want to receive direct
> mail.

Patch in bug 77304.

Comment 13

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

(In reply to Magnus Melin from comment #12)
> (In reply to Jim Porter (:squib) from comment #7)
> > We should respect that. Now, granted, we could ignore the Reply-To if it's
> > the same as the List-Post, although that still breaks the case where the
> > *author* set the Reply-To that way because they don't want to receive direct
> > mail.
> 
> Patch in bug 77304.

I'll comment over there, but to be brief: if we accept this, I think it should be behind a pref, since Reply-To == List-Post is a totally legit thing for the author of a message to do. I'd rather we patch the mailing list software to put users in control of this.

Comment 14

[Yuri]

+1 This is a major regression.

Comment 15

[Alex Abdugafarov]

+1 This is extremely annoying, Reply All should not ignore sender of the original message. I have to not forget to add him manually every time.

Comment 16

[Marco A.G.Pinto [:marcoagpinto]]

Attachment: OpenOffice_reply_to_all_bug_20150424.eml (another example)

Another example of not working.

Just select "Reply to All" and it will send to the ML and not all.

Comment 18

[Rainer Bielefeld]

NOT reproducible with  en-US (German language pack) SeaMonkey 2.38  (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:41.0)  Gecko/20100101 Firefox/41.0 Build 20150923195647  (Classic Theme) on German WIN7 64bit:

[e-mail], Posting 2015-07-16 /  [e-mail] / "Now i cannot use start-shell-msvc2013-x64.bat please ???"
'rightclick that posting in thread pane → Reply to all' opens reply-mail in composer, recipients are list + sender.
This message contains a "Reply-To" in header. So due to "Bug 77304 - Cannot reply to From: when Reply-To: field appears in header" this message should be affected

REPRODUCIBLE with  en-US (German language pack) SeaMonkey 2.38  (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:41.0)  Gecko/20100101 Firefox/41.0 Build 20150923195647  (Classic Theme) on German WIN7 64bit:
[e-mail], mailing list "[e-mail]", 
Posting 2015-08-26 /  [e-mail]  /  "Re: [freifunk-bs] Router für die Landesaufnahmebehörde"
'rightclick that posting in thread pane → Reply to all' opens reply-mail in composer, recipient is only list.