On Tue, 25 Sep 2007, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.linux.hardware, in article <pan.2007.09.25.08.41.14.499236@127.0.0.1>, Rodney wrote: [Please include some attribution so people have a clue as to who you are responding to.] >[edit] >> It seemed to me that if I reply to the original message, or even the >> one I am replying to now, my reply should go only to the "Reply To:" >> group, but it never happens. It makes the "Reply To:" header pretty >> ineffective. 1036 Standard for interchange of USENET messages. M.R. Horton, R. Adams. December 1987. (Format: TXT=46891 bytes) (Obsoletes RFC0850) (Status: UNKNOWN) Last paragraph of section 2.0 Certain headers are required, and certain other headers are optional. Any unrecognized headers are allowed, and will be passed through unchanged. The required header lines are "From", "Date", "Newsgroups", "Subject", "Message-ID", and "Path". The optional header lines are "Followup-To", "Expires", "Reply-To", "Sender", "References", "Control", "Distribution", "Keywords", "Summary", "Approved", "Lines", "Xref", and "Organization". Each of these header lines will be described below. Section 2.2.1 2.2.1. Reply-To This line has the same format as "From". If present, mailed replies to the author should be sent to the name given here. Otherwise, replies are mailed to the name on the "From" line. (This does not prevent additional copies from being sent to recipients named by the replier, or on "To" or "Cc" lines.) The full name may be optionally given, in parentheses, as in the "From" line. Section 2.2.3 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 the keyword poster is present, follow-up messages are not permitted. The message should be mailed to the submitter of the message via mail. Note that most readers will ignore a "Followup-To: poster" header, just as many ignore a "Reply-To:" header. >To Which "Reply To" header are you referring? There is no "Reply To" >header in either your post or the one you are replying to in this >thread. I think it's a bit of mis-understanding on Doug's part. While RFC1036 isn't an official standard (note the Status: line above), it's the most common practice. One of these days, the 'Usefor' group will get their fingers out, and finally get the replacements published. They've been agonizing over them for quite some time. "Netnews Article Format", Charles Lindsey, 9-Jan-07, <draft-ietf-usefor-usefor-12.txt> "Netnews Architecture and Protocols", Russ Allbery, Charles Lindsey, 3-Jul-07, <draft-ietf-usefor-usepro-08.txt> >Therefore, I'm confused by what you mean by "it never happens" and what >you mean by "ineffective". Note the difference between the "Followup-To:" and "Reply-To:" headers. They serve completely different purposes. >However, this is way off topic for this spam thread. The "spam thread" is off topic for a posting to comp.os.linux.hardware. Old guy