[Tickets #7782] Usability bug dealing with mail lists

[bugs at horde.org]

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Ticket URL: http://bugs.horde.org/ticket/7782
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  Ticket             | 7782
  Created By         | agullo at ati.es
  Summary            | Usability bug dealing with mail lists
  Queue              | IMP
  Version            | 4.3.2
  Type               | Bug
  State              | Unconfirmed
  Priority           | 2. Medium
  Milestone          |
  Patch              |
  Owners             |
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agullo at ati.es (2008-12-16 04:57) wrote:

I've identified an usability bug on IMP that causes messages sent to  
mail lists to get lost.

First of all, although I'm a computer engineer, I'm not the  
administrator of the server running IMP - I've come across this bug  
just as an user, and that means I don't know what IMP version I'm  
reporting of, because IMP just doesn't show it.  So, I just can't fill  
properly the IMP version that is required at step 2 of bug ticket  
creation.  My suggestion about it is either to get IMP showing its  
version number or to add an 'Unknown' item at the list of IMP versions  
to be reported of.

Now for the bug: 'Reply' works oddly and causes messages to get lost.

When it comes to mail lists, 'Reply' usually takes the address for the  
reply message from the 'In-Reply-To' header.  But... not so when it  
comes to local mail lists!

You see, my email address is hosted at the domain ati.es.  When I deal  
with outside mail lists (such as the ones from Yahoo!Groups), 'Reply'  
works all right.  But when I deal with a local mail list such as  
sobre at ati.es, 'Reply' ignores the 'In-Reply-To' header and takes the  
address for the reply message from the 'From' header.  This causes the  
message to be addressed not to the mail list but only to the last  
message sender, so the mail list misses it.  And as the way things  
happen, a lot of misses are unnoticed before the problem is discovered.

Additionally, a new and unexpected 'Reply to list' option appears  
(just between 'Reply' and 'Reply to all'), which because of being  
unexpected passes unnoticed for some time.  This 'Reply to list'  
option makes the reply to the list all right.  It seems that the  
intention here is that the user watches out before making replies.   
I'm going to reply this mail list message, but wait!  Is it an outside  
list and should I click 'Reply', or an inside list and should I click  
'Reply to list'?

You see, the problem is not that you can't reply to local mail lists.   
The problem is that you don't make the reply right, and the mail list  
loses the message, because the 'Reply' option works differently from  
expected.

My suggestion is to drop this 'Reply to list' option, and get the  
'Reply' option back doing what it used to do.

Should there exist some powerful reason for 'Reply to list' to exist,  
which I just can't figure out, then at least don't keep an 'Reply'  
option which works not the way the user expects - rename it as 'Reply  
to sender'.  This way confusion would be avoided and messages wouldn't  
be lost.