#reply-thru

The great thing about mailing lists is that they make it simple to discuss things with an entire group. A problem with mailing lists is that they can make it too simple to discuss things with an entire group. Everyone has seen it or had it happen to them: you receive a message through a list and reply with a personal note to the message's sender. Your reply, however, actually goes to the entire list. Embarrassing.

The Problem

The reason this happens is because most mailing list software (including Fiesta by default) sets a "Reply-To" header pointing back to the list when a message is distributed. When you press Reply, your email client sees that header and composes a new message to the list rather than the sender. Mailing lists do this to foster group communication; if replies go to the whole group then everyone stays in the loop. Otherwise, it's very easy for discussions to become fragmented.

The problem seems intractable: we want people to be able to send personal replies, but we also want to keep group discussion on the list as much as possible (even if somebody hits Reply instead of Reply-All). To date, all mailing list software has sort of punted on the problem. The list software picks a default behavior and, at best, gives users the ability to customize the behavior themselves.

Customization might seem like a great solution, but it's bad for a couple of reasons. First, customization requires work and management. Who gets to decide how a list behaves? When? Is the setting mandatory or is it hidden away where only advanced users will find it? Second, customization means that different lists behave different ways, even on the same service. This is the same problem seen with all modal UIs; users can never be certain exactly how a list will behave without knowing how it's configured.

A New Solution: Reply-Thru

We've been working on what we think is a better solution to this problem. We're calling it Reply-Thru. Reply-Thru is enabled on all lists that are using NewFiesta.

When you get a message from a Fiesta list you can Reply or Reply-All, just like a normal email message. If you Reply-All, your message will go to the entire list. If you Reply, it will go only to the sender. What makes Reply-Thru special, however, is how that direct message is sent. It gets sent through Fiesta, and a note is added telling the recipient that it was sent directly to them. The recipient has the option of sending a Reply directly back to you, but they also have the option of hitting Reply-All and taking the conversation back to the list. They can also distribute the message to rest of the list with a single click.

Reply-Thru makes direct responses the default, but makes it dead simple to bring the discussion back to the list when that's where it belongs. Best of all, there's no configuration: every list can behave the same way. There are some issues with this approach as well, most notably is that we have to manipulate the From address of emails being sent to lists. Instead of seeing an email from [email protected], users will see [email protected]. This might present some confusion, especially to those who are used to the old behavior.