Hello,
this is to inform you that the reply settings on this list have changed (so-called "Reply to mangling" has been disabled).
So far, e-mails had set a reply-to the mailing list address. In other words, with any e-mail client, replies to e-mails on the list were automatically sent directly to the list.
In the past, this lead to two major problems:
1. Several times, people have sent direct replies to the public list, where deleting them is nearly impossible. I remember at least one case where confidential information has been sent out that caused lots of worries for the sender and his employer. This happened because people hit "reply" and thought it would reply to the sender only.
2. I have heard complaints in the past from people, stating that working with the non-developer lists of LibreOffice is a pain for them, because of reply-to mangling, resulting in a lack of communication. This also led to the fact that numerous tasks were done by the same people, who needed to spend more and more time, instead of sharing the work burden with others. While I do not fully believe this argument, there's just one way to find out...
Therefore, I have applied a change:
Replies to e-mails from the list now only go to the original sender. You either need to use the "reply to all" feature of your e-mail program, or - preferably - the "reply to list"/"reply to group" feature, which will direct replies directly to the list.
This is common practice on most mailing lists, and even the default setting for our mailing list software, so we did not re-invent the wheel here. Those seeking for details should have a look at http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html
I know we had numerous discussions on this topic in the past, but the outcome was that roughly 50% were for this change, and 50% refused it, so I am really sitting between two chairs here, for which I beg for your understanding. On the one hand, those complaining the lists are unusable with reply-to mangling, on the other hand, those complaining the lists are unusable without reply-to mangling. Unfortunately, combining those two, even on a per-recipient basis, is not possible, so they are mutually exclusive to each other.
In order to find out the real impact, I simply changed the setting, and again, I beg for your understanding.
Do not worry: The mailing lists are for the community, so it's the community deciding how they should work. What I'd like to ask all of you is to try out for a few days if that change is good for each list or not. Should we find out it is more harmful than it helps, I will immediately switch back to the old behaviour.
Sorry for this short notice, and I beg for your understanding that I'm somehow sitting between two chairs here.
Florian