Network Working Group J. G. Myers Internet Draft: The Wide-Reply-To: header Carnegie Mellon Document: internet-drafts/draft-myers-822-widereply-00.txt February 1995 The Wide-Reply-To: header Status of this memo This document is an Internet Draft. Internet Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its Areas, and its Working Groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet Drafts. Internet Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months. Internet Drafts may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is not appropriate to use Internet Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as a ``working draft'' or ``work in progress``. To learn the current status of any Internet-Draft, please check the 1id-abstracts.txt listing contained in the Internet-Drafts Shadow Directories on ds.internic.net, nic.nordu.net, ftp.isi.edu, or munnari.oz.au. A revised version of this draft document will be submitted to the RFC editor as a Proposed Standard for the Internet Community. Discussion and suggestions for improvement are requested. This document will expire before 15 Aug 1995. Distribution of this draft is unlimited. 1. Introduction Past experience with various messaging systems shows the need for separate user agent functions for replying to the orgininator of a message and for replying to all other recipients of a message. This document defines the Wide-Reply-To and Resent-Wide-Reply-To header fields which indicate addresses to be used for the latter form of reply. Myers [Page 1] Internet Draft The Wide-Reply-To: header February 1995 2. Automatic use of To / CC / Wide-Reply-To For user agent systems which automatically generate address lists for "wide replies"; replies intended to go to all recipients of a message as opposed to the originator of a message, the following recommendations are made: o If the "Wide-Reply-To" field exists, then the reply should go to the the addresses indicated in that field and not to the address(es) indicated in the "To" or "CC" fields. o If there are "To" or "CC" fields, but no "Wide-Reply-To" field, then the reply should go to the address(es) indicated in the "To" and "CC" fields. 3. Deprecated use of Reply-To in teleconferencing groups The use of the "Reply-To" field where the address of a "message teleconferencing" group equipped with automatic distribution service is included in all messages submitted to the teleconference is depre- cated and discouraged. 4. Formal Syntax The following syntax specification uses the augmented Backus-Naur Form (BNF) notation as specified in RFC 822. wide-headers = "Resent-Wide-Reply-To" ":" 1#address / "Wide-Reply-To" ":" 1#address 5. Security Considerations Security issues are not discussed in this memo 6. Author's Address John G. Myers Carnegie-Mellon University 5000 Forbes Ave. Pittsburgh PA, 15213-3890 Email: jgm+@cmu.edu Myers [Page 2] Internet Draft The Wide-Reply-To: header February 1995 Appendix A: Former practice: netnews RFC 1036 defines a "Followup-To" header, which is similar in concept to "Wide-Reply-To". Instead of listing addresses, "Followup-To" lists newsgroup names. If the "Followup" header does not exist, RFC 1036 specifies that the value of the "Newsgroups" field be used. The "Newsgroup" field is the netnews equivalent of the "To" and "CC" fields. Practically all netnews user agents distinguish between the "reply" and "followup" functions. The former sends a reply message to the originator of a message, the latter posts a reply message to one or more newsgroups. Appendix B: Former practice: Andrew Message System AMS, the Andrew Message System, uses an "X-Andrew-WideReply" field, with semantics virtually identical to the "Wide-Reply-To" field described in this document. AMS user agents typically have three distinct reply commands. The "Reply to Sender" command uses the "Reply-to" and "From" fields as described in RFC 822. The "Reply to Readers" command uses the "X- Andrew-WideReply", "To", and "CC" fields. The "Reply to All" command uses the union of addresses that would be provided by the "Reply to Sender" and "Reply to Readers" commands. The "X-Andrew-WideReply" header is not typically set by message ori- ginators. It is, however, used extensively by the bulletin board filing system in order to ensure that wide replies to messages on bulletin boards get sent to the correct address. Appendix C: Author's thoughts on combined originator and wide replies The question of when one should include the originator's address (Reply-To/From) in addition to the recipients' addresses (Wide- Reply-To/To/CC) when making a wide reply is a subject of some contro- versy. Currently, different communities have different social norms. In netnews, the act of sending a reply to both the originator as e- mail and to a set of newsgroups is almost unheard of. When it does happen, the originator will usually object to receiving a personal copy. Reasons for objecting to the personal copy include that the user's primary mailbox is handled at a higher priority than the news- group, and that the user is fooled into thinking the reply is a per- sonal instead of a public one. Myers [Page 3] Internet Draft The Wide-Reply-To: header February 1995 With Internet mailing lists, it is common for the originator to be given a personal copy of replies sent to the list. Many originators like these personal copies--since the delivery bypasses the list exploder, the personal copy is usually delivered much more quickly than the copy sent through the list. Since mailing lists are usually delivered to the user's primary mailbox anyway, the objections to this practice that appear in netnews typically do not appear with Internet mailing lists. At andrew.cmu.edu, the original AMS site, the social norms match those of netnews, even for local mailing lists. This is because AMS has mechanisms for automatically filing incoming mail. Many users read mailing lists as local bulletin boards, not as personal mail. In some cases, the list of recipients of a message may not include an address which will eventually deliver to the originator. User agent programs would be well advised to include all three of the "Reply to Sender", "Reply to Readers" and "Reply to All" functions. Myers [Page 4]