[...]



This is not a bug. It all depends on whether or not the mailing list 
munges the Reply-To header in the messages from the list. You can get 
into an endless debate between proponents and opponents of this easily:



        http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html

        http://www.metasystema.net/essays/reply-to.mhtml



In the end it is the decision of the mailing list operator whether or 
not it inserts a Reply-To header and consequently, if just hitting the 
'Reply' button will send a message to the list or to the author of the 
message only. So you're barking up the wrong tree here.

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@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.