J,

In my view this is not "just a UI" issue. It goes deeper. PM'ing is an
action distinct from "reply" and should be treated as such.

Well here I'm going to agree with what you said, while disagreeing that it ought to be applied here.

I suspect that "PM" carries with it semantics (expectations) that are wholly different from what a "Send to Sender" means in Groups.io. That is part of why I object to that model being applied.

I think Brian mentioned that he would expect (and prefer) that a PM be a wholly separate thing: not carry in the subject line nor a quote from the original message. If that's what you're imagining then that's not Send to Sender and you are not solving the problem at hand: you're proposing something else entirely, something Mark has said he's thought about, a forum-like PM system.

The other key bit of semantics involves the word "Private". Brian may correct me, but I don't think a forum PM generally produces an email message carrying the replyer's email address. Send to Sender does - it really is an offlist message with far more in common with a group message than with a "PM" in the forum sense.


Shal
https://groups.io/g/GroupManagersForum