I had always thought that "disable other reply options" (in, for this case, a group with "reply to group" set) applied to email as well as web replies. However, it has come to my attention that's not always the case. In the case of aol email, for example, email replies resulting from the member hitting "reply" go only to the individual; the "disable other reply options" is not in effect for them. Whereas in gmail (which I use), the disabling is in effect - I only see "reply to group" and no option "reply" in my emails, like this:
View/Reply Online (#640) |  Reply To Group |  Mute This Topic | New Topic
Your Subscription | Contact Group Owner |  Unsubscribe [j.olivia.catlady@...]

I assumed this was a bug having to do with aol email's interaction with groups.io, until I checked the language of the explanation of "disable other reply options," which reads "Removes links on the website and digest to reply options other than your selected Reply To option." So is this saying that the disabling is guaranteed only for digest emails and not email replies in general? Was this a known issue with aol (and possibly other) email? Is there any way to disable other reply options for all email services? Because that's what I'd always thought it meant, until today.
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J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

p.s. Mark, I will send you the details to support. It turns out that this does seem to be a bug having to do with the one member. Other aol members hitting "reply" to a thread at my request, as an experiment, are having their messages correctly go to the group and not to me.
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J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

On Tue, Sep 29, 2020 at 12:20 PM, J_Catlady wrote:

Other aol members hitting "reply" to a thread at my request, as an experiment, are having their messages correctly go to the group and not to me.

That would be a function of how each person has their email client/program set up.  Sounds like they've got it set to ignore the Reply To: header.

Duane

Thanks, Duane! 

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J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

But wait a sec: should group members be able to loophole out of a group's "disable other reply options" using settings in their email? Also, I'm not sure (aka: I have not the vaguest idea) how these email settings work, but when she clicks on Reply All, her reply does go to the group, as opposed to the individual.
--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

On Tue, Sep 29, 2020 at 08:23 PM, J_Catlady wrote:

But wait a sec: should group members be able to loophole out of a group's
"disable other reply options" using settings in their email?

Nothing to do with settings. If I compose a message in my email, typing the group's or an individual's address in the "to"box decides where it is going

Also, I'm not
sure (aka: I have not the vaguest idea) how these email settings work, but
when she clicks on Reply All, her reply does go to the group, as opposed to
the individual.

AFAIK, reply-all goes to all the addresses the original message had in the "to", "from"and "CC" boxes

groetjes, Ronaldo

True but she’s not doing that. She’s simply hitting “reply.”

--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

On Tue, Sep 29, 2020 at 01:03 PM, J_Catlady wrote:

she’s not doing that. She’s simply hitting “reply.”

In other words, her email is filling in the individual's address instead of the group address. She's not changing anything. So at first glance it looks like an aol problem, but it's not doing that with the other aol members, so it seems more likely to be an email setting. Or something. Anyway, I've forwarded her email to Mark at support.
 
--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

With the exception of the "reply only to sender" topic setting*, there is no way for groups.io to actually force a particular reply behavior on each and every group member. 

The reply-to setting for a group or topic affects only the corresponding field in the outgoing message header (for individual messages), to wit:

Reply-To: main@beta.groups.io

This amounts to a suggestion, and that's all it can do. Whether the recipient complies with that suggestion depends on that person's own behavior (e.g.: reply vs reply all), settings and capabilities of his email provider, and especially the settings/behavior of his email client.

In particular, multiple email clients are known to fail to comply with RFCC 5322, at least by default. Instead of honoring the Reply-to: line, they send the message back to the From: address. Remedying this requires knowledge of both the provider and the client, and even then may not be fixable.

Ref: https://beta.groups.io/g/main/message/18853 

Hope this helps,
Bruce

*"Reply only to sender" is different in that if the recipient attempts to send a message back into the same topic, groups.io actively blocks it.

On Tue, Sep 29, 2020 at 07:26 PM, Bruce Bowman wrote:

In particular, multiple email clients are known to fail to comply with RFCC 5322, at least by default. Instead of honoring the Reply-to: line, they send the message back to the From: address.

Yes, I've been recently noticing that on my iPhone, a second reply by me to the same recipient instead is sent back to me. I finally figured out that you can subvert this behavior by specifying "reply all."

However, in this case, there seems to be something unique about the one group member's email situation. Hard to know what it is. The "reply" behavior of the other people in my group with aol (at least all the ones who responded to my test thread) is correct according to the group reply-to setting, namely, the reply goes to the group.

FWIW, and in case this helps, the member is using a PC running WIndows 10.
 
--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

On Tue, Sep 29, 2020 at 10:48 PM, J_Catlady wrote:

However, in this case, there seems to be something unique about the one group member's email situation. Hard to know what it is. The "reply" behavior of the other people in my group with aol (at least all the ones who responded to my test thread) is correct according to the group reply-to setting, namely, the reply goes to the group.

FWIW, and in case this helps, the member is using a PC running WIndows 10.

J - It's probably the client software that this person is using to read and compose emails. Windows 10 Mail has been reported to fail to honor RFC 5322 (https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/windows-10-mail-app-does-not-repect-reply-to/5ea3d244-4f9b-47b6-ab61-0970d75c4af1). Some versions of Outlook don't follow it, either. I'm not aware of any setting in these clients that can be changed to make them follow the reply-to standard. Others who actually use them might have recommendations, but before going down that road we need to know what your subscriber is actually using.

Currently, in groups.io, the From: address of an individual message is the same as the person who made the post. An account setting could be established to rewrite this From: address to match the group address, but only for those groups that have both "Reply to Group" and "Remove other reply options" set. This is kinda along the lines of the existing "I'm on GMail and always want copies of my own emails" account setting. Although I'm reluctant to recommend the expansion of such account settings, it should work, and is just about all groups.io could do to address this.

Failing that, your subscriber will need to either adopt compliant client software, or just get into the habit of checking the To: line every time they reply and correct it as needed.

Hope this helps,
Bruce

Bruce,

Thanks, this is awesomely informative. Yes, that seems to be what's happening. It's actually amazing that it hasn't been happening more often. So far, I've noticed it only with this one group member, and she (thankfully) is extremely cooperative and willing to be careful to always use "reply all."

As for the groups.io change that you say could be made to rectify this ("An account setting could be established to rewrite this From: address to match the group address, but only for those groups that have both "Reply to Group" and "Remove other reply options" set), I think that might cause more problems than it solves, and/or I don't understand it. It could be done in my group, which has both of those options set. But would that cause emails from this particular person to not have her correct "from" address in emails people receive for her messages to the group? I think I'm getting "from" and "to" confused in the fix.

Thank you!
--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

On Wed, Sep 30, 2020 at 11:31 AM, J_Catlady wrote:

Thanks, this is awesomely informative. Yes, that seems to be what's happening. It's actually amazing that it hasn't been happening more often. 

I do believe the problem is common, and am surprised it doesn't get reported more often.

As for the groups.io change that you say could be made to rectify this ("An account setting could be established to rewrite this From: address to match the group address, but only for those groups that have both "Reply to Group" and "Remove other reply options" set), I think that might cause more problems than it solves, and/or I don't understand it.

I'm not advocating that it be implemented, but it seems to be the only available "fix" that groups.io could apply to a problem that groups.io did not cause. 

It could be done in my group, which has both of those options set. But would that cause emails from this particular person to not have her correct "from" address in emails people receive for her messages to the group? 

No. It would only be applied to messages [s]he receives, and even then only from groups with those particular reply-to settings.

This is entirely analogous to the From rewrite that's currently done for the "I always want copies of my own messages" setting in account preferences, but for a different reason:

• The "always want copies" rewrite is done to munge the From address so when it comes back with a matching From address and message-id, it isn't flagged by GMail (and perhaps others) as a dupe and sent to the bit-bucket.
• The hypothetical account setting I'm talking about would rewrite the From address to match that of the group, thereby ensuring that the RFC5322-noncompliant email client [s]he is using nonetheless sends any replies [s]he composes where they're supposed to go.

I'd be happy to discuss this further but if we're not going to propose this as a feature it should probably be taken off-group.

Regards,
Bruce

On Wed, Sep 30, 2020 at 10:11 AM, Bruce Bowman wrote:

I'd be happy to discuss this further but if we're not going to propose this as a feature it should probably be taken o

Then lets propose it as a feature. Do you want to do it? You can state it more accurately and concisely than I can. Probably should stay in this thread? Or start another topic with a more accurate title?
 
--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

Things have actually gotten worse since the member started using "reply all" instead of "reply." So I am now strongly urgng Bruce's proposed fix.

What's happening now is that the member thoughtfully clicks "reply all," which makes the message go to the individual with cc to the group. Then when the individual replies, THAT message goes out privately rather than to the group. Meanwhile I've asked the member to carefully check her "to" field and remove the individual member's address, leaving just the group address.

As Bruce says, this is certainly happening more often than we realize. How many people use PCs running Windows 10? That's the most up to date version, right? So probably tons of people.
--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

On Wed, Sep 30, 2020 at 01:20 PM, J_Catlady wrote:

Then lets propose it as a feature. Do you want to do it?

Not really. :-)

Bruce