Changes to replying to newsgroups in Thunderbird

[Jim]

Just a quick heads-up to anyone out there who uses Thunderbird to read
newsgroups: in the latest nightly (2012-04-09), the message header
buttons now distinguish between reply (to the sender) and followup (to
the newsgroup). This makes the buttons work like they do for mailing
lists, so things should be clearer and more consistent.

See <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=718342> for more details.

- Jim

[Justin Wood (Callek)]

So to be clear, if I hit "reply" on a NG message now it goes to the
*author* instead of the *ng*?

In what cases is it defaulting to the Newsgroup with a basic reply:

Followup-To must be set?
Reply-To must be set?
Both Must be set
None must be set
Never defaults to newsgroup??

This matters very much to me, and is why I ask.

--
~Justin Wood (Callek)

[Jim]

On 04/08/2012 11:09 PM, Justin Wood (Callek) wrote:
> So to be clear, if I hit "reply" on a NG message now it goes to the
> *author* instead of the *ng*?

"Reply" works exactly like "Message -> Reply to Sender Only".
"Followup" works exactly like "Message -> Reply to Newsgroup".

> In what cases is it defaulting to the Newsgroup with a basic reply:

Never.

- Jim

[Axel Hecht]

To clarify, there "followup" button is there by default for NG messages,
right? Thus, doing a followup isn't any more work than it is right now,
it's just a button with a different label.

Axel

[Justin Wood (Callek)]

This is very troubling to me, a REPLY to a newsgroup, almost always
wants to be replied to the newsgroup not the user (especially since many
e-mails specified as NG e-mails are invalid!)

With this change I'll expect much more frustration from actual users
when using newsgroups! I myself am going to be likely abandoning all my
Thunderbird Use when it comes to newsgroups if this change
proliferates/stays. Yea there is "Followup" but the mental model of how
things work, should work, etc. is completely broken.

Can you elaborate on how this makes things better especially when
considering the consolidation of UI with mailing lists. I want to give
the benefit of the doubt, but my ingrained expectations make that hard atm.

--
~Justin Wood (Callek)

[Jim]

On 04/09/2012 06:22 AM, Axel Hecht wrote:
> To clarify, there "followup" button is there by default for NG messages,
> right? Thus, doing a followup isn't any more work than it is right now,
> it's just a button with a different label.

Correct.

- Jim

[Peter Lairo]

On Mo. 09.04.2012 04:14, Jim wrote:
> Just a quick heads-up to anyone out there who uses Thunderbird to read
> newsgroups: in the latest nightly (2012-04-09), the message header
> buttons now distinguish between reply (to the sender) and followup (to
> the newsgroup). This makes the buttons work like they do for mailing
> lists, so things should be clearer and more consistent.

I removed and don't use the buttons that the current developers
(mis)placed into the message's header. I placed the Reply, Reply All,
and Forward buttons (back) into the Mail Toolbar. Does this change mean
that when I *reply* to a newsgroup post using my Reply button on the
Toolbar, my message will go to the sender's (often fake) e-mail address
instead of to the newsgroup? Would I have to add another button to the
Toolbar just for the times I'm *replying* to newsgroups? This sounds
very troubling.
--
Regards,
Peter Lairo

Bugs I think are important:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=250539
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=391057
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=436259
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=446444

Islam: http://www.jihadwatch.org/islam101/
Israel: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/myths2/
Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster: http://www.venganza.org/
Anthropogenic Global Warming skepsis: http://tinyurl.com/AGW-Skepsis

[Jim]

On 04/09/2012 12:06 PM, Peter Lairo wrote:
> Does this change mean that when I *reply* to a newsgroup post using
> my Reply button on the Toolbar, my message will go to the sender's
> (often fake) e-mail address instead of to the newsgroup?

No. The "Reply" button on the main toolbar still means "Followup" when
in a newsgroup. The labeling is kind of weird, but since the main
toolbar doesn't have a "smart" reply button, we just left it how it was.

- Jim

[Peter Lairo]

Thank goodness for small favors (I'm at the point where I'm glad when
things aren't made worse in Thunderbird). I think that "followup" is
much weirder than "reply" for newsgroups. This is reinforced after
looking up the dictionary definition of "followup"[1]: "an action or
thing that serves to *increase the effectiveness* of a previous action".
Replies to newsgroups are very often a "jumping" in on a thread. Also,
many posts are not intended to "increase the effectiveness" of a thread,
but for any of many other reasons (asking tangentially related question,
OT-posts, adding new information, etc.). It also loosely implies that
one can primarily only followup on ones' *own* actions (ng posts).

[1] http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/followup

[Jim]

On 04/09/2012 01:56 PM, Peter Lairo wrote:
> I think that "followup" is much weirder than "reply" for newsgroups.

Take that up with the Usenet gods, since that terminology has been
around for decades. In fact, having a clear distinction between "reply"
and "followup" is a requirement for meeting the GNKSA[1], which Mozilla
has dedicated efforts to meeting in the past[2]:

The software MUST provide separate, clearly distinguished commands
to do each of the following:

a) Post a new article ...

b) Post a followup article ...

c) Reply by e-mail ...

Software that uses the English language is strongly encouraged to
include the phrases "Post to newsgroup", "Followup to newsgroup",
and "Reply by e-mail" (or "Reply to sender" or "Reply to author") --
in menus, on-line help, and written documentation. It SHOULD avoid
using other verbs such as "Send" or "Respond" whose meaning is not
evident to the user. An ordinary, untrained user SHOULD be able to
easily pick the correct command.

Rationale: Users who post followups when they should send e-mail
replies, or vice versa, seem to be an endemic problem. They are
almost always using software that doesn't make the difference clear,
or doesn't even provide both commands.

[1] http://js.home.xs4all.nl/gnksa/
[2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=gnksa

- Jim

[Justin Wood (Callek)]

Given this, it does not follow why "Reply" as a bareword is to author
instead of "to newsgroup"

Nor do you really explain why following this specification is a net win
in *this one case*.

I would certainly accept and expect a "Reply \/" where default action is
to newsgroup (Followup in that bug) and the expansion is "Reply to author"

Or at *least* a (sticky) thing where "Reply \/" defaults to one way if
necessary and the "(*) Reply to AUTHOR" \n "( ) Reply to Newsgroup" are
seperate.

The other KEY requirement to have this, imo is to allow the COMPOSE
window itself to make *easy* switching between modes.

If I hit "Reply" as it would currently stand, and it displays just the
author, but instead I wanted "Reply to newsgroup" we *need* a way to
switch it, or to do the right action right in the first place (or both)

--
~Justin Wood (Callek)

[Jim]

On 04/09/2012 10:57 AM, Justin Wood (Callek) wrote:
> This is very troubling to me, a REPLY to a newsgroup, almost always
> wants to be replied to the newsgroup not the user (especially since many
> e-mails specified as NG e-mails are invalid!)

"Reply" isn't the accepted terminology for a response sent to a
newsgroup. "Followup" is. This has been the case since at least 1987
(the publication date of RFC 1036), which defines "Reply-To" as the
destination for email responses to be sent, and "Followup-To" as the
destination for Usenet responses to be sent.

> Can you elaborate on how this makes things better especially when
> considering the consolidation of UI with mailing lists. I want to give
> the benefit of the doubt, but my ingrained expectations make that hard atm.

The behavior now works the same as it would with a mailing list*, so
it's possible to reply via email or followup via news (aka reply to the
mailing list) with a single click. This feature only adds functionality,
and takes nothing away, aside from a few pixels.

As mentioned in another post, this is required for compliance with the
Good Netkeeping Seal of Approval, which Mozilla has previously worked
towards (granted, those bugs are *old*, but NNTP isn't exactly the most
active area of Thunderbird development).

The only downside that I can see from this change is that people who've
been raised on inaccurate terminology will have to adjust to the
accepted form.

- Jim

* Except that 1) Ctrl+R in a mailing list is reply-to-sender, whereas
it's in news, it's followup-to-newsgroup, and 2) nothing is changed
with the Mail Toolbar buttons, only the message header buttons.
Perhaps something should be done about these in the future, but that
was out of scope for the issue at hand.

[Jim]

This terminology is blessed by RFC 1036, which describes Reply-To as the
address for email responses and Followup-To as the address for NNTP
responses. We could clarify the tooltip of the "Reply" button to say
"Reply to the sender of this message", though that might cause some
confusion when dealing with messages that munge the Reply-To header.

In any case, this makes the text in the Message menu (almost) identical
to the GNKSA recommendations ("Reply to Sender Only" and "Followup to
Newsgroup"). The only reason I didn't use all that text on the toolbar
buttons is because space is at a premium there.

> Nor do you really explain why following this specification is a net win
> in *this one case*.

It's a net win because prior to this bug, there was no button allowing a
user to reply to the author of a news post (the only way was Message ->
Reply to Sender Only).

> I would certainly accept and expect a "Reply \/" where default action is
> to newsgroup (Followup in that bug) and the expansion is "Reply to author"

You're in luck. That's exactly what the Followup button does.

> The other KEY requirement to have this, imo is to allow the COMPOSE
> window itself to make *easy* switching between modes.

That'd be nice, but it goes *well* beyond NNTP; this is something we
want for mail, too. Gmail's UI is probably a decent template for the UX
here.

- Jim

[Justin Wood (Callek)]

Jim wrote:
>
>> I would certainly accept and expect a "Reply \/" where default action is
>> to newsgroup (Followup in that bug) and the expansion is "Reply to
>> author"
>
> You're in luck. That's exactly what the Followup button does.

But it forces technical terminology (Followup-To) from an Old RFC onto
the user, instead of the *trained* and *expected* terminology "Reply".

REPLY itself changing effective meaning is not a benefit/improvement.

--
~Justin Wood (Callek)

[Millwood]

The other newsgroup reader I use, emacs GNUS, uses followup and reply as
the RFC specifies.

[clay]

Never..? as in Ctrl+r will on longer 'reply' to the newsgroup?

[Jim]

On 04/09/2012 04:44 PM, clay wrote:
> On 04/08/2012 11:31 PM, Jim wrote:
>> On 04/08/2012 11:09 PM, Justin Wood (Callek) wrote:
>>> In what cases is it defaulting to the Newsgroup with a basic reply:
>>
>> Never.
>

> Never..? as in Ctrl+r will on longer 'reply' to the newsgroup?

The above was in the context of the message header toolbar. Everything
else remains the same (except "Message -> Reply to Newsgroup" is now
"Message -> Followup to Newsgroup").

- Jim

[Chris Ilias]

I agree with this change, but I also think there's a learning factor
involved. Most users don't know that Followup is what it is supposed to
be, and they are just plain used to clicking 'reply' for newsgroup
posts. There is going to be some muscle retraining involved.

Can we have a transitional period (1 planned release), where the 'Reply'
button will not be displayed on newsgroup posts by default?
* That prevents users from clicking on 'Reply' without knowing it does
something different now.
* It makes them try the 'Followup' button.
* It makes them get used to clicking on the 'Followup' button.

[Jim]

On 04/09/2012 05:41 PM, Chris Ilias wrote:
> Can we have a transitional period (1 planned release), where the 'Reply'
> button will not be displayed on newsgroup posts by default?

I don't really have an issue with this, but I think it should wait until
the aurora merge, since then we won't have to undo the change in central
later.

- Jim

[Gervase Markham]

On 09/04/12 21:23, Justin Wood (Callek) wrote:
> But it forces technical terminology (Followup-To) from an Old RFC onto
> the user, instead of the *trained* and *expected* terminology "Reply".

+1. Outside geek circles, I "reply" to a Twitter messagfe, I "reply" to
a web-based discussion forum thread, and I "reply" to a newsgroup
message. All of these are colloquialisms for "carrying on the
discussion" by whatever technical means are most appropriate for the
forum concerned.

If you change the behaviour of Ctrl-R in Newsgroups (it's hard to tell
from the discussion whether this is proposed or not) to send email to
the user rather than continue the discussion, then a lot of my newsgroup
posts are going to start going astray.

Gerv

[Jim]

On 04/10/2012 06:22 AM, Gervase Markham wrote:
> On 09/04/12 21:23, Justin Wood (Callek) wrote:
>> But it forces technical terminology (Followup-To) from an Old RFC onto
>> the user, instead of the *trained* and *expected* terminology "Reply".
>
> +1. Outside geek circles, I "reply" to a Twitter messagfe, I "reply" to
> a web-based discussion forum thread, and I "reply" to a newsgroup
> message.

The issue is that the "Reply" button on the message header means "Reply
to Sender" in every context in Thunderbird *except* news. True, we could
say "Reply to Group" instead of "Followup", but "Followup" is a
well-established term in newsgroup contexts (GNKSA recommends it, and
lots of newsreaders use it).

> If you change the behaviour of Ctrl-R in Newsgroups (it's hard to tell
> from the discussion whether this is proposed or not) to send email to
> the user rather than continue the discussion, then a lot of my newsgroup
> posts are going to start going astray.

Ctrl+R isn't changing. The only changes are 1) followup-to-newsgroup is
called "Followup" now, and 2) in the message header, there's a separate
"Reply" button that replies to the sender of the message. (2) might
temporarily be removed to help people adjust to the term "Followup", as
Chris Ilias suggests.

- Jim

[Justin Wood (Callek)]

Allow me to (a) support item 2 then if you are still moving forward with
"Followup" as the term to use, despite my ingrained concerns. and (b)
*suggest*/Request that "Reply" be instead "Reply to Author" to
explicitly call out as different than "Reply [to Newsgroup]"

--
~Justin Wood (Callek)

[Justin Wood (Callek)]

Justin Wood (Callek) wrote:
> Allow me to (a) support item 2 then if you are still moving forward with
> "Followup" as the term to use, despite my ingrained concerns. and (b)
> *suggest*/Request that "Reply" be instead "Reply to Author" to
> explicitly call out as different than "Reply [to Newsgroup]"
>

And just to elaborate on this point... from GNKSA itself

> The software MUST provide separate, clearly distinguished commands to do
> each of the following:

> ...
> c) Reply by e-mail, with "Subject: " and "To: " headers derived
> appropriately from the original article. (see #5 and #8 below)


Which to me indicates that "Reply" as a bare word is not *clearly
distinguished* from the other options in there.

Nevermind the paragraph immediately following:

> Software that uses the English language is strongly encouraged to
> include the phrases "Post to newsgroup", "Followup to newsgroup", and
> "Reply by e-mail" (or "Reply to sender" or "Reply to author")

--

~Justin Wood (Callek)

[Robert Kaiser]

Justin Wood (Callek) schrieb:

> I myself am going to be likely abandoning all my
> Thunderbird Use when it comes to newsgroups if this change
> proliferates/stays.

You can of course use SeaMonkey instead, which due to its
change-resistance has not picked up that UI change, nor the on-message
toolbar and is stuck with Netscape-of-1997 UI paradigms here. :P

Robert Kaiser

[Justin Wood (Callek)]

Hehe :-P

As you likely know (including by header reading) I still use Seamonkey a
LOT, I do occasionally use TB though as well, because I like to be able
to compare bugs in one to bugs in the other, and I use it on other
computers not owned by me.

--
~Justin Wood (Callek)