Comment 42 for bug 52667

Ok, hitting on a few comments here so bear with me.

1: First and foremost the functionality should be configurable at the folder
level. All discussion about default behavior is all well and good but allowing
the user to change the default to suit their preference is paramount. Folders
simply don't have enough configurability as it stands right now.

2: The reply-to-list should be placed on reply and not reply-to-all. This is
because one is replying... to the list. Not replying to all but only really the
list. As pointed out this mirrors what happens in newsgroups which is what
mailing lists most resemble.

3: Reply-to-sender could be made a drop-down. In fact reply should have a drop
down with reply-to-sender, reply-to-list and reply-to-all which all do just that
regardless of context or the (lack of) presence of other buttons.

4: Shoving said fuctionality onto yet another button is a bad idea. We already
have 2 reply buttons. That's valuable screen-estate that shouldn't be cluttered
(by default) unless the user does the cluttering. Quite frankly I'd kill to
have "delete & next", "delete & previous" and then have delete change to "delete
and close" long before another reply button. Reason being is that I delete far
more mail than to which I send a reply. Often used options get a button and
ideally a shortcut. Less often used options get a drop down. Least used
options get a menu item.

With that in mind what do I personally do most often on mailing lists? Reply,
to the list. Reply, to the sender maybe 1% of the time of Reply, to the list.
Reply to all... never. So I'd be more than happy with an overloaded reply
button which was reply to sender in the absence of mailing list headers, reply
to list with the presence of mailing list headers, allowed me to override the
behavior through a drop-down as needed or, in extreme cases, have the folder set
to a default behavior and override what the context would dictate. With that I
could drop reply-to-all off my button bar, have all the functionality I want in
1 button which did the right thing 99.9% of the time and yet allow me to
intelligently correct it the other .1% of the time. That's something that can't
be said about shoving it into another button or on the reply-to-all button. ;)