Bug 357464

KMail should reply to sender by default instead of replying to the list. When replying to a message sent to a list, there should be a passive popup offering the option to reply to the list.

Reproducible: Always




When replying to a list mail, there are two possibilities:

A) The user wants to participate in a discussion, and the recipient should be the list. This is probably common among free software developers, but relatively rare among general population. Most people don't engage in mailing list discussions a lot.

B) The user responds to an inquiry sent to a list, such as 'to sign up, reply to this message with your details'. The recipient should be the sender, because the list may have tens or hundreds of recipients. This use case is common in work environments and all areas of life. This should be the default IMO.

The current default is not appropriate for the following reasons:

1) Nonstandard. Other mail applications that I'm aware of reply to sender by default. The unexpected behavior is made worse by the fact that it is easy to not notice the wrong recipient until too late.

2) The way of maximal embarrassment. It is always awkward to sent a message to the wrong recipient, but sending a 'I want to join, my info is ...' (or something worse) to tens or hundreds of people is a whole different level of embarrassing.

Good software won't make it's user loose his/her face. I've used KMail for a long time and I eventually learned this behavior after several mistakes, but that doesn't stop me from occasionally forgetting about it and sending a stupid mail to all my colleagues. I strongly feel the default should be changed. A passive popup to alert the user about the choice of recipient should be also provided.