🚀 go-pugleaf

In <1992Jul16.165608.17970@utdallas.edu> shane@utdallas.edu (Shane Davis) writes:

>In article <1992Jul16.023706.32373@mp.cs.niu.edu>, rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>|>   Complain to the mailing list manager.  Complain to people who write
>|> broken software which does this.  The "Reply-To:" is supposed to be
>|> an optional header available to the author of the article.  The practice
>|> of adding a "Reply-To:" pointing back to the list is abusive.  It abuses
>|> the intentions of the "Reply-To:" header.  It abuses the readers who
>|> wish to reply privately to the author.  It abuses the readers of the
>|> mailing list who see many messages of no interest to anyone but the
>|> original author.
>|> 

>Most lists are set such that any Reply-To inserted by the author will be
>respected; the list is only inserted if there is no Reply-To. So, this is
>under the poster's control (though how a news gateway behaves regarding
>Reply-To is not a function of poster or LISTSERV). Perhaps the gateway should
>insert the From: address into Reply-To.

>If these Reply-To were so abusive, why have people been using these lists for
>so many years? Obviously, people do not feel abused. I don't see your name on
>RFC 822, so what makes you so certain of the intentions of Reply-To?

I certainly feel abused by this practise.  I had to write a script to bounce
undeliverable mail (account disk space full, no mail folder, etc.) on our
mailframe.  Messages from a LISTSERV can't be handled in the same way as
regular mail because the Reply-To: header line points back to the list -- 
bouncing the message to that address causes a mail loop.  The only 
solution seemed to be to check the comments in header lines for tokens
like "list" or "distribution" that are generally found in messages from
a LISTSERV.  I'd be a lot happier though if LISTSERV would add an
Errors-To: header to provide a proper place to report delivery problems to.

I'd guess that LISTSERV also has some klugey logic to try to distinguish
a bounce reply from a list submission.  
-- 
John Stewart -- Computing and Communications Services, Carleton University
Internet: jstewart@ccs.carleton.ca or Mr.Canoehead@algonquin.carleton.ca  
"Why can't we just forget about our constitutional problems and go canoeing?"