🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1650@harrier.ukc.ac.uk> sjl@ukc.ac.uk (S.J.Leviseur) writes:
#ukc (the .UK <-> .UUCP gateway) will reject mail for certain sites.
#
#We have two classes of rejection, reject with error message and
#reject silently. This happens over charged links where the site
#has refused to pay for their mail traffic. In this case it is unfair
#for the rest of the UK to pay for traffic for these sites. After
#a certain amount of traffic we stop sending error messages for the same reason. 
Our site does pay for its news and mail (quite a lot last year - your new
leased lines are really helping reduce the bill).   But nevertheless I think
you are wrong to reject *silently* mail to sites that don't pay.   The problem
is that although the site may well know - or at least have been told - that
they cannot have mail they don't pay for, the person mailing someone there
may often have no idea that the site is out of bounds.

I suggest that your second class of 'defaulter' be changed from "reject
silently" to "reject with short error message".    While getting back 
"Your mail to $to about $subject has not been delivered because $reason"
rather then getting the complete message as sent returned is annoying (you
may not still have the original), it is a lot better than getting no
response at all and assumimg that your mail has been delivered.   And I'm
sure that the cost of sending such short messages back cannot be very high
- I'd rather that the rest of the UK net (in effect) bear that cost than
that the UK gets the reputation for mail "silently fading away".

Regards,        "None shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity"
        David Wright           STL, London Road, Harlow, Essex  CM17 9NA, UK
dww@stl.stc.co.uk <or> ...uunet!mcvax!ukc!stl!dww <or> PSI%234237100122::DWW