Re: lynx-dev How to Lynx

[David Woolley]

> ok.  why not use the "Mail-Followup-To:" header for list-replys related to

What's the RFC number (better what's the STD number)?  (Microsoft ignore
Precedence: List because it is not in an RFC).

> public discussion?  i'm really p***ed that i can't use my auto-reject-HTML-
> and-spam-gimmick because of people not using established standards.  

*Never* auto-reply to addresses in headers.  This one of the reasons
that you need good administrivia filters when using reply to list, but
the mis-feature of Microsoft Exchange of doing this resulted in 
contributors to one popular list (NTBUGTRAQ) being mail-bombed by
around 80 Out of Office Reply's, even though the result of the 
list owner discovering this was happening was instant excommunication;
that list, which is moderated, when to reply-to-list to ensure the
excommunication without the mailbombing.  Some corporate mail systems
that have had SMTP bolted on do this for non-delivery reports as
well, so Majordomo already has some filters for those.

It is also highly inadvisable to auto-reply to spam as most spam source
addresses are either invalid (in which case filtering out invalid DNS
names gets rid of a lot) or valid names of innocent parties (a common
trick now is to take them from the same list as the direct victims,
but it has also been used to mail bomb people who have annoyed the
spammer).

Most automatic replies should be sent to the envelope sender address,
and if sent to a known mailing list, or anything that sets a Precedence:
List or Precedence: Junk header, should be assumed to be a request for
permanent disconnection from that source.  It might be reasonable to
send some automatic responses to header addresses, possibly Out of Office
ones, but these should not be sent if Precedence: List or Precdence: Junk
appears (the difference is that List requests non-delivery notification;
Junk is unlikely to be used these days).

The envelope sender address for lynx-dev is address@hidden

It actually doesn't set Precedence: List, but Precedence: bulk, which
sendmail considers less important that list.  The sendmail documentation
encourages the use of list (for various backward compatibility reasons),
but Microsoft refuse to support it because the sendmail documentation
doesn't constitute a standard in their terms.  On most serious mailing
lists, Outlook+Exchange dominate the mail user agents by a large margin.


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