Xref: utzoo comp.mail.sendmail:2817 comp.mail.headers:649 comp.mail.misc:5000 Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!bfmny0!tneff From: tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff) Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail,comp.mail.headers,comp.mail.misc Subject: Re: Use of Errors-To: (LONG, how'd that happen?) Message-ID: <45833180@bfmny0.BFM.COM> Date: 7 Mar 91 10:14:56 GMT References: <1991Mar6.172315.1112@phri.nyu.edu> <44380215@bfmny0.BFM.COM> Reply-To: tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff) Followup-To: comp.mail.sendmail Lines: 58 In response to my suggested header suite for articles distributed via mailing list, Eliot Lear sez >Leave the user's headers alone (if you must add Errors-to, that's the >least offensive). DON'T change the default semantics of the >recipient's MUA. Doing so will cause embarrassing situations, with >private mail being posted to a public list or to the -request address, >*depending on the mailer*. Follow RFC-1123. After a few years playing with it, I have decided that where wideband public mailing lists are concerned, reliable distribution takes precedence over the sanctity of headers. This is a matter of competing paradigms. Where the goal is reliable one-to-one mail transmission, all the carefully worked out RFC strictures should indeed apply. But a worldwide mailing list is a different beast. It is more like an electronic periodical for public discussion of selected topics. Its priority should be to make continuing the discussion as easy as possible, while filtering out as much noise as possible. Unfortunately the RFC encoded notion of a "mailing list" is much closer to a corporate in-house memo distribution. Instead of just messaging Joe in Sales, we want to be able to distribute the weekly report to {Joe in Sales, Ann in Marketing, Ed in Administration, and Renee on Mahogany Row}. Everyone can reasonably be expected to be addressed the same way, errors and other garbage can be fixed by picking up the phone, and anyone who wants to "reply" to my weekly report does so to me, not to the list as a whole. This is not how it's worked out in the real world. Despite the growth of Netnews, big mailing lists are still thriving, with members scattered on strange networks all over the planet. When hard working moderators try to play by all the nice RFC rules and handle huge mailing lists "by the book," the results are simple: Stuff bounces like crazy, replies fail by the hundreds, discussion languishes more than necessary, and an unacceptable portion of the moderator's time ends up being spent babysitting others' balky mailers instead of devoting creative time to whatever beloved hobby or topic inspired the mail list in the first place. My approach is different. If you send private mail to someone at, from or through my site, you get all the virtuous RFC mandated behavior, as it should be. But if you send something to one of my mail list addresses, you are in effect submitting a piece for publication, and I reserve the right to massage it into conformance with my delivery structure. If it looks like administrivia or a mailer hiccup, I sideline it pending moderator intervention. If it's a legitimate article, I repost it in multiple versions -- one each for Internet, UUCP, BITNET, CompuServe, MCI Mail, and so forth. Each version has a customized header designed to help it survive its journey to subscribers' mailboxes, while routing replies to the list and errors to me. In this way everything connects. I choose to handle subscription requests manually, in order to make sure weird stuff doesn't get into the rosters. But in exchange, I can take two weeks off when I want to without having to shut down the lists.