[MLB-WIRELESS] Fw: Delivery Status Notification (Failure) ( anyone else get this? )

[Toliman]

At 12:13 PM 14/01/2003, you wrote:
>On Tue, Jan 14, 2003 at 11:13:13AM +1100, paul van den bergen wrote:
> > FWIW, I can't say I agree with this... solve the "problem" at the
> > simplest point... which in this case would be the mail list server.
> > not teh mail software.
>
>yes, simplest solutions are usually best - but only IF they are actually
>solutions.
>
>munging reply-to is NOT a solution to anything.  it breaks a lot more
>than it allegedly "fixes".

so sayeth you. nothing in life that has any personal reward is easy and 
simple. the things we value have been earned through some   effort or 
struggle.

but sending 40 messages in an hour, and having to modify the email address 
for every single reply is just fucking tedious.

>the lame rebuttals to http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html all
>conveniently ignore one crucial point because they have no answer for it
>- munging reply-to destroys any reply-to header that the original author
>may have set.

my google-fu is stronger
http://www.metasystema.org/essays/reply-to-useful.mhtml

given enough of an actual concern, im sure an effort could be made to 
disprove every single menial point and reference Chip Rosenthal's article 
makes. the thing is, there's no referee on the page, there are no actual 
"lame rebuttals" on the page, they have been stripped away.

> > lazy? lazy is good.
>
>only when it's smart laziness, not stupid laziness.
>
>apart from the several reasons listed in reply-to-harmful.html, it also
>has a tendedncy to cause mailing-list loops when subscribers are on a
>broken (almost always NT-based) mail server.
>
>i've run many hundreds of mailing lists over the years.  i'm currently
>responsible for over 250 of them.  the single most common cause of
>mailing-list loops is the combination of Reply-To header munging and a
>subscriber on a broken NT mail server.

uhuh ... have you run one recently? to me, that reason is not #1 for the 
maleficarious nature of reply-to munging at the minute on a popular 
list.it's more like #6, a lower priority than say, email virii, spammers on 
and off-list, people bouncing emails, people sending the list messages and 
replies to messages that are sophistricated and specious (containing false 
reasoning). like this one. I'd put those as more urgent than making a 
mailing list follow antiquated ideals of proper list management.

>the way to prevent that is to
>ban Reply-To munging and then hack the list software so that Reply-To
>munging is not possible.  i did that years ago on my list servers and it
>*instantly* solved the problem of mailing list loops...haven't had any
>since.

i'm sure that this is your experience, but other mailing servers have come 
up with alternatives that are far less... obstructive.

>if you think that the occasional duplicate CC is annoying, wait until
>you get a list loop, where the same messages go around again and again
>and again until the list operator unsubs the problem address.  as do the
>messages of everyone who complains or comments about the loop ON the
>list itself.  a list loop can easily result in even a low-traffic
>10-or-20 message per day list jumping up to several dozen or several
>hundred messages per hour.

and mailing list daemon's can solve this problem about a dozen ways, since 
it is a regular occurrence, one that springs to mind is the same method 
used to block and filter spam-like mail sent to mailing lists, etc. many 
minds have wandered into this discussion and been ignored to the detriment 
of the best possible solution.

and from another post by Paul:
 >>I don't understand why this is bad... it is an email list. what reason 
would
 >>someone want to preserve the reply-to from a list?

i can imagine, it's to include the humourous and often funny crap that 
people modify and include as their reply to addresses such as this lovely 
unsolicited email i got from another mailing list:

"Received: from 95.75.230.166 ([95.75.230.166]) by mta21.bigpong.com
Return-Path: <blueyedpmpsl454 at yahoo.com>
Reply-To: <hottestmale at localhost.coim>
From: <blueyedpmpsl454 at yahoo.com>
Delivered-To: toliman at m.pop.ihug.com.au
X-Mailer: AOL 7.0 for Windows US sub 118"

>that is fairly common.  generally the people who are in favour of
>Reply-To munging are those who have no experience running mailing lists
>and who therefore are unable to think of good reasons.

those people who rule servers rarely are forced to be democratic or 
analytical about their choices, their inability to appreciate the 
dictatorial nature of server administration underlies some of the hostility 
on both sides. i.e. they are absolute dicks when replying to people who are 
asking a commonly repeated question, and are appalled when people reply 
back, having been told to "go away and read the manual" in a crude way.

Toliman.


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