Subject: Re: How to handle subscribers with autoresponders

From: Cullen Jennings <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 03 Jul 2004 09:21:29 -0700

On 6/28/04 7:41 PM, "Adam Roach" <[email-masked]> wrote:

> There are, for example,
> certain mailing lists to which I've actually become hesitant to send
> messages because I know I'll be punished by half-a-dozen Outlook-style
> "out of office" notices.

Hmm, the replies I get from humans to my posts are usual farm more punishing
that these vacation messages but ...

I agree these "Out of office" message should not go to everyone on the list
but I see no way of stopping them from not going to the sender. People are
not going to stop using them - they are way too useful. This coming from a
guy who seldom uses them. I get a ton of grief by many people for not using
them - many people at my employer expect them to be there so they can act
accordingly. I think that the email system I use will only send you one of
these messages a week so that future messages you send to me will not result
in more vacation messages.

Trying to mandate them away is wishful thinking - I have no practical
suggestion other than post from an account you don't read and hope people
reply to you on the list.

Cullen

PS. I'm out of the office next week so cell phone is best way to reach me if
you want to talk about this :-)

---

From: Magnus Westerlund <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 05 Jul 2004 09:35:26 +0200

Hi,

I think Jeffry has a very valid point. The outlook auto responses 
started arriving after the mailman upgrade a few weeks ago. And I would 
assume that the change that resulted in this is the change of the 
Precedence header. I guess someone that knows a bit more about exchange 
servers can indicate if this is correct or not.

I would suggest that if possible one could reconfigure the mailman lists 
so that at least all exchange users will not out-respond to any sender 
to the list.

Cheers

Magnus W

Jeffrey Haas wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 28, 2004 at 05:18:05PM -0500, Adam Roach wrote:
> 
>>I'm seeing an increasing trend on IETF mailing lists regarding the use 
>>of antisocial auto-responders.
> 
> 
> As we are all aware, this isn't a new problem or trend.  However, I
> do have the following question:
> 
> Why are the mailing lists "Precedence: list" rather than "Precedence: bulk"?
> 
> Admittedly, the former is more descriptive but the latter is more
> recognized by programs such as "vacation".  I would be curious if
> simply changing the list precedence would be sufficient to get rid
> of much of this problem.
> 

-- 

Magnus Westerlund

Multimedia Technologies, Ericsson Research EAB/TVA/A
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