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Subject: 
Re: Out-of-office replies, mail header suggestion
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.admin.nntp
Date: 
Sat, 6 Jan 2001 06:52:55 GMT
Viewed: 
82 times
  
In lugnet.admin.nntp, Frank Buiting writes:
I received an Out-of-office reply from someone who is subscribed via
LUGNET's newsgroups per mail feature.

Eeek, what brain-dead mail delivery agent sent that?  (By any chance was it
MS Exchange?)


This isn't really a problem but I
noticed that the header generated by LUGNET contains the following line:
"Precedence: list"
however for this to work I think it should be
"Precedence: bulk"

Well, a cursory scan of various mailing list software shows that some use
"bulk" and some use "list" -- i.e., they don't all use "bulk".  More seem
to use "list" today than 5 years ago, although it looks like "bulk" is still
more common (unfortunately).

A vacation program certainly should _not_ reply to "Precedence: list" even
if "list" isn't offically part of the SMTP mail RFC -- "list" has been in
widespread use for a long time.

The theory goes that "list" tells a mail delivery agent that a message comes
from a mailing list and that it should be processed only after more important
mail has been processed, and "bulk" tells the delivery agent that a message
is a broadcast -- like a mailing list message, only less important, and if a
bulk message can't be delivered, the delivery agent is advised to throw it
away instead of bouncing it.

Thus, the problem with "bulk" is that the sender never learns of bounces,
which are important for unsubscribing defunct email addresses.  (Because
there is an exception to every rule, I wouldn't be surprised if there were
broken MDA's out there that actually did bounce bulk mail.  :-)


See also RFC 2076:
http://www.dsv.su.se/jpalme/ietf/ietf-mail-attributes.html
paragraph 3.9 section 'precedence' however it is mentioned that it is not a
standard header but most common value is 'bulk'.

Maybe "bulk" is the most common value because the largest percentage of
e-mail today is bulk e-mail.  :-)


It is also mentioned here:
http://www.landfield.com/faqs/mail/list-admin/software-faq/ (second
paragraph of the section "2.08  Loop detection and elimination")

Hrmm, a section on loop detection and elimination and it doesn't even mention
the X-Loop header?

--Todd



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Out-of-office replies, mail header suggestion
 
(...) Yup, you're right: "X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (Microsoft Exchange Internet Mail Service Version 5.5.2650.21)" (...) My guess that it should be "bulk" was shaped by other mailing list I have compared the headers from and the info I found (...) (24 years ago, 6-Jan-01, to lugnet.admin.nntp)

Message is in Reply To:
  Out-of-office replies, mail header suggestion
 
Hi Todd, I received an Out-of-office reply from someone who is subscribed via LUGNET's newsgroups per mail feature. This isn't really a problem but I noticed that the header generated by LUGNET contains the following line: "Precedence: list" however (...) (24 years ago, 5-Jan-01, to lugnet.admin.nntp)

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