From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 3 13:33:38 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA06485; Tue, 3 Oct 2000 13:13:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4C81717E8B for ; Tue, 3 Oct 2000 13:13:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [17.216.27.250] (A17-216-27-250.apple.com [17.216.27.250]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id NAA18728 ; Tue, 3 Oct 2000 13:41:53 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2000 13:34:50 -0700 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Review: Building Online Communities Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk When Margaret posted the note about her book, it piqued my interest, so I went and got a copy. I've gone through it now, and thought I'd post my thoughts on the book for others who might be thinking about it. First, a disclaimer -- I don't know Margeret at all, and I know John mostly from this list and because we've both run internet things forever -- and while John and I don't always agree on stuff, I always respect his opinion, even if we disagree. It was because he was a co-author that I decided to check it out. This book is going to be of different levels of interest to different people. here's my quick summary: "Boss just told me we need a community, whatever that is": B+ "I know how to run (name a service), looking to expand to other tools": B "I've got a handle on doing this, I want to run my stuff better": C "What do they know I don't know already?" : C- The first 2/3 of the book, roughly, is technical stuff. That's split up between mail lists (about 40%), IRC, Web-based services and USENet, the latter three about equally represented. There's a fairly strong bias towards e-mail as the core community technology, and against web (not surprising given John's background). IRC, ICQ, and other things are seen as supplementary tools. The technical stuff is split roughly in half, between "how to use this stuff" and "how to set up this stuff". The first part, on "how to use this stuff" for each service, if you split out of this book into a book of its own, is the one I'd love to beat my users over the head with when they do stupid things -- it's a great end-user overview of all of these tools, but, IMHO, more filler material in a "how to build these things" book. The book is a good "single source" for lots of interesting info and reference copies of things like welcome messages. The suggested rules, content, etc is in general pretty well thought out, and little of it will honk off the users of this list. The last third of the book is where you get away from "how to create a list", "how to configure a list", "how to use a list" type details to putting it together and running it, growing it, marketing it, financing it -- the non-technical side of things. Again, there's lots of good source material here (rules, FAQs, vendors, etc), all in a central location, well-organized and well-thought-out. I don't think there are any major revelations here, but it's a nice, fairly conservative package of common sense. Overall: I wish there'd been less material aimed at end-users instead of admins, although for the person trying to figure all this out from scratch, that's going to be more useful. You could build things by using nothing but the recommendations in the book (use the welcome messages, rules, etc without change) and not hurt yourself or look like an idiot. The non-technical side of things was more what I was looking for, and I found that content interesting but not toe-tingling. Some good references, a number of things I plan on looking into a bit more, but "not brain surgery". My rating for the book: somewhere between a C and a C-. The less you're comfortable with this stuff (and there are a lot of us who are skilled at one technology, like lists, trying to figure out the other ones -- in my case, I'm getting my hands around IRC right now), the more useful this book is. And if you already know everything, you don't need it at all, but who's in that category? Not me, that's for sure. For me, this is a good investigation-of-technology book, or a reference to hand to interested novices. I'll also likely use it as a convenient reference for their drafts of rules and etc. It's a book I'll keep on my shelves, but not on my desk. Good book, not great book. Not worth buying for any one technology, but if you're building a site melding a number of tools together, or trying to get a handle on running communities instead of lists, it can be useful. chuq -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) You seem a decent fellow. I hate to die. From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 17 22:03:43 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id WAA19423; Tue, 17 Oct 2000 22:00:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4E2EE17E8B for ; Tue, 17 Oct 2000 21:59:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [209.239.169.197] (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197]) by plaidworks.com (8.10.1/8.10.1) with ESMTP id e9I5Lx228827 for ; Tue, 17 Oct 2000 22:22:00 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2000 22:24:03 -0700 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: FYI -- my new beast. Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk it's finally finished, so I can pass around pointers to it. I've redone all my hockey stuff into its own site, . this is more than just mailing lists, but the lists are still a big part of it. For those that care about such, my baseline rules have morphed again, thanks in no small part to discussion I had with folks and feedback from this list (for which I send thanks). On the technology side, it's based on mailman, mwforum (for web forums, and also for resource lists like pointers to the mailing lists, mhonarc for web archives, all wrapped around Linux and Apache. There's very little code customization here; it's nice to be able to find stuff 'off the shelf' that doesn't need to be heavily hacked to do what I want... I just hope it's good for a couple of years and I don't have to tear it down and start over any time soon... and I hope the users like it, since that's what really matters... chuq -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Be just, and fear not. From list-managers-owner Sun Oct 22 06:33:48 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA28339; Sun, 22 Oct 2000 06:04:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gull.prod.itd.earthlink.net (gull.prod.itd.earthlink.net [207.217.121.85]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1E13017E8B; Sun, 22 Oct 2000 06:04:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ee-nt.climber.org (pool0116.cvx7-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net [209.178.164.116]) by gull.prod.itd.earthlink.net (EL-8_9_3_3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id GAA05315; Sun, 22 Oct 2000 06:29:41 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <4.3.1.0.20001022053531.00b9d7b0@pop.climber.org> X-Sender: eckert@pop.climber.org X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 4.3.1 Date: Sun, 22 Oct 2000 05:43:43 -0700 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, majordomo-workers@GreatCircle.COM, mj2-dev@csf.colorado.edu From: SRE Subject: Re: X Loop trapping Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk problem: Many list servers add some sort of loop trapping header, but at least one service provider adds identical headers to every email originated by any user in their domain... so those users appear to be bounces when they send posts or requests. ('*' replaces '-' below, to avoid traps on THIS list) At 08:40 PM 10/17/00, A. Subscriber wrote: >Never mind about the MS Outlook question...it appears that my mail server is >adding the X*Loop header...I tried sending using other mail programs and saw >the same header. So here's a guy for which EVERY message contains the header X*Loop*Detect: 1 At 08:40 PM 10/17/00, A. Subscriber wrote: >I have no control over this...is there any way for me to work around this >and get a response from the list server? I can disable Mj2's loop trapping stuff, but that opens up other problems and so far no one else I'm aware of is adding X*Loop. I add X*Loop headers to outgoing messages, and trap them in posts, to keep loops from hitting the list subscribers. I'm not sure what other packages do, so I'm consulting the oracle to see what you all suggest. Are you using X*Loop as an error trap? Do you have subscribers who send human-originated email with X*Loop headers? Opinions and experiences requested! Below is the response from this subscriber's tech support person: >Thank you for contacting technical support. I apologize for all the >inconvenience this issue may have caused you. Our mail system puts this >comment, X*Loop*Detect: 1, in the subject line to track looping mail > >According to RFCs, you can put a user-defined field that starts with ‘X-‘ >and we use this to track looping mail through our mail servers. If any mail >server isn’t accepting mail because of this, please contact the >administrators of that mail server and request them to setup their mail >server according to RFCs. > >If you have any other question or feel that this issue has not been resolved >to your satisfaction, please feel free to contact us again. > >Best regards >Technical support. From list-managers-owner Mon Oct 23 18:11:55 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA19255; Mon, 23 Oct 2000 17:46:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: from avocet.prod.itd.earthlink.net (avocet.prod.itd.earthlink.net [207.217.121.50]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 927FE17E8B; Mon, 23 Oct 2000 17:46:18 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ee-nt.climber.org (sdn-ar-015casfrMP164.dialsprint.net [158.252.219.166]) by avocet.prod.itd.earthlink.net (EL-8_9_3_3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id SAA08121; Mon, 23 Oct 2000 18:11:45 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <4.3.1.0.20001023174734.00c12520@pop.climber.org> X-Sender: eckert@pop.climber.org X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 4.3.1 Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2000 17:50:43 -0700 To: Joe Smith From: SRE Subject: Re: Mj2: Re: X Loop trapping Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com, majordomo-workers@greatcircle.com, mj2-dev@csf.colorado.edu In-Reply-To: <20001023143936.A11737@tardis.Tymnet.COM> References: <4.3.1.0.20001022053531.00b9d7b0@pop.climber.org> <4.3.1.0.20001022053531.00b9d7b0@pop.climber.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 02:39 PM 10/23/00, Joe Smith wrote: >Any loop detector that is not based on the list name is doomed to failure. Well, just trapping ANY x*loop header certainly stops loops! It also stops a bunch of autoresponders that follow the convention of putting loop headers in. This is the first time I've seen an ISP put them in every message sent by every client, and I deliberately set my lists up to look for ANY variant of x*loop because I've seen a bunch of them and they were ALL automated messages. If I make my server only trap headers added by my server, then I don't catch vacation autoresponders and badly behaving routers. (Yes, I look both in the headers and the message body...) From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 24 06:11:52 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id FAA28640; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 05:52:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from one.elistx.com (one.elistx.com [209.116.252.130]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id C70A917E8B for ; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 05:52:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from two.elistx.com (ppp.elistx.com [209.116.254.209]) by eListX.com (PMDF V6.0-24 #44856) with ESMTP id <0G2X00CJFRM4ON@eListX.com> for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 09:18:05 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 09:19:20 -0400 From: James M Galvin Subject: elist address or your address in message TO header To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Reply-To: James M Galvin Message-id: <0G2X00CJGRM4ON@eListX.com> Content-id: <1724.972393559.0@two.elistx.com> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: multipart/mixed; boundary="----- =_aaaaaaaaaa0" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk ------- =_aaaaaaaaaa0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-ID: <1724.972393559.1@two.elistx.com> I don't recall seeing this topic discussed here and I'm very interested in what folks think about this issue. Memail.com has just begun switching their elists from having the address of the elist in the message TO header to having the subscribed address in the message TO header. Personally, I'm disappointed because I think only personal email should have my address in the message TO header I know all the reasons why elist managers themselves like this, notably because they get better error messages when email fails and also because it helps remind the subscriber how they got started. But why I really dislike it is because it screws up vacation/out-of-office announcement programs, which are not supposed to reply unless the recipient appears in the message headers. For me personally it also screws up my email filtering, because the first distinction I make is to test whether a message is personal email, i.e., addressed directly to me. Elists are just not personal email. Now I know its Lyris and Link Communications behind what MeMail.Com is doing. I don't really fault Lyris, per se, since I understand the view of doing what the client wants. I also know they don't need it since they do everything else an elist technology can do in the space of managing failed mail. But I also know there are no real "rules" in this space so I decided to get some opinions. Hence my question. Do you think it is appropriate for elists to address their messages as if they were personal email? Thanks, Jim ------- =_aaaaaaaaaa0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-ID: <1724.972393559.2@two.elistx.com> Content-Description: Contact Information -- James M. Galvin ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Public mailing lists hosted free at ------- =_aaaaaaaaaa0-- From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 24 07:39:26 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA29609; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 07:33:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3516217E8B for ; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 07:33:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [209.239.169.197] (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197]) by plaidworks.com (8.10.1/8.10.1) with ESMTP id e9OEuK232677; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 07:56:20 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <0G2X00CJGRM4ON@eListX.com> References: <0G2X00CJGRM4ON@eListX.com> Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 07:54:38 -0700 To: James M Galvin , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: elist address or your address in message TO header Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >Memail.com has just begun switching their elists from having the address >of the elist in the message TO header to having the subscribed address >in the message TO header. Personally, I'm disappointed because I think >only personal email should have my address in the message TO header I'm planning on doing this, too. >For me personally it also screws up my email filtering, because the >first distinction I make is to test whether a message is personal email, >i.e., addressed directly to me. Elists are just not personal email. I think that's a false assumption that you're filtering on. Instead, I test to see if something is a list, by testing whether the list server sets an appropriate header (ususally Sender) to flag what list it came from. >Hence my question. Do you think it is appropriate for elists to address >their messages as if they were personal email? I think it's appropriate, but I also think you're also looking at the use of the header in a way that shouldn't be assumed here. Three big reasons why I see this as a big win: 1) differentiate the mail lists from spam, since most spam Bcc:s. 2) makes the subscribed address explicit to the user and easy to find, which is a huge plus for large lists full of naive users. 3) personalizes the email. It may only be a small step in personalization, but it's a big one. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Be just, and fear not. From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 24 08:40:27 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA00130; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 08:20:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from one.elistx.com (one.elistx.com [209.116.252.130]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3A97217E8B for ; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 08:20:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: from two.elistx.com (ppp.elistx.com [209.116.254.209]) by eListX.com (PMDF V6.0-24 #44856) with ESMTP id <0G2X00G3KYGX2J@eListX.com> for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 11:46:11 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 11:47:24 -0400 (EDT) From: James M Galvin Subject: Re: elist address or your address in message TO header In-reply-to: X-Sender: galvin@two.elistx.com To: Chuq Von Rospach Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Message-id: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >For me personally it also screws up my email filtering, because the >first distinction I make is to test whether a message is personal email, >i.e., addressed directly to me. Elists are just not personal email. I think that's a false assumption that you're filtering on. Instead, I test to see if something is a list, by testing whether the list server sets an appropriate header (ususally Sender) to flag what list it came from. I would argue as to whether it is a false assumption, since clearly the documented purpose of the message TO header is to indicate where an originator sent a message. The content provider, in general, has no idea who I am and therefore should, by default, not address a message to me or abuse what I'm calling an unfortunate feature of many elist technologies/services (although see my comments below about personalization). Nonetheless, I have to concede that while I might want only my personal email to have my email address in the message TO header, I know it is not true in general anymore. I find this disconcerting. You've also given me another reason why I don't like it, which goes back to one of my original points. There are no real rules in this space, in particular there is no way to know in general that a particular message is an elist message. You suggest testing for an appropriate header, but the point is the "appropriate header" varies by elist technology. Up until recently the only real test you could depend on was checking to see if you were listed in the actual message headers. And, forgive me for repeating myself, vacation/out-of-office announcement technologies depend on this (or at least the good ones do). One problem I see is the overlaying of issues. I understand the need/desire for personalization. It certainly has its place, e.g., if I belong to an organization and they use email to stay in touch, a personalized message has a way of promoting continued loyalty. But frankly, I'm having a lot of trouble accepting that line of reasoning when it comes to discussion groups or newsletters or news distributions. The overlay is the fact that the elist technologies have found yet another weapon in the arsenal against spam, which I would argue doesn't give them anything they don't already have and does take away functionality. So, they latch onto emotions and tell people personalization is a big win. >Hence my question. Do you think it is appropriate for elists to address >their messages as if they were personal email? I think it's appropriate, but I also think you're also looking at the use of the header in a way that shouldn't be assumed here. Three big reasons why I see this as a big win: 1) differentiate the mail lists from spam, since most spam Bcc:s. Turn this around. What spammers really do is rarely put the name of the elist in the actual message headers. Thus an elist technology or service provider can test for this and eliminate 99 44/100% of all attempts to use their elist for spam. Subscribers don't need this feature if elists would their job. 2) makes the subscribed address explicit to the user and easy to find, which is a huge plus for large lists full of naive users. A worthy point, but it's also common now to put the subscribed address in the message itself, usually at the bottom although I get a few at the top. So, I find it difficult to accept this as a significant motivator. 3) personalizes the email. It may only be a small step in personalization, but it's a big one. Certainly, personalization has its place. In my particular example (the memail.com elists) I don't see the need for personalization, but your mileage may vary. This point, however, is really a marketing question, which gets back to the overlaying of issues. My personal opinion is that elist technologies/services are exploiting an opportunity promoted by marketers. The downside as I see it is that it takes away from the overall robustness of the email infrastructure, which is so fragile anyway. Jim -- James M. Galvin ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Public mailing lists hosted free at From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 24 09:02:09 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA00255; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 08:33:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from snipe.prod.itd.earthlink.net (snipe.prod.itd.earthlink.net [207.217.120.62]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id A302117E8B for ; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 08:33:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ee-nt.climber.org (sdn-ar-023casfrMP145.dialsprint.net [63.183.8.147]) by snipe.prod.itd.earthlink.net (EL-8_9_3_3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id IAA13988; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 08:59:17 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <4.3.1.0.20001024085902.00baf4b0@pop.climber.org> X-Sender: eckert@pop.climber.org X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 4.3.1 Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 09:01:33 -0700 To: James M Galvin From: SRE Subject: Re: elist address or your address in message TO header Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <0G2X00CJGRM4ON@eListX.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 06:19 AM 10/24/00, James M Galvin wrote: > Do you think it is appropriate for elists to address >their messages as if they were personal email? It's resource-intensive to do it that way, rather than bulk delivery of the same message to many people, so I doubt it will become a trend. I agree that re-writing the To field is a bad idea, but it's hard to make the case that they're doing you wrong. My lists use a special header that contains the list name (rather than relying on "to", which might not be set if BCC was used) so people can filter reliably. Some vacation programs also ignore "precedence: bulk" and the like, so maybe memail is counting on that? From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 24 09:18:42 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA00500; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 08:58:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from one.elistx.com (one.elistx.com [209.116.252.130]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4ED5F17E8B for ; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 08:58:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: from two.elistx.com (ppp.elistx.com [209.116.254.209]) by eListX.com (PMDF V6.0-24 #44856) with ESMTP id <0G2Y00G5908I2J@eListX.com> for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 12:24:19 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 12:25:34 -0400 (EDT) From: James M Galvin Subject: Re: elist address or your address in message TO header In-reply-to: <4.3.1.0.20001024085902.00baf4b0@pop.climber.org> X-Sender: galvin@two.elistx.com To: SRE Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Message-id: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > Do you think it is appropriate for elists to address >their messages as if they were personal email? It's resource-intensive to do it that way, rather than bulk delivery of the same message to many people, so I doubt it will become a trend. Actually, it's resource unfair on the receiving side, but not otherwise a big issue on the originating side. It really doesn't take all that much of a machine anymore to sustain 1,000s of concurrent outgoing connections, as long as you're using a multi-threaded SMTP client. However, if you look at a site like AOL, Yahoo, or Hotmail, consider what's happening on their end if you've got a few thousand subscribers from each of their sites on a big elist. Sure, they have some throttle controls but that's where the inefficieny lies; even if they're using a multi-threaded SMTP server. Some vacation programs also ignore "precedence: bulk" and the like, so maybe memail is counting on that? Precedence is another one of those problematic headers. Popularized by USENET, today it enjoys so many different uses that making your statement out of context is specious. On the other hand, it is yet another weapon in the arsenal, albeit an unreliable one. Memail does not insert a precedence header that I see. Jim -- James M. Galvin ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Public mailing lists hosted free at From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 24 09:34:29 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA00726; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 09:17:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from one.elistx.com (one.elistx.com [209.116.252.130]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id EE99817E8B for ; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 09:17:31 -0700 (PDT) Received: from two.elistx.com (ppp.elistx.com [209.116.254.209]) by eListX.com (PMDF V6.0-24 #44856) with ESMTP id <0G2Y00G8S14F2J@eListX.com> for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 12:43:28 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 12:44:43 -0400 (EDT) From: James M Galvin Subject: Re: elist address or your address in message TO header In-reply-to: X-Sender: galvin@two.elistx.com To: Mitch Collinsworth Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Message-id: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Everything you say is true Mitch, but going back to a comment I made to Chuq, the slippery slope we are on is that there is no standard way to filter. For every elist to which a person subscribes you have to get a few messages and then determine how best to identify those messages so you can filter them. What I'm particularly noticing is a trend (in my opinion overzealous) towards personalization that is eliminating one of the key distinctions (and the only remaining general test) between personal email and elist messages. Certainly a subscriber can still deal with what is happening to them, I'm really just lamenting how I see it getting harder, unnecessarily. Perhaps it isn't getting hard enough and so even I'm being overzealous. Jim On Tue, 24 Oct 2000, Mitch Collinsworth wrote: Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 12:09:48 -0400 (EDT) From: Mitch Collinsworth To: James M Galvin Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: elist address or your address in message TO header > But why I really > dislike it is because it screws up vacation/out-of-office announcement > programs, which are not supposed to reply unless the recipient appears > in the message headers. Do they include a "Precedence: bulk" header? A good vacation program will not respond when this is included. > For me personally it also screws up my email filtering, because the > first distinction I make is to test whether a message is personal email, > i.e., addressed directly to me. Elists are just not personal email. Do they include a "Sender:" header? If so you can filter on this. -Mitch -- James M. Galvin ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Public mailing lists hosted free at From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 24 09:51:05 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA01077; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 09:46:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 78DCB17E8B for ; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 09:46:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [17.216.27.202] (A17-216-27-202.apple.com [17.216.27.202]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id KAA23810 ; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 10:19:14 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <4.3.1.0.20001024085902.00baf4b0@pop.climber.org> References: <4.3.1.0.20001024085902.00baf4b0@pop.climber.org> Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 10:11:28 -0700 To: SRE , James M Galvin From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: elist address or your address in message TO header Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 9:01 AM -0700 10/24/00, SRE wrote: >It's resource-intensive to do it that way, rather than bulk >delivery of the same message to many people, so I doubt it >will become a trend. it's already a trend. give it another year and it'll be quite common. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Be just, and fear not. From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 24 10:08:20 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA00776; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 09:22:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2298A17E8B for ; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 09:22:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [17.216.27.202] (A17-216-27-202.apple.com [17.216.27.202]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id JAA26374 ; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 09:55:46 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 09:47:13 -0700 To: James M Galvin , Chuq Von Rospach From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: elist address or your address in message TO header Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 11:47 AM -0400 10/24/00, James M Galvin wrote: >I would argue as to whether it is a false assumption, since clearly the >documented purpose of the message TO header is to indicate where an >originator sent a message. we could argue, but IMHO, you'd lose, and IYHO, I'd lose, probably. you're making the assumption, and I don't buy it, that if someone is being sent something through a list it's no longer being sent to them. I disagree with that, and with the growing use of VERP and customized lists, you can't even say that a mailing list is "bulk" mail per se any more, either. So the assumption you're making might be true of majordomo I, but isn't true of any MLM that VERPs. So it's not a safe assumption to use to generalize across list mail. >Nonetheless, I have to concede that while I might want only my personal >email to have my email address in the message TO header, I know it is >not true in general anymore. I find this disconcerting. And I find it useful and it solves all sorts of problems inherent in mechanics of mail lists in an age where everyone had 93 mail addresses. >is an elist message. You suggest testing for an appropriate header, but >the point is the "appropriate header" varies by elist technology. A minor issue, IMHO. I'd say 90-95% put appropriate info in Sender, and the few who don't still (for the most part) have easily identifiable ways to find them. This is exactly the problem the List-ID RFC is designed to solve, by the way, so it's being resolved, except for people who ignore standards in the first place. >One problem I see is the overlaying of issues. I understand the >need/desire for personalization. It certainly has its place, e.g., if I >belong to an organization and they use email to stay in touch, a >personalized message has a way of promoting continued loyalty. But >frankly, I'm having a lot of trouble accepting that line of reasoning >when it comes to discussion groups or newsletters or news distributions. Fair enough. I certainly am not going to stand and say your opinion's bogus -- I understand where you're coming from, sympathize to some extent, but don't agree and I don't believe it's a common opinion. > > Three big reasons why I see this as a big win: I won't argue point by point, because it boils down to "we disagree". I see your views, I simply don't hold them... > >My personal opinion is that elist technologies/services are exploiting >an opportunity promoted by marketers. The downside as I see it is that >it takes away from the overall robustness of the email infrastructure, >which is so fragile anyway. I think it improves the robustness, because, as someone who runs these things in a big way, the biggest problem I keep running into is the "what the heck address did this route through anyway" issue. I personally disagree that the answer is sticking the subscribed address in the body of the message -- I think the message is owned by the author, not the MLM, and I already have philosophical issues with putting a footer on things, but since it is *so* useful in helping naive users and I can make it explicit that it's not part of the message, I do it. I don't want that to get out of control, however, by stuffing everything I can into it. And stuffing it in a header (aka the List-* stuff or List-ID) isn't a complete solution because there are still too many places that strip all that stuff while rerouting and botching mail delivery. And the users who most need that info are least likely to know how to turn on full headers or whatever it takes to access them. I guess this comes down to a philosophical problem, so of course I'm going to wander in with an analogy for people to find loopholes in -- the post office. As far as I can tell, your view of your mailbox is there is two kinds of mail: 1) mail to you - stuff from mom, your bill from the electrical company. 2) junk mail delivered to "resident" or "occupant". Things like the latest home depot flyer, or the 39 million political flyers I'm madly throwing away. In my view, there's a third style: individually addressed bulk mailing. In the real world, this includes things like the restoration hardware catalog -- it's a mass mailing, but it's still addressed to me. By your view, anything that's mailed in multiples (like that Restoration Hardware catalog) should be sent to my address for Resident. By my view, even though they're mailing a million catalogs, they're still sending me MY copy. I see the e-list area moving into this third area. And I don't have a problem with that, and I think it's a good thing overall. Now if we could only get the paper cataloggers to be as good at unsubscribes and bounce processings as e-mail people are.... -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Be just, and fear not. From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 24 10:51:13 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA01687; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 10:40:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: from one.elistx.com (one.elistx.com [209.116.252.130]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5F17B17EB1 for ; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 10:40:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: from two.elistx.com (ppp.elistx.com [209.116.254.209]) by eListX.com (PMDF V6.0-24 #44856) with ESMTP id <0G2Y00GGK4YW2J@eListX.com> for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 14:06:33 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 14:07:47 -0400 (EDT) From: James M Galvin Subject: Re: elist address or your address in message TO header In-reply-to: X-Sender: galvin@two.elistx.com To: Mitch Collinsworth Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Message-id: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk First, I apologize for being imprecise when speaking of the message TO header. I meant it to include both TO and CC message headers, and explicitly not to include RESENT-TO, RESENT-CC, or BCC. With respect to Precedence and Sender being standards, I offer the following observations. Precedence is not a standard insofar as it's use is not documented by a recognized "authority". On the other hand, it has several de facto uses, with the emphasis there on uses, i.e., more than one. Thus, it's hard to call it *a* standard, except perhaps in a specific context. Sender is a standard, being sufficiently well-documented by the earliest of email standards, RFC822. It's supposed to be used to indicate the identity of the sender of the message when that is different than the author. For technologies like majordomo, Lyris, or LISTSERV, it is appropriate for them to set this value when resubmitting a message for delivery, since they are applications that run outside an email system (even when running stand-alone because they are not providing generic email services, just including enough of an email system to serve the elist). However, to suggest that all elist technologies or services should set this value is false. For example, when the elist services of expansion and distribution are provided as part of the MTA, i.e., the email system never gives up control of the message, it would be inappropriate to set this value. Jim -- James M. Galvin ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Public mailing lists hosted free at From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 24 11:18:45 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA02096; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 11:18:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from one.elistx.com (one.elistx.com [209.116.252.130]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 46BE017E8B for ; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 11:18:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from two.elistx.com (ppp.elistx.com [209.116.254.209]) by eListX.com (PMDF V6.0-24 #44856) with ESMTP id <0G2Y00GIV6PK2J@eListX.com> for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 14:44:09 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 14:45:23 -0400 (EDT) From: James M Galvin Subject: Re: elist address or your address in message TO header In-reply-to: X-Sender: galvin@two.elistx.com To: Chuq Von Rospach Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Message-id: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I really like your analogy to postal mail: 1. personal email 2. non-specific junk email 3. specific junk email I had not considered that model before and it very much applies. Seems to me if one accepts that model it pretty much shuts down my issue. As with postal mail, a "subscriber" is left with the responsibility of sorting/filtering their email as best they can with whatever information the originator happens to make available to them. I guess I just feel a little bit of disappointment because we could do better with technology if we would all cooperate to do so. Separately, I do want to comment on a couple other things you said. In my opinion, VERPs belong at the envelope layer, not in the message (i.e., individual addressing), because I try very hard to enforce the postal analogy to an extreme: you don't steam open the envelope and mess with what's inside. Of course that makes VERPs less than 100% effective, since not all email systems respect the separation. And, just to contradict myself, I do like what Lyris does with Message-IDs, but I give myself this because Message-ID really belongs to the email system, not the message, and is just unfortunately carried in the "message". For the record, I strongly support the use of the List-* headers. Although a lot of elists use them, the real issue is getting the email clients to do something useful with them. Also, I, too, am philosophically opposed to adding footers or headers to messages, although as a practical matter they are hard to avoid. On the technical side, if you have an elist that allows other than text/plain content, adding headers and footers fails miserably unless you take care to construct or reconstruct a multipart. Anyway, marketing is one thing and technical issues are another. Although I understand why what's happening is happening, on balance I don't find the technical reasons compelling. Nonetheless, your analogy has "bumped my balance" just a bit. Jim -- James M. Galvin ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Public mailing lists hosted free at From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 24 12:03:52 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA02587; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 11:56:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3E28F17E8B for ; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 11:56:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [17.216.27.202] (A17-216-27-202.apple.com [17.216.27.202]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id MAA24036 ; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 12:29:22 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 12:21:32 -0700 To: James M Galvin , Mitch Collinsworth From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: elist address or your address in message TO header Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 2:07 PM -0400 10/24/00, James M Galvin wrote: >Precedence is not a standard insofar as it's use is not documented by a >recognized "authority". On the other hand, it has several de facto >uses, with the emphasis there on uses, i.e., more than one. Thus, it's >hard to call it *a* standard, except perhaps in a specific context. I'm rather suprised nobody's fought to standardize this (but no, I don't plan on it). it would be a good thing to do, especially if the standardization would include a formal way of identifying mailbots and vacationbots and the like. Using Precedence: list, Precedence: bulk, et al is a big use of Precedence, but so many things still "roll their own" and make it tough for people trying to do the right thing and avoid nasty bot-loops. Formalizing Precedence and building in a formal standard for bot identification and recognition would be a big plus. >However, to suggest that all elist technologies or services should set >this value is false. For example, when the elist services of expansion >and distribution are provided as part of the MTA, i.e., the email system >never gives up control of the message, it would be inappropriate to set >this value. Good point. When I think of this stuff, I generally make the (incorrect) assumption it's ALL MLM stuff. But it brings up an interesting issue -- how should this be id-ed? List-ID is heading towards RFC (or is it final?). procmail sort of users X-loop. Should there be a standard way of identifying that mail was auto-generated in some way and if so, what kind of information should be provided? -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Be just, and fear not. From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 24 12:18:46 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA02507; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 11:50:00 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 826EA17E8B for ; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 11:49:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [17.216.27.202] (A17-216-27-202.apple.com [17.216.27.202]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id MAA40106 ; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 12:23:02 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 12:15:11 -0700 To: James M Galvin , Chuq Von Rospach From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: elist address or your address in message TO header Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 2:45 PM -0400 10/24/00, James M Galvin wrote: >I really like your analogy to postal mail: I love analogies (and I know they drive some folks crazy...) because they help us map new things into the space of the known world -- not just by indentifying how the analogy relates to it, but where the analogy falls apart. To some degree, I see it as a way of understanding what's already known (based on real world analogs) and what parts we have to focus on understanding (because the real world analogs fail or aren't relevant). Effectively, it's debugging by boundary condition testing... >In my opinion, VERPs belong at the envelope layer, not in the message >(i.e., individual addressing), because I try very hard to enforce the >postal analogy to an extreme: you don't steam open the envelope and mess >with what's inside. At a philosophical level, I agree. that's why I don't look footers on mail list messages, but in practice, view it more as sticking a label on the outside of the envelope, since I'm careful to avoid whacking the content, and instead append it to the end. But to play games with terminology, when I'm putting the address in the "to:" line, I'm not steaming open the envelope. I'm attaching a mailing label to the outside -- you're looking at the envelope too literally here with VERP. all I'm doing is choosing to use a more correct (or perhaps specific is a less loaded word) address on that mailing label I paste on the envelope.the header *is* part of the envelope, even if it's not 'envelope' in the terminology of SMTP. If you really want to get literal about it, what I'm doing is what my bank does with my bank statement -- print the address on the statement, and use an envelope with a window instead of printing it on the envelope itself.... >For the record, I strongly support the use of the List-* headers. >Although a lot of elists use them, the real issue is getting the email >clients to do something useful with them. which is a chicken/egg thing. clients won't support them until MLMs use them. MLMs are now starting to support them, so it's a matter of time. We sometimes tend to get into the mindthink that if it doesn't happen overnight, it never will -- and even on the internet, we need some patience (hell, we need a lot more patience. I get tired of living in overdrive...) >Anyway, marketing is one thing and technical issues are another. >Although I understand why what's happening is happening, on balance I >don't find the technical reasons compelling. Nonetheless, your analogy >has "bumped my balance" just a bit. which is why it's nice to talk these things through. It's given me some things to think about, too, as to ways to best do this (and when not to...). I'm not for customization for customization's sake (I really hate false familiarity in messages), but you wouldn't believe what a little personalization does to make people happier. One big problem with MLMs is I think they tend to emphasize this impersonal aspect, which I think encourages trolling and flaming. After all, the messages are from a list, not people on a list. Little things like the "To:" can help reset that mindset by turning lists back from things to people using a thing, and we can only benefit. I'm not saying this is a solution. I'm saying I think it's one small piece that helps... For instance -- Recently I modified my "goodbye" messages sent to people who unsubscribe, so that they say that we're sorry to see them go, and adds a mailto: link if they want to send us feedback on why they're leaving. The most common note I get back is "we're not! we're just changing addresses" -- but the second most common is simply thanking us for asking. And given the internet's propensity to gripe at every opportunity, that I see so few gripes when I'm ASKING people to take a final shot as the door shuts is interesting, but the reaction on simply being asked kinda stunned me. People WANT to think you care. And it's little things that make them think that. Calling them by name instead of "occupant" is a little thing, but it (IMHO) changes attitudes in subtle ways, both from the point of view of the admin and the recipient. It's something I really want to study down the road, and I think "To: fred@hotmail.com" does this a lot better than a footer that says "Your'e subscribed as fred@hotmail.com", whic to some degree reinforces the impersonalization aspect. That comes across to me more as an implied "we don't want ot have to bother looking you up", as opposed to "here's the email we wanted to send you". -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Be just, and fear not. From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 24 12:33:45 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA02899; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 12:24:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail.rev.net (mail.rev.net [206.67.68.8]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id BD2A917E8B for ; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 12:24:24 -0700 (PDT) Received: from fantasy (USER2.GVA.NET [216.80.135.6]) by mail.rev.net (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id e9OJnrU13049 for ; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 15:49:53 -0400 Message-Id: <200010241949.e9OJnrU13049@mail.rev.net> From: "Bernie Cosell" Organization: Fantasy Farm Fibers To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 15:49:54 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: elist address or your address in message TO header X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Perhaps someone could explain to me how this works: if I send a message to a person, and cc the mailing list, or if I send a message "to:" two mailing lists [both occur to me fairly regularly], what happens to the headers? Can someone 'reply to all' to my message and have it go to the 'all' that I, as the author of the message, intended? My sort-of ongoing problem with MLMs isn't so much getting the mail filtered properly --- I only need to figure that out once and then 'emtomb' it in my filter set and then never think about it again... what bugs me is the inconsistency of addresses for "how to reply and get it to go where you want". If the system removes the list-identity from the email, as a _reader_ now [not the filterset], how do I know WHY I got the message? It'll say "To: " and "From: " --- where will the "this came in from the manure forkers mailing list" info be hidden? Or are we entering a world where you *HAVE* to use filters to sort your mail [and so I'd only know what mailing list it came in on by which folder it got sorted to?!]. I may be in the minority [and I'll probably lose] but I still rather prefer that the headers in the message I receive reflect the addressing and routing the author intended... /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 24 12:48:45 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA02878; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 12:20:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from lolita.speakeasy.net (lolita.speakeasy.net [216.254.0.13]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 662B617E8B for ; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 12:20:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 24450 invoked from network); 24 Oct 2000 19:43:47 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO gonzo.speakeasy.net) (192.168.0.5) by 192.168.0.13 with SMTP; 24 Oct 2000 19:43:47 -0000 Received: (qmail 32382 invoked from network); 24 Oct 2000 19:45:52 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO 000427EMC.scadian.net) (204.217.159.3) by gonzo.speakeasy.net with SMTP; 24 Oct 2000 19:45:52 -0000 Message-Id: <5.0.0.25.0.20001024152920.00a18c70@mail.scadian.net> X-Sender: scadianblaise@mail.scadian.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.0 Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 15:45:45 -0400 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Jim Trigg Subject: Re: elist address or your address in message TO header In-Reply-To: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 12:47 PM 10/24/00, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: >we could argue, but IMHO, you'd lose, and IYHO, I'd lose, probably. you're >making the assumption, and I don't buy it, that if someone is being sent >something through a list it's no longer being sent to them. I disagree >with that, and with the growing use of VERP and customized lists, you >can't even say that a mailing list is "bulk" mail per se any more, either. >So the assumption you're making might be true of majordomo I, but isn't >true of any MLM that VERPs. So it's not a safe assumption to use to >generalize across list mail. What is VERP? That's an acronym I haven't seen before. >At 11:47 AM -0400 10/24/00, James M Galvin wrote: > >>is an elist message. You suggest testing for an appropriate header, but >>the point is the "appropriate header" varies by elist technology. > >A minor issue, IMHO. I'd say 90-95% put appropriate info in Sender, and >the few who don't still (for the most part) have easily identifiable ways >to find them. This is exactly the problem the List-ID RFC is designed to >solve, by the way, so it's being resolved, except for people who ignore >standards in the first place. That sounds nice, except that 50-75% of mail readers in common use cannot filter based on the Sender: header, let alone any particular header. They can filter on: To, From, Subject, Reply-To, or "any header". >I personally disagree that the answer is sticking the subscribed address >in the body of the message -- I think the message is owned by the author, >not the MLM, and I already have philosophical issues with putting a footer >on things, but since it is *so* useful in helping naive users and I can >make it explicit that it's not part of the message, I do it. I don't want >that to get out of control, however, by stuffing everything I can into it. >And stuffing it in a header (aka the List-* stuff or List-ID) isn't a >complete solution because there are still too many places that strip all >that stuff while rerouting and botching mail delivery. And the users who >most need that info are least likely to know how to turn on full headers >or whatever it takes to access them. Which is exactly the problem with using "List-ID" to identify that it's not personal email and should be sent to a separate sorting area. >I guess this comes down to a philosophical problem, so of course I'm going >to wander in with an analogy for people to find loopholes in -- the post >office. > >As far as I can tell, your view of your mailbox is there is two kinds of mail: > >1) mail to you - stuff from mom, your bill from the electrical company. > >2) junk mail delivered to "resident" or "occupant". Things like the latest > home depot flyer, or the 39 million political flyers I'm madly > throwing away. > >In my view, there's a third style: individually addressed bulk mailing. In >the real world, this includes things like the restoration hardware catalog >-- it's a mass mailing, but it's still addressed to me. > >By your view, anything that's mailed in multiples (like that Restoration >Hardware catalog) should be sent to my address for Resident. By my view, >even though they're mailing a million catalogs, they're still sending me >MY copy. > >I see the e-list area moving into this third area. And I don't have a >problem with that, and I think it's a good thing overall. Now if we could >only get the paper cataloggers to be as good at unsubscribes and bounce >processings as e-mail people are.... I agree that there are three categories, and what they are. In an ideal world, subscription lists would have two standard headers that could be filtered on - a general one that indicates that it is a subscription list and a specific one that indicates what list it is. The basic problem is that there are three pieces of data that need to be conveyed in the headers and only two universally accessible locations for that data. The universally accessible locations are the From and To headers, and the three pieces are the originator, the destination, and the remailing agent. You appear to be arguing from the perspective of running lists where the originator and the remailing agent are negligibly different (announcement lists). Jim appears to be arguing from a perspective of "if the remailing agent isn't the originator, I care more about the remailing agent than the destination." I'm looking for a middle ground, but failing to find something that satisfies all of the requirements (short of writing my own MUA, and that's not a useful answer). I especially identify with Jim from the perspective of lists where copies are not commonly sent to the originator of the post being responded to. I want to prioritize such that a personal reply to my posting shows up in my inbox, but a reply to the list shows up in the list folder. If the list replaces its address with mine in the To field, it's harder to tell which is which (especially if the respondent's MUA preserves other headers). Jim Trigg From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 24 13:18:45 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA03381; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 13:12:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from one.elistx.com (one.elistx.com [209.116.252.130]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id E2A7D17E8B for ; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 13:12:02 -0700 (PDT) Received: from two.elistx.com (ppp.elistx.com [209.116.254.209]) by eListX.com (PMDF V6.0-24 #44856) with ESMTP id <0G2Y00J5MBZ181@eListX.com> for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 16:37:51 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 16:39:03 -0400 (EDT) From: James M Galvin Subject: Re: elist address or your address in message TO header In-reply-to: X-Sender: galvin@two.elistx.com To: Chuq Von Rospach Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Message-id: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >Precedence is not a standard insofar as it's use is not documented by a >recognized "authority". I'm rather suprised nobody's fought to standardize this (but no, I don't plan on it). At this point, the principal problem would be that the varied uses are incompatible. Thus, the best path, I think, is to create new headers, one for each use, which, or course, has its own backward compatibility issues. >However, to suggest that all elist technologies or services should set >this value is false. For example, when the elist services of expansion >and distribution are provided as part of the MTA, i.e., the email system >never gives up control of the message, it would be inappropriate to set >this value. Good point. When I think of this stuff, I generally make the (incorrect) assumption it's ALL MLM stuff. But it brings up an interesting issue -- how should this be id-ed? Which, in fact, is the same question I was asking, although I didn't choose a particularly good context in which to ask it. Just to be specific, and please correct me if this is not where you were headed, given any arbitrary message and only that message, is it possible to know if it is from an elist? If I allow myself additional information, e.g., knowing I subscribed to an elist at a particular address, then certainly I can probably always construct a filter that will identify such messages. However, because there is no standard for id'ing an elist message, the question can not be answered in general without out-of-band information. By the way, there was an attempt many years ago, early 1990's, in the IETF to standardize many MLM functions and features. However, back then, BITNET was still strong enough that LISTSERV versus majordomo (less so) versus the Internet de facto standard of "-request" split the community and consensus was never achieved. The List-* headers are a Proposed Standard in the IETF (the first step along the 3-step standardization path), and there's no reason to think they will not evenutally be a full Standard. One could make the case that the List-* headers were a creative way around the political issues of a decade ago. (And as far as I know LISTSERV does not support them.) Sadly, none of the List-* headers are required, even if you're supporting them. In the next iteration of the standard I'd like to see it say that if you are going to support List-* headers you must include "THIS HEADER". Currently, the document does say that it is sufficient to include only the List-Help header, which suggests it should probably be the required header, but I think a case could be made for List-Owner also. I'm not especially partial to either; I'd would just like one chosen. If this were done I think it would constitute an id for MLM stuff, irrespective of whether it is supported by an email system or elist application. On the issue of "auto-generated" email, X.400 protocols actually handled all this much better, but then they were much stricter about the envelope versus message separation issue. There has been some discussion from time-to-time in the IETF among the email folk about standardizing an "auto-generated" id of some sort, but a constituency never seems to develop so it doesn't go anywhere. The real problem with headers is the chicken and egg analogy you eluded to in an earlier message. If the email clients/applications don't actually support them, they are doomed to failure anyway. Jim From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 24 13:48:46 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA03587; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 13:36:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: from one.elistx.com (one.elistx.com [209.116.252.130]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0484017E8B for ; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 13:36:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: from two.elistx.com (ppp.elistx.com [209.116.254.209]) by eListX.com (PMDF V6.0-24 #44856) with ESMTP id <0G2Y00J7KD4K81@eListX.com> for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 17:02:45 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 17:03:58 -0400 (EDT) From: James M Galvin Subject: Re: elist address or your address in message TO header In-reply-to: <200010241949.e9OJnrU13049@mail.rev.net> X-Sender: galvin@two.elistx.com To: Bernie Cosell Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Message-id: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Perhaps someone could explain to me how this works: if I send a message to a person, and cc the mailing list, or if I send a message "to:" two mailing lists [both occur to me fairly regularly], what happens to the headers? Can someone 'reply to all' to my message and have it go to the 'all' that I, as the author of the message, intended? The answer to your question is it depends on how the elist or its supporting technology is configured. The better technologies offer all sorts of options, some they probably didn't intend, but it's amazing what users will do given even half-a-chance. I can tell you what a well-behaved email system is supposed to do, but most MLM stuff is an elist application that is not an email system (proudly so in some cases) and thus all bets are off. In any case, your question is a corollary to the question I've been asking. Not only is there no standard for how to identify an elist message, there is no standard set of accepted practices for how to configure or operate elists for particular purposes (e.g., discussion, digest, or newsletter elist), although there are some de facto practices. The other thing to keep in mind is that once you submit a message for delivery, usually to a local SMTP server to handle on your behalf, if the message is destined to leave a local, corporate, or otherwise closed environment, i.e., it is headed for the Internet, you have no control over it whatsoever. You certainly have no control over what a recipient's local email system or client is likely to do to the message. This is a tenet of the Internet email infrastructure. Kinda gives you the "warm fuzzies", doesn't it?! :-) Enjoy, Jim -- James M. Galvin ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Public mailing lists hosted free at From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 24 14:03:59 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA03775; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 13:56:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: from one.elistx.com (one.elistx.com [209.116.252.130]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3DD3717EB4 for ; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 13:56:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: from two.elistx.com (ppp.elistx.com [209.116.254.209]) by eListX.com (PMDF V6.0-24 #44856) with ESMTP id <0G2Y00JCCE1G4P@eListX.com> for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 17:22:29 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 17:23:41 -0400 (EDT) From: James M Galvin Subject: Re: elist address or your address in message TO header In-reply-to: X-Sender: galvin@two.elistx.com To: Chuq Von Rospach Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Message-id: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk But to play games with terminology, when I'm putting the address in the "to:" line, I'm not steaming open the envelope. I'm attaching a mailing label to the outside -- you're looking at the envelope too literally here with VERP. all I'm doing is choosing to use a more correct (or perhaps specific is a less loaded word) address on that mailing label I paste on the envelope.the header *is* part of the envelope, even if it's not 'envelope' in the terminology of SMTP. If you really want to get literal about it, what I'm doing is what my bank does with my bank statement -- print the address on the statement, and use an envelope with a window instead of printing it on the envelope itself.... Heh, heh, nice analogy. But I think I can use it to my benefit instead of yours. :-) I would make the case that the bank statement analogy is better matched with personalizing the actual content as opposed to the headers. The physical envelope itself is generic, as should the headers be in an elist message. The window itself represents the name of the elist, with what's visible on the inside representing the SMTP envelope information. The actual name and address information on the inside represents the salutation of the actual content of the email message. I think the real problem here is that Internet email (SMTP/RFC822) overloads the "headers" in a "message". I had intimated before that at least one thing X.400 really did do better was to make an absolute separation of such things. Without this I don't see any easy resolutions. Recently I modified my "goodbye" messages sent to people who unsubscribe, so that they say that we're sorry to see them go, and adds a mailto: link if they want to send us feedback on why they're leaving. Good idea! I've already added this to my service. Thanks, Jim -- James M. Galvin ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Public mailing lists hosted free at From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 24 14:18:47 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA04008; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 14:14:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gsp.org (rsk.tidalwave.com [208.211.3.21]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3200B17EB4 for ; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 14:14:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from rsk@localhost) by gsp.org (8.11.1/8.11.1) id e9OLfXg03090 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 17:41:33 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 17:41:21 -0400 From: Rich Kulawiec To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: elist address or your address in message TO header Message-ID: <20001024174121.A2815@gsp.org> References: <0G2X00CJGRM4ON@eListX.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2i In-Reply-To: <0G2X00CJGRM4ON@eListX.com>; from galvin@acm.org on Tue, Oct 24, 2000 at 09:19:20AM -0400 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Tue, Oct 24, 2000 at 09:19:20AM -0400, James M Galvin wrote: > Memail.com has just begun switching their elists from having the address > of the elist in the message TO header to having the subscribed address > in the message TO header. Personally, I'm disappointed because I think > only personal email should have my address in the message TO header And you're correct, of course. Mail sent "to" a mailing list address such as list-managers@greatcircle.com is not sent to any individual, but to the address of the mailing list -- and it is therefore that address which should appear in the "To:" field. Not only that, but (and I'll check on this) I believe that this violates RFC 822. See also http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html ("Reply-To" Munging Considered Harmful) which does not address this specific topic, but one closely related to it. ---Rsk From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 24 14:33:47 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA04056; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 14:19:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gsp.org (rsk.tidalwave.com [208.211.3.21]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 03D1E17EB1 for ; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 14:19:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from rsk@localhost) by gsp.org (8.11.1/8.11.1) id e9OLkg703412 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 17:46:42 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 17:46:40 -0400 From: Rich Kulawiec To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: elist address or your address in message TO header Message-ID: <20001024174639.B2815@gsp.org> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2i In-Reply-To: ; from galvin@acm.org on Tue, Oct 24, 2000 at 12:44:43PM -0400 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Tue, Oct 24, 2000 at 12:44:43PM -0400, James M Galvin wrote: > For every elist to which a person subscribes you have to get a few > messages and then determine how best to identify those messages so you > can filter them. What I'm particularly noticing is a trend (in my > opinion overzealous) towards personalization that is eliminating one of > the key distinctions (and the only remaining general test) between > personal email and elist messages. I completely agree. The newbies running many of the mailing lists out there are either not thinking through all of the issues *or* are selfish enough to attempt to deploy a solution which works for *them*... but which hoses everyone else. That said, a standard mechanism by which mailing list messages can be filtered is highly desirable. Clearly, "Subject:" line tags are a farce and can't be used; the "To:" field can sometimes be used, as can the "Cc:" field (and procmail has a mechanism to treat both the same way w.r.t. filtering); "Sender:" can sometimes be used but many mailing lists don't set it correctly -- and a surprising number of sites don't treat it correctly; amd "X-Mailing-List:" is, AFAIK, not part of any RFC. Time out for a quick check...okay, the procmail rulesets in place here indicate that 331 out of 362 mailing lists can be filtered correctly using "TO"; "Sender:" works for 23 of those left over; and the rest fall into miscellaneous categories. ---Rsk From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 24 14:49:24 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA04158; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 14:27:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4EE4317EB1 for ; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 14:27:31 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [17.216.27.202] (A17-216-27-202.apple.com [17.216.27.202]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id PAA35028 ; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 15:00:06 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 14:52:05 -0700 To: James M Galvin , Chuq Von Rospach From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: elist address or your address in message TO header Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 4:39 PM -0400 10/24/00, James M Galvin wrote: >At this point, the principal problem would be that the varied uses are >incompatible. Thus, the best path, I think, is to create new headers, >one for each use, which, or course, has its own backward compatibility >issues. If it's an optional superset, it's not a huge deal. But now you start to see why I said I wasn't going ot fight this fight.. (grin) >Just to be specific, and please correct me if this is not where you were >headed, given any arbitrary message and only that message, is it >possible to know if it is from an elist? I do not know of a generally available MLM where you can't use a header to figure it out. I'm sure there are some weirdies out there, but most encode the Sender, MLMs are starting to use List-ID, and if that doesn't work, I can usually use Reply-To, Errors-to or some other header that has a pointer back to an admin/bounce address. One MLM in my filter list (I think it's ezmlm) uses "mailing-list", which violates the RFCs, IMHO (it ought to be X-Mailing-List, since it's not a formal header). I'd say you could write a fairly reasonable procmail script to true/false is-a-list and be right with high accuracy. >The List-* headers are a Proposed Standard in the IETF (the first step >along the 3-step standardization path), and there's no reason to think >they will not evenutally be a full Standard. One could make the case >that the List-* headers were a creative way around the political issues >of a decade ago. (And as far as I know LISTSERV does not support them.) Mailman will in 2.0, along with List-ID. I expect as they're formalized, you'll see other MLMs add them. I can understand at some level why someone like listserv takes their time here -- because you run the risk of adopting something that changes. It's easier for a smaller MLM or an open-source system to do this than a big corporate entity, because the users tend to be more tolerant of "oh, the RFC changed, this will be incompatible in the next release" isms. >"THIS HEADER". Currently, the document does say that it is sufficient >to include only the List-Help header, which suggests it should probably >be the required header, but I think a case could be made for List-Owner >also. Some of that comes from expecting list-id to be what is used for identifying lists, which is on a separate RFC track and last I looked, somewhat behind. the List-* stuff wasn't designed for filter identification issues as much as encoding data for mail client automation. So the long-term answer is List-ID, unless it gets sideracked and falters. >On the issue of "auto-generated" email, X.400 protocols actually handled >all this much better, but then they were much stricter about the >envelope versus message separation issue. There has been some >discussion from time-to-time in the IETF among the email folk about >standardizing an "auto-generated" id of some sort, but a constituency >never seems to develop so it doesn't go anywhere. I've been tempted to add an X-Loop, even if it's not procmail, simply because filters have a chance to worry about that. that, and Precedence: bulk help, because things like vacation are smart enough to know that if I'm sending it bulk, I don't need ot know you're on vacation. That probably gets half. >The real problem with headers is the chicken and egg analogy you eluded >to in an earlier message. If the email clients/applications don't >actually support them, they are doomed to failure anyway. If you don't use them, though, the client authors have no reason to adopt them. Someone has to lead, and it takes time. I'm *just now* starting to look at CSS on my web sites, because my user population has finally hit a point where a large majority uses CSS compatible browsers. And even at that, I plan on keeping it really simple because of compatibility issues -- but six months ago, I wouldn't even consider it..... -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Be just, and fear not. From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 24 15:04:09 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA04130; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 14:27:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 776D817EB1 for ; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 14:26:58 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [17.216.27.202] (A17-216-27-202.apple.com [17.216.27.202]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id OAA46472 ; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 14:59:59 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <5.0.0.25.0.20001024152920.00a18c70@mail.scadian.net> References: <5.0.0.25.0.20001024152920.00a18c70@mail.scadian.net> Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 14:40:49 -0700 To: Jim Trigg , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: elist address or your address in message TO header Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 3:45 PM -0400 10/24/00, Jim Trigg wrote: >What is VERP? That's an acronym I haven't seen before. here's a reasonable explanation: Basically, it's setting the return envelope to encode subscriber info in it for bounce processing -- but to be honest, we're de facto extending that to include all aspects of e-mail customization. At the base level, it's sending out individual messages to every person on a mail list as opposed to bulk-mailing to a list. >That sounds nice, except that 50-75% of mail readers in common use >cannot filter based on the Sender: header, let alone any particular >header. They can filter on: To, From, Subject, Reply-To, or "any >header". so we shouldn't use any technology everyone can't use? We shouldn't put the hooks into things to encourage other client programmers to accept and use them? you have to move things forward or they stagnate or die. Especially in a case like this, where if they don't want to take advantage of it, they don't have to. But should we not do this for the people who do have the capability because some folks don't? (in case it's not obvious, I don't but taht approach. I don't add gizmos to my systems because they exist, but I don't hold back just because some subset can't take advantage of them, either) >Which is exactly the problem with using "List-ID" to identify that >it's not personal email and should be sent to a separate sorting >area. but this is a case where the MLMs have to take a lead in promoting the RFC. the clients aren't going to support it until the MLMs do (why should they?), the MLMs have to put it out there so the client programmers will know it makes sense to support it. Same with the list-* RFCs. >Jim appears to be arguing from a perspective of "if the remailing >agent isn't the originator, I care more about the remailing agent >than the destination." I'm looking for a middle ground, but failing >to find something that satisfies all of the requirements (short of >writing my own MUA, and that's not a useful answer). Interesting point, but let me take it in a slightly different direction (oh, damn. Chuqui's gonna throw out another analogy). We have those three pieces of data: who's it from, who's it to, and how did it get there? From is simple -- the author goes in the from line. We're arguing about which piece ought to be in the to:/Cc: line. The person being sent the mail, or the list delivering it. And sitting back and thinking about it a bit more, the answer probably ends up "it depends". If you view the MLM as the postman, does it make sense to put the postman's name on the envelope instead of the final receipient? Taht's effectively what most MLMs do today. I now realize there's a nasty wrinkle in all this. I've been thinking primarily from the point of view of announcement style lists (since that's where most of my work is these days) -- that is literally the on-line version of that Restoration Hardware catalog I used earlier. However, with discussion lists, it's less clear. If you coerce the To line, you lose the linkage back ot the list for replies, unless you choose to include a coerced Reply-To. No, I won't go there. But you have to have some linkage back to the list, which is where the postal analogies break down. Restoration hardware doesn't get involved in lengthy discussions with their catalog recipients via postal mail. So it really looks like we're all right here, depending on circumstance. you have: announcement lists: Coerce To to end user, since they aren't intended to reply. discussion lists: Coerce to: to end user, Coerce reply-to to list if you want to noodge stuff through the list. Don't Coerce either if you want to leave it up to the user where to reply. I'd say, now that I think about it, that for most of my discussion lists, I'd rather NOT coerce To/Reply-To on discussion lists than coerce it just to make the To: line "right". But for announcement-type lists, I still think coercing the To: line to the end user is a win. In other words, it's a dessert topping and a floor wax. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Be just, and fear not. From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 24 21:49:10 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA08564; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 21:44:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: from windlord.stanford.edu (windlord.Stanford.EDU [171.64.13.23]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with SMTP id D793117E8B for ; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 21:44:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 27143 invoked by uid 50); 25 Oct 2000 05:10:01 -0000 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: elist address or your address in message TO header References: In-Reply-To: James M Galvin's message of "Tue, 24 Oct 2000 12:25:34 -0400 (EDT)" From: Russ Allbery Organization: The Eyrie Date: 24 Oct 2000 22:10:01 -0700 Message-ID: Lines: 19 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0807 (Gnus v5.8.7) XEmacs/21.1 (Channel Islands) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk James M Galvin writes: > Some vacation programs also ignore "precedence: bulk" and the like, > so maybe memail is counting on that? > Precedence is another one of those problematic headers. Popularized by > USENET, today it enjoys so many different uses that making your > statement out of context is specious. Popularized by Usenet? Huh? Precedence has never been a Usenet header that I've ever seen. The oldest use of precedence that I'm aware of is that Precedence: junk has been in the headers generated by the old-style Unix vacation program for eons, and sendmail.cf had handling of a few different types of precedence headers and they had some effect on queue prioritization. -- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 24 22:04:03 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA08615; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 21:48:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: from windlord.stanford.edu (windlord.Stanford.EDU [171.64.13.23]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with SMTP id E828817E8B for ; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 21:48:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 27150 invoked by uid 50); 25 Oct 2000 05:13:47 -0000 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: elist address or your address in message TO header References: <0G2X00CJGRM4ON@eListX.com> <20001024174121.A2815@gsp.org> In-Reply-To: Rich Kulawiec's message of "Tue, 24 Oct 2000 17:41:21 -0400" From: Russ Allbery Organization: The Eyrie Date: 24 Oct 2000 22:13:46 -0700 Message-ID: Lines: 23 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0807 (Gnus v5.8.7) XEmacs/21.1 (Channel Islands) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Rich Kulawiec writes: > And you're correct, of course. Mail sent "to" a mailing list address > such as list-managers@greatcircle.com is not sent to any individual, but > to the address of the mailing list -- and it is therefore that address > which should appear in the "To:" field. Not only that, but (and I'll > check on this) I believe that this violates RFC 822. RFC 822 specifies the format of messages for a communications protocol between hosts. Once you've got the message in your hot little hands and you're doing other things with it, you can fiddle with it as much as you want. I've never bought the argument that list reflectors are somehow part of the mail transport system; as far as I'm concerned, mailing list software consumes an e-mail message and then generates a completely new (but substantially similar) message that it sends to some number of recipients. Otherwise, there are way too many things that *all* list management software does to messages that would break the rules for e-mail relaying. Like changing the envelope sender. -- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 24 22:50:03 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id WAA09246; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 22:36:15 -0700 (PDT) Received: from devo.impressive.net (cr699510-a.slnt1.on.wave.home.com [24.112.162.213]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id BCD3A17E8B for ; Tue, 24 Oct 2000 22:36:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: by devo.impressive.net (Postfix, from userid 500) id 1FE2B37DD6; Wed, 25 Oct 2000 02:01:51 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 02:01:51 -0400 From: Gerald Oskoboiny To: James M Galvin Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: elist address or your address in message TO header Message-ID: <20001025020150.A28973@impressive.net> Mail-Followup-To: James M Galvin , list-managers@greatcircle.com References: <0G2X00CJGRM4ON@eListX.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <0G2X00CJGRM4ON@eListX.com>; from galvin@acm.org on Tue, Oct 24, 2000 at 09:19:20AM -0400 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Tue, Oct 24, 2000 at 09:19:20AM -0400, James M Galvin wrote: > I don't recall seeing this topic discussed here and I'm very interested > in what folks think about this issue. > > Memail.com has just begun switching their elists from having the address > of the elist in the message TO header to having the subscribed address > in the message TO header. Personally, I'm disappointed because I think > only personal email should have my address in the message TO header In general, I think altering any of the original headers in a message is bad and should be avoided whenever possible. (which is pretty much always, in my experience.) Modifying the Subject or Reply-To is bad enough, but doing it to other headers like To:, From:, or Message-Id: is an extremely bad idea, IMO. > I know all the reasons why elist managers themselves like this, notably > because they get better error messages when email fails and also because > it helps remind the subscriber how they got started. I think VERPs are the way to go to track bounces, and List-* headers can help with everything else (that is, envisioning a future a few years from now where these headers are generated by default by MLMs and taken advantage of by MUAs.) > But why I really > dislike it is because it screws up vacation/out-of-office announcement > programs, which are not supposed to reply unless the recipient appears > in the message headers. Lists should issue Precedence: and List-* headers, and autoresponders should not reply to incoming mail with those headers, no matter who the apparent recipient is. > For me personally it also screws up my email filtering, because the > first distinction I make is to test whether a message is personal email, > i.e., addressed directly to me. Elists are just not personal email. I suggest making that the last distinction: filter mail from known lists first (preferably using the List-Id header), then filter mail that's addressed to you to your inbox, then filter anything else to a low priority mailbox, because it's probably spam. > Now I know its Lyris and Link Communications behind what MeMail.Com is > doing. I don't really fault Lyris, per se, since I understand the view > of doing what the client wants. I also know they don't need it since > they do everything else an elist technology can do in the space of > managing failed mail. But I also know there are no real "rules" in this > space so I decided to get some opinions. > > Hence my question. Do you think it is appropriate for elists to address > their messages as if they were personal email? No, that's not appropriate at all, at least not for discussion lists. (announcement lists are much different, and I don't see anything wrong with doing it for those kinds of lists.) -- Gerald Oskoboiny http://impressive.net/people/gerald/ From list-managers-owner Wed Oct 25 07:04:59 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA18408; Wed, 25 Oct 2000 06:57:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from lolita.speakeasy.net (lolita.speakeasy.net [216.254.0.13]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 5E25417E8B for ; Wed, 25 Oct 2000 06:57:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 9561 invoked from network); 25 Oct 2000 14:21:20 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO gonzo.speakeasy.net) (192.168.0.5) by 192.168.0.13 with SMTP; 25 Oct 2000 14:21:20 -0000 Received: (qmail 514 invoked from network); 25 Oct 2000 14:23:32 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO 000427EMC.scadian.net) (204.217.159.3) by gonzo.speakeasy.net with SMTP; 25 Oct 2000 14:23:32 -0000 Message-Id: <5.0.0.25.0.20001025095931.00a24eb0@mail.scadian.net> X-Sender: scadianblaise@mail.scadian.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.0 Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 10:23:26 -0400 To: Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Jim Trigg Subject: Re: elist address or your address in message TO header In-Reply-To: References: <5.0.0.25.0.20001024152920.00a18c70@mail.scadian.net> <5.0.0.25.0.20001024152920.00a18c70@mail.scadian.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 05:40 PM 10/24/00, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: >At 3:45 PM -0400 10/24/00, Jim Trigg wrote: > >>That sounds nice, except that 50-75% of mail readers in common use cannot >>filter based on the Sender: header, let alone any particular >>header. They can filter on: To, From, Subject, Reply-To, or "any header". > >so we shouldn't use any technology everyone can't use? We shouldn't put >the hooks into things to encourage other client programmers to accept and >use them? > >you have to move things forward or they stagnate or die. Especially in a >case like this, where if they don't want to take advantage of it, they >don't have to. But should we not do this for the people who do have the >capability because some folks don't? > >(in case it's not obvious, I don't but taht approach. I don't add gizmos >to my systems because they exist, but I don't hold back just because some >subset can't take advantage of them, either) No, that's not what I'm saying. I have no problem with adding features that allow more advanced users to use them while less advanced users can't. I have a problem with changing things so that the less advanced users are no longer able to do what they once could. >>Which is exactly the problem with using "List-ID" to identify that it's >>not personal email and should be sent to a separate sorting area. > >but this is a case where the MLMs have to take a lead in promoting the >RFC. the clients aren't going to support it until the MLMs do (why should >they?), the MLMs have to put it out there so the client programmers will >know it makes sense to support it. Same with the list-* RFCs. That's true. The problem is that you seem to be advocating making the new feature the *only* way to identify the list that the message came by. Jim Trigg From list-managers-owner Wed Oct 25 07:34:18 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA18722; Wed, 25 Oct 2000 07:29:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id BC39517E8B for ; Wed, 25 Oct 2000 07:29:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [209.239.169.197] (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197]) by plaidworks.com (8.10.1/8.10.1) with ESMTP id e9PEqZ209439; Wed, 25 Oct 2000 07:52:35 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <5.0.0.25.0.20001025095931.00a24eb0@mail.scadian.net> References: <5.0.0.25.0.20001024152920.00a18c70@mail.scadian.net> <5.0.0.25.0.20001024152920.00a18c70@mail.scadian.net> <5.0.0.25.0.20001025095931.00a24eb0@mail.scadian.net> Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 07:53:37 -0700 To: Jim Trigg , Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: elist address or your address in message TO header Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 10:23 AM -0400 10/25/00, Jim Trigg wrote: > >That's true. The problem is that you seem to be advocating making >the new feature the *only* way to identify the list that the message >came by. no, not only. Perhaps official is the better term. Of course, if you have a better way of doing it, we're all ears... -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Be just, and fear not. From list-managers-owner Wed Oct 25 09:19:28 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA19565; Wed, 25 Oct 2000 09:00:39 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail.rev.net (mail.rev.net [206.67.68.8]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id A724D17E8B for ; Wed, 25 Oct 2000 09:00:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from fantasy (USER9.GVA.NET [216.80.135.13]) by mail.rev.net (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id e9PGQKd07248 for ; Wed, 25 Oct 2000 12:26:20 -0400 Message-Id: <200010251626.e9PGQKd07248@mail.rev.net> From: "Bernie Cosell" Organization: Fantasy Farm Fibers To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 12:26:17 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: elist address or your address in message TO header In-reply-to: References: <5.0.0.25.0.20001025095931.00a24eb0@mail.scadian.net> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 25 Oct 2000, at 7:53, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > At 10:23 AM -0400 10/25/00, Jim Trigg wrote: > > > >That's true. The problem is that you seem to be advocating making > >the new feature the *only* way to identify the list that the message > >came by. > > no, not only. Perhaps official is the better term. > > Of course, if you have a better way of doing it, we're all ears... Perhaps you need to remind me/us of what "it" is. If I remember right [it was a lot of email ago], the only reasons offered for this "feature" [sic] were: 1) making it easier to trace errors 2) give incompetent users a better warm-fuzzy feeling about their email being "personalized". Downsides (at least the ones I saw right off): hard to tell if the email really *WAS* addressed to you or not or if it was list-originated harder to reply to the list (if you can correctly guess which one originated the message) [or do the MLMs that do this sort of thing also mung the reply-to?] So, while I await to be eddicated about all the other problems this scheme is intended to help, how about: 1) is done at least as well, if not better, by VERP 2) if you want to personalize, why not personalize the BODY... the headers are what I see when I scan my mailbox and what I filter on, and so, IMO, so space there is precious. So if you *HAVE* to "personalize", why not change the *body* of the message. You could have it say something like: Dear Chuq. Here's your latest issue of the hockey-lovers digest we hope you enjoy it as much as the previous digests... [rest of message] ... and it'll all feel SO friendly and personal.. :o) I must be missing something really useful important, because those are _surely_ not the real reasons for what I see as a basically bogus change. /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From list-managers-owner Wed Oct 25 10:18:48 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA20217; Wed, 25 Oct 2000 10:12:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 835A417E8B for ; Wed, 25 Oct 2000 10:12:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [17.216.27.202] (A17-216-27-202.apple.com [17.216.27.202]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id KAA30770 ; Wed, 25 Oct 2000 10:45:44 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <200010251626.e9PGQKd07248@mail.rev.net> References: <5.0.0.25.0.20001025095931.00a24eb0@mail.scadian.net> <200010251626.e9PGQKd07248@mail.rev.net> Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 10:37:48 -0700 To: "Bernie Cosell" , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: elist address or your address in message TO header Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Does this help? > > >That's true. The problem is that you seem to be advocating making >> >the new feature the *only* way to identify the list that the message >> >came by. >> >> no, not only. Perhaps official is the better term. >> >> Of course, if you have a better way of doing it, we're all ears... > >Perhaps you need to remind me/us of what "it" is. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Be just, and fear not. From list-managers-owner Wed Oct 25 10:33:48 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA20341; Wed, 25 Oct 2000 10:24:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail.rev.net (mail.rev.net [206.67.68.8]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9920717E8B for ; Wed, 25 Oct 2000 10:23:56 -0700 (PDT) Received: from fantasy (USER9.GVA.NET [216.80.135.13]) by mail.rev.net (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id e9PHniL13023 for ; Wed, 25 Oct 2000 13:49:45 -0400 Message-Id: <200010251749.e9PHniL13023@mail.rev.net> From: "Bernie Cosell" Organization: Fantasy Farm Fibers To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 13:49:42 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: elist address or your address in message TO header In-reply-to: References: <200010251626.e9PGQKd07248@mail.rev.net> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 25 Oct 2000, at 10:37, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > Does this help? > > > > >That's true. The problem is that you seem to be advocating making > >> >the new feature the *only* way to identify the list that the message > >> >came by. > >> no, not only. Perhaps official is the better term. > >> > >> Of course, if you have a better way of doing it, we're all ears... > > > >Perhaps you need to remind me/us of what "it" is. No and I'm more confused than ever now and I apologize for being reall dense about this. If by 'it' you meant 'to identify the list that the message came by', then I'm perplexed, because the proposed scheme [removing the listname from the To or CC [as appropriate] and replacing it with the person's email addr] isn't a scheme for doing that at all but rather makes it *HARDER* to figure out whence the message came... If you meant something else, then it went completely over my head, becasue that 'came by' comment in what you forwarded back si the only thing I could see as a possible referent for 'it' and... That's why I asked --- at the expense of making email more confusing and making it *harder* to figure out "the list that the message came by", we get... ??what?? /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From list-managers-owner Wed Oct 25 12:03:48 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA21346; Wed, 25 Oct 2000 11:59:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ivan.iecc.com (ivan.iecc.com [208.31.42.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 81D4A17E8B for ; Wed, 25 Oct 2000 11:59:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 25567 invoked by uid 100); 25 Oct 2000 15:25:22 -0400 Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 15:25:20 -0400 (EDT) From: John R Levine To: Bernie Cosell Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: elist address or your address in message TO header In-Reply-To: <200010251749.e9PHniL13023@mail.rev.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > That's why I asked --- at the expense of making email more confusing and > making it *harder* to figure out "the list that the message came by", we > get... ??what?? I think the suggestion is to put the recipient's address in the To: line, and to put the list name in Sender: or X-List-Name: or something like that for people who use filtering rules to sort list mail into separate mailboxes. I really like the idea of putting the receipient's name in the To: line. Even though I use VERP to put a unique envelope return address on each message sent out to my lists, and that works quite well for bounce pruning, I get plenty of both manual and automatic bounces where the envelope and most of the header lines are all gone or smashed beyond recognition. It's rare to lose the To: line, which means that I can figure out what address to take off the list. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 From list-managers-owner Wed Oct 25 16:33:47 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA24612; Wed, 25 Oct 2000 16:31:15 -0700 (PDT) Received: from hotmail.com (f48.law7.hotmail.com [216.33.237.48]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2CB1B17E8B for ; Wed, 25 Oct 2000 16:31:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail pickup service by hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC; Wed, 25 Oct 2000 16:57:02 -0700 Received: from 24.25.12.129 by lw7fd.law7.hotmail.msn.com with HTTP; Wed, 25 Oct 2000 23:57:02 GMT X-Originating-IP: [24.25.12.129] From: "       " To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Questions on which MLM software would be best? Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 19:57:02 EDT Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Message-ID: X-OriginalArrivalTime: 25 Oct 2000 23:57:02.0371 (UTC) FILETIME=[45107730:01C03EDF] Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I was hoping that perhaps some of you list managers could reccomend which MLM software would suit my needs best. I'm looking for something freely available not commercial software. Briefly here is what I would like the list to do (if customizing is required that's fine as long as it's simple - I'm far from an expert programmer or system admin): be able to support a list that may grow to many tens of thousands of subscribers it will be an announcement type list - only a couple of people should be able to post and the rest of the subscribers will only receive messages I would like the messages to show as "From:" a name I specify @mydomain.com as opposed ot the user that posted the message or majordomo@mydomain.com (or similar). Archieving and digest features would be nice but strictly nessecery.. I would like users to be able to subscribe by sending a blank message to example-subscribe@mydomain.com and to confirm their subscription by simply hitting reply and send as opposed to having to enter any special commands or keys, etc. I would like unsubcribing to work in the same fashion. That's about it. Also I'll most likely only be running one list 2 or 3 at most so the idea here is not to get something that makes it easy for many users on a system to run mailing lists. I and another person our two with root access to my system will be the only ones creating/managing lists. Thanks for your time. _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From list-managers-owner Wed Oct 25 18:48:51 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA26803; Wed, 25 Oct 2000 18:41:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from lolita.speakeasy.net (lolita.speakeasy.net [216.254.0.13]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with SMTP id B518A17E8B for ; Wed, 25 Oct 2000 18:41:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 2399 invoked from network); 26 Oct 2000 02:04:47 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO gonzo.speakeasy.net) (192.168.0.5) by 192.168.0.13 with SMTP; 26 Oct 2000 02:04:47 -0000 Received: (qmail 18419 invoked from network); 26 Oct 2000 02:06:57 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO escallop) (64.20.67.157) by gonzo.speakeasy.net with SMTP; 26 Oct 2000 02:06:57 -0000 From: "Jim Trigg / Blaise de Cormeilles" To: "       " Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 22:06:14 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: Quoted-printable Subject: Re: Questions on which MLM software would be best? Cc: List-managers@greatcircle.com In-reply-to: X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12b) Message-Id: <20001026014107.B518A17E8B@honor.greatcircle.com> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 25 Oct 00, at 19:57, =A0=A0=A0 =A0=A0=A0 wrote: > I was hoping that perhaps some of you list managers could reccomend > which MLM software would suit my needs best. I'm looking for > something freely available not commercial software. Briefly here is > That's about it. Also I'll most likely only be running one list 2 or > 3 at most so the idea here is not to get something that makes it easy > for many users on a system to run mailing lists. I and another person > our two with root access to my system will be the only ones > creating/managing lists. Thanks for your time. >From your comment about "root access", I presume that you will be running it on a Unix/Linux box, yes? If so, either MajorDomo or MailMan should meet your needs. Since each is included in at least one Linux distribution, they must both be freely available. Jim Trigg running lists on both From list-managers-owner Wed Oct 25 19:03:52 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA26832; Wed, 25 Oct 2000 18:43:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from lolita.speakeasy.net (lolita.speakeasy.net [216.254.0.13]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 428BF17E8B for ; Wed, 25 Oct 2000 18:43:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 29394 invoked from network); 26 Oct 2000 02:07:07 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO gonzo.speakeasy.net) (192.168.0.5) by 192.168.0.13 with SMTP; 26 Oct 2000 02:07:07 -0000 Received: (qmail 22435 invoked from network); 26 Oct 2000 02:09:20 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO escallop) (64.20.67.157) by gonzo.speakeasy.net with SMTP; 26 Oct 2000 02:09:20 -0000 From: "Jim Trigg / Blaise de Cormeilles" To: List-managers@greatcircle.com Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 22:08:51 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: elist address or your address in message TO header X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12b) Message-Id: <20001026014327.428BF17E8B@honor.greatcircle.com> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 24 Oct 00, at 17:23, James M Galvin wrote: > But to play games with terminology, when I'm putting the address > in the "to:" line, I'm not steaming open the envelope. I'm > attaching a mailing label to the outside -- you're looking at > the envelope too literally here with VERP. all I'm doing is > choosing to use a more correct (or perhaps specific is a less > loaded word) address on that mailing label I paste on the > envelope.the header *is* part of the envelope, even if it's not > 'envelope' in the terminology of SMTP. > > If you really want to get literal about it, what I'm doing is > what my bank does with my bank statement -- print the address on > the statement, and use an envelope with a window instead of > printing it on the envelope itself.... > > Heh, heh, nice analogy. But I think I can use it to my benefit > instead of yours. :-) > > I would make the case that the bank statement analogy is better > matched with personalizing the actual content as opposed to the > headers. The physical envelope itself is generic, as should the > headers be in an elist message. The window itself represents the > name of the elist, with what's visible on the inside representing > the SMTP envelope information. The actual name and address > information on the inside represents the salutation of the actual > content of the email message. Ah, there are actually *four* types of mail! I hadn't thought it through sufficiently. Type Postal mail Internet mail 1. Personal mail Letter from friend Letter from friend 2. Bulk personalized Bill Announcement list 3. Bulk remailing Fanzine Discussion list 4. Bulk unsolicited "Occupant" Spam The problem is that bulk remailing, unlike all of the other types, needs three addresses: The originator, the remailer, and the recipient. For all of the others, the originator and the remailer are sufficiently indistinguishable for the remailer to be ignorable. I no longer have a problem with putting the recipient's address in the To header, but think we really need to work to get all remailers to either put their address in Sender or support the List-ID header, and to get all mail clients to support filtering on Sender and on List-ID. Jim Trigg From list-managers-owner Wed Oct 25 22:03:47 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id WAA29312; Wed, 25 Oct 2000 22:00:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from harrier.prod.itd.earthlink.net (harrier.prod.itd.earthlink.net [207.217.121.12]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id E6B6517E8B for ; Wed, 25 Oct 2000 22:00:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ee-nt.climber.org (sdn-ar-018casfrMP060.dialsprint.net [158.252.222.62]) by harrier.prod.itd.earthlink.net (8.9.3-EL_1_3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id WAA10281; Wed, 25 Oct 2000 22:26:14 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <4.3.1.0.20001025221916.00be6200@pop.climber.org> X-Sender: eckert@pop.climber.org X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 4.3.1 Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 22:22:28 -0700 To: "Jim Trigg / Blaise de Cormeilles" From: SRE Subject: Re: Questions on which MLM software would be best? Cc: "       " , List-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <20001026014107.B518A17E8B@honor.greatcircle.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 07:06 PM 10/25/00, Jim Trigg / Blaise de Cormeilles wrote: > >From your comment about "root access", I presume that you will be >running it on a Unix/Linux box, yes? If so, either MajorDomo or >MailMan should meet your needs. Since each is included in at least >one Linux distribution, they must both be freely available. Majordomo2 is somewhere near being released. I've been running a couple dozen lists on it for well over a year. WAY more features that Majordomo 1.9x, and without Mj1's clunky license. http://www.hpc.uh.edu/majordomo/#mj2 No problem with your requirements, but I haven't got a list over 1000 subscribers so I can't personally vouch for HUGE list performance. From list-managers-owner Thu Oct 26 00:48:47 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id AAA00697; Thu, 26 Oct 2000 00:37:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: from listes.cru.fr (listes.cru.fr [195.220.94.165]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7374B17E8B for ; Thu, 26 Oct 2000 00:36:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cru.fr (solex.cru.fr [195.220.94.70]) by listes.cru.fr (8.9.3/jtpda-5.3.2) with ESMTP id KAA00664 ; Thu, 26 Oct 2000 10:02:45 +0200 Message-ID: <39F7E525.9079D3B3@cru.fr> Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2000 10:02:45 +0200 From: Olivier Salaun Organization: CRU X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.74 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.16-3 i686) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: =?iso-8859-1?Q?=A0=A0=A0=20=A0=A0=A0?= Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Questions on which MLM software would be best? References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk brh42@hotmail.com wrote: > > I was hoping that perhaps some of you list managers could reccomend which > MLM software would suit my needs best. I'm looking for something freely > available not commercial software. Briefly here is what I would like the > list to do (if customizing is required that's fine as long as it's simple - > I'm far from an expert programmer or system admin): I'd recommend using Sympa. > be able to support a list that may grow to many tens of thousands of > subscribers It includes a bulk email, with configurable grouping factors. We manage MLs with 20 000 subscribers. We know of usage with 30 000+ subscribers with good performences.. > it will be an announcement type list - only a couple of people should be > able to post and the rest of the subscribers will only receive messages No problemo. You may setup the list to require a confirmation key from the moderator, or require a X509 certificate (S/MIME). > I would like the messages to show as "From:" a name I specify @mydomain.com > as opposed ot the user that posted the message or majordomo@mydomain.com (or > similar). Sympa provides an "anonymous_sender" list parameter. Every distributed message will have a single From:, as defined in the config. > Archieving and digest features would be nice but strictly nessecery.. It provides digest, mail searchable web archives (based on MHOnArc). Web archives can also be restricted (to subscribers, or owners,...). > I would like users to be able to subscribe by sending a blank message to > example-subscribe@mydomain.com and to confirm their subscription by simply > hitting reply and send as opposed to having to enter any special commands or > keys, etc. I would like unsubcribing to work in the same fashion. List-subscribe are implemented, but we recommend not to use this feature to avoid a spam web harvester could subscribe to the list. Confirmations in message subects also works. > That's about it. Also I'll most likely only be running one list 2 or 3 at > most so the idea here is not to get something that makes it easy for many > users on a system to run mailing lists. I and another person our two with > root access to my system will be the only ones creating/managing lists. Once you installed Sympa, almost everything can be performed from the web, including list creation (moderated by listmaster). Current version of Sympa is 2.7.3. Next version (alpha next week) will also include : + list configuration edition from the web + shared web (upload) for each list + S/MIME encryption Sympa : http://www.sympa.org/ -- Olivier Salaün Comité Réseaux des Universités From list-managers-owner Thu Oct 26 07:04:16 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA06676; Thu, 26 Oct 2000 06:49:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: from one.elistx.com (one.elistx.com [209.116.252.130]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7E5CC17E8B for ; Thu, 26 Oct 2000 06:49:39 -0700 (PDT) Received: from two.elistx.com (ppp.elistx.com [209.116.254.209]) by eListX.com (PMDF V6.0-24 #44856) with ESMTP id <0G3100HL1JMKN3@eListX.com> for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Thu, 26 Oct 2000 10:15:58 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2000 10:17:05 -0400 (EDT) From: James M Galvin Subject: Re: elist address or your address in message TO header In-reply-to: X-Sender: galvin@two.elistx.com To: Chuq Von Rospach Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Message-id: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >Just to be specific, and please correct me if this is not where you were >headed, given any arbitrary message and only that message, is it >possible to know if it is from an elist? I do not know of a generally available MLM where you can't use a header to figure it out. Certainly I agree with you but your statement doesn't answer the question. Without out-of-band information is not possible to construct *a* filter criterion that will correctly filter all elist messages. Nonetheless, I've always been successful at constructing a filter criterion for any elist. And, as you say, even today there aren't that many different criteria that are needed to filter almost all elist messages. The point is there is not exactly one. >The List-* headers are a Proposed Standard in the IETF (the first step >along the 3-step standardization path), and there's no reason to think >they will not evenutally be a full Standard. One could make the case >that the List-* headers were a creative way around the political issues >of a decade ago. (And as far as I know LISTSERV does not support them.) Mailman will in 2.0, along with List-ID. I expect as they're formalized, you'll see other MLMs add them. You know, I confess I have a vague recollection of "List-ID" but I can not find any documentation about it. Do you have a pointer to anything? In particular, I can not find anything in the IETF. I wonder if it was superceded by the LIST-* headers? If it was, it would be another reason why that document needs to have at least one mandatory header. Jim -- James M. Galvin ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Public mailing lists hosted free at From list-managers-owner Thu Oct 26 07:35:07 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA07098; Thu, 26 Oct 2000 07:29:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1D53717E8B for ; Thu, 26 Oct 2000 07:29:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [209.239.169.197] (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id IAA34910 ; Thu, 26 Oct 2000 08:02:27 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2000 07:53:50 -0700 To: James M Galvin , Chuq Von Rospach From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: elist address or your address in message TO header Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 10:17 AM -0400 10/26/00, James M Galvin wrote: >Certainly I agree with you but your statement doesn't answer the >question. Without out-of-band information is not possible to construct >*a* filter criterion that will correctly filter all elist messages. wasn't that sort of the point of the discussion? A lack of any real standard here? but in any event, list-id is the proposed solution to this. And secondarily, maybe it's just me, but I don't see this as a big thing. So I have to tweak a filter when I sign up to a mail list... List-ID will help automate that, if I want to. >You know, I confess I have a vague recollection of "List-ID" but I can >not find any documentation about it. Do you have a pointer to anything? here's pointers off of Grant's site: -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto: