[jaws-uk] Re: Out of Office replies
- From: "Brian Lingard" <b.lingard@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <jaws-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 01:14:47 -0400
Ottawa Canada
Dear David and list:
You receive out of office replies when you post a message to a
list such as this one because of Brain dead vacation programs!
This is the name of the program that responds to incoming e-mail
with a message that the recipient is away from the office for a
while and urgent matters should be directed to so and so in their
absence.
This program is not supposed to respond to e-mail received from a
list such as a Freelists or Listserv managed list.
However over the years various programmers have forgotten this
little point and written versions of the program that happily
respond to each message they receive while the person is flagged
as being away.
There used to be an option in this program to limit its
auto-responses to say once per day to a given correspondent, once
a week or even once a month. However it seems many
implementations of it now happily auto-respond to each and every
message they receive, even if from the same sender 15 seconds
apart!
Some interesting infinite loops can be created if you send an
e-mail to someone on vacation say just after you set your
computer to say you too are on vacation!
Originally mail from mailing lists had a keyword inserted into
its subject field that was a tip to the vacation program to NOT
auto-respond to it. The word was [bulk] but it seems the people
who write list management programs and auto-response programs
have forgotten this gentlemen's agreement years ago.
Oh and one little thing some mail systems don't do right is to
send trouble reports regarding the delivery status of a message,
such as a delay or inability to deliver it to the SENDER of a
message, not to the person it is FROM:
I'll explain this:
The message is from its author but may be sent on their behalf by
someone else. Normally the from and sender are one and the same,
but mail from a list is sent out over the list by the list
management program although it is from its author.
So if a mail system cannot deliver the message or will have a
delay in doing so, it should advise the SENDER of this as the
author may be a good rocket scientist or M. D., but not know much
about computers and e-mail problems.
This spec is enshrined in an actual RFC, the 822 spec which deals
with the addressing and handling of e-mail.
I've seen various e-mail programs that don't implement it
correctly and when I advise the site's Postmaster, of the spec
and particular item in it, they generally tell me they will take
up the matter with their software vendor or publisher.
If everything on the Internet worked the way its creators
intended, you wouldn't receive out of office auto-responses to
messages sent out over a list.
Sorry for the long winded explanation, but some things require a
thorough explanation.
Brian
Brian K. Lingard
E-mail: b.lingard@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Tel: +1 (613) 247-0665
New York, NY Tel: +1 (646) 797-2862
FAX: +1 (613) 247-0665
Skype: ve3yiab2ji15
This message composed on Dell laptop.
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