[Mailman-Users] New FAQ entry: broken autoresponders

[Nigel Metheringham]

Steve Lay wrote:
> Is it possible to filter the envelope sender on a list?  If so,
> filtering senders like MAILER-DAEMON would catch groupwise (the
> worst I've come across) and postmaster would catch one other that
> I know of too.  Ideally, this would be done by mailman itself.
> Would these envelope addresses ever constitute legitimate
> postings?

[Quoting J C Lawrence <claw at kanga.nu>]
> >More simply, if the return path of a message is ever null ("<>"), it
> >should be bounced from wrapper post.

Although I would not be suprised if a Groupwise bounce message did not
have envelope sender set null :-(
Can we assume that Return-Path: is a standard delivery of envelope
sender information into the Mailman scripts?


> Mailman (post 1.1) does this bounce detection - presumably by looking at
> the envelope sender in the first instance.  I think I'm arguing for
> envelope senders of "postmaster[@domain]" and "mailer-daemon[@domain]" to
> be treated as failure messages by bounce detection code too.  People with
> broken autoresponders would then get treated as if their address was
> failing while they took a vacation.  This appeals to me as the punishment
> gets inflicted on the trouble maker, not the innocent list admin or (even
> worse) the other subscribers.

In general I agree with this, however I know of at least one very long
time admin who frequently (possibly always) works from a postmaster
account rather than his own....   

	Nigel.