Server setup
- Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 01:29:34 +0200
Having received dozens of delivery errors from mailers all over Europe, I
now understand that you have thought to prevent mailing loops by setting
the return address to the poster's address. This is completely
ridiculous! I have strictly no interest in learning the names of the
dozen people who are unable to receive their mail because of X.400
congestion, unknown internal error 23, you name it. Furthermore the
reason there are so many people who cannot receive their mail is that you
are asking the mailers to send delivery errors to the posters, who cannot
do anything about them and are probably not forwarding them to you, out
of courtesy or under the assumption that you also got a copy, which you
did not. The errors should go to the list owners, who have the ability to
take action to correct the situation.
The alternative is to ask everyone to please forward any and all error
they get after posting to any RARE list to dixon@localhost. Is that what
you want us to do? BITNET has over 6 years of experience with automatic
mailing list managers, how to operate them from a remote machine, what to
do with delivery errors of this or that type, and so on. The "list
owners" have developed de facto customs and guidelines through their own
forum, LSTOWN-L. Maybe RARE should invest manpower in documenting these
practices instead of going through the painful process of reinventing
the wheel from scratch - and at the subscribers' expense, to boot.
Eric
