On Wed, Aug 13, 2003 at 11:28:19AM -0500, David W. Tamkin wrote: > JC Dill wrote: > > >Weighing these 2 issues, my present gut feeling is that I should not take > >any action if the vacation program is only sending *one* response to each > >poster ... > > I disagree. The subscriber is running software that harvests addresses > of posters to the list and sends them unnecessary, unsolicited, > impersonal, off-topic email. Once per poster is too often. You should > shut the subscription off as soon as you find out it's happening.
I agree that somebody with an autoresponder that is misbehaving should be removed or denied posting. However I would stop short of calling them names. Many people are simply making use of a program that they suppose will do the right thing. And new autoresponder programs show up now and then, sometimes where it seems that the author doesn't take recognized proper behaviour into account. I've been wondering for a while: does there exist a test site for autoresponders (for the developers of autoresponders)? Something that would send a number of prototypical mail messages to a particular address and see if the agent at that address is doing anything wrong? (Obviously it would have to have some way of not being abused.) -mm- PS: a recent draft: http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-moore-auto-email-response-02.txt
