Tilman Schmidt wrote:
--- On Mon, 2/1/10, ml ml <mliebher...@googlemail.com> wrote:
has anyone got some hints for me how to write a auto reply /
vacation script? Or is there already such a project out ...
Yes: DON'T. There are enough problems with existing autoresponders out there.
well, there is the feature request which needs to be done. So there is
no way around it.
In my experience, there is almost always a way around unreasonable
feature requests, although it typically involves hurdles such as
actually talking to the requestors.
What problems exactly, how can they be avoided?
Firstly, using an autoresponder very rarely serves any useful purpose.
In many cases it actually harms, for example by leaking internal
information (such as the existence of the mail address, the real name of
its owner, or the reason and/or duration of his or her absence), creates
false expectations ("will reply promptly after my return" :-) and/or
annoys the recipient ("why is no one filling in?").
Secondly, autoresponders frequently respond to mails they shouldn't,
such as mailing lists, newsletters, SPAM, "do not reply" mails, machine
generated notification mails, DSNs, mails from other autoresponders ...
Reliably avoiding that is very hard.
Thirdly, autoresponders may send their autoresponse to the wrong
recipient. It's of course not always obvious who the correct recipient
of an autoresponse should be or how to determine that algorithmically.
Fourthly, the autoresponse is often useless to the recipient. I
regularly receive automatic "I have received your mail and will reply to
it promptly" messages which don't give me any clue to which mail they
might refer to, and from mailboxes to which I never consciously sent a mail.
And fifthly (does that word exist?), autoresponders interact badly with
another nuisance "feature request", legal disclaimers. The autoresponder
emits a canned message that doesn't give a clue to whom it might be
addressed and what it might referred to, and the attached disclaimer
then asks the recipient to "delete all copies of the message" if he or
she is "not the intended recipient". What kind of impression will the
recipient of such a message get about the legal and technical competence
of the organization that was responsible for the emission of such an
incoherent piece of mail?
On the other hand, there are people who use email regularly in situations where
it is useful to know that the recipient is away and, if they want to provide
that information, when they will return. But, the feature really needs a way
for the user to provide the input and might not be possible in Mimedefang
running on an internet gateway. On unix-like systems where it is possible to
forward to a program with a .forward file in the user's home directory it is
done with a program called 'vacation', and the 'usermin' (an offshoot of webmin)
can be used as a web interface to manage the setup if people don't ordinarily
log in directly to the mail server. It is important to get several things right
in a program like this (don't respond more than once, don't respond to mail list
messages, etc.), so be sure you know what you are doing if you have to reinvent
this wheel.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikes...@gmail.com
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