Steven D'Aprano wrote: > On Thu, 11 Sep 2008 17:27:33 +0200, Sjoerd Mullender wrote: > >> When mail messages bounce, the MTA (Message Transfer Agent--the program >> that handles mail) *should* send the bounce message to whatever is in >> the Sender header, and only if that header does not exist, should it use >> the From header. > > Who makes up these rules, and why should we pay the least bit of > attention to them? > > It's one thing to say "right or wrong, that's what list admins do and you > have to deal with their behaviour whatever way you can". It's another > thing altogether to take the legalistic attitude of "never mind the > consequences, the standard is the standard and must be unthinkingly > obeyed". If the standard does more harm than good, then ignoring the > standard is the right thing to do. (Better would be to change the > standard, but that probably won't happen until there's a critical mass of > people who ignore the existing broken standard and form their own de > facto standard.) > > A standard isn't "correct" just because it's a standard, it's merely > something that a committee has agreed to do. In other words, it's a > compromise. Now, such compromises might be good and useful, or they might > combine the worst of all opinions. Just because something is standardized > doesn't make it the right thing to do. If you want proof of this, I give > you the recently approved ISO standard for Microsoft's so-called "Office > Open XML" OOXML file format. > > The standard behaviour of sending bounce and out-of-office messages to > the sender works well when sending email to individuals, but for mailing > lists it is pointless and counter-productive. Pointless, because the > sender can't do anything to fix the problem he's being notified about. > And counter-productive, because it is an anti-feature, something that > makes the mailing list more unpleasant and less useful. Anyone who has > regularly emailed to a large mailing list has surely experienced the > frustration of receiving bounce messages from perfect strangers. > > To anyone who wishes to defend the process of sending mailing list > bounces back the sender, ask yourself this: what do YOU do with such > bounces when you receive them? If you ignore them or delete them (whether > manually or via a procmail recipe or some other automatic system) then > what benefit does the standard behaviour offer?
I think you misunderstand. He's referring to the Sender header, not the >From header. The messages the listbot sends out have a Sender header of "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" (supposing the subscriber's email address is [EMAIL PROTECTED]). Bounces should be directed to the bitbucket or list admin or whatever, not the user in the >From header. kring.com just has a broken mail server. -- -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list