Re: Mailing list readership (was: Re: lynx-dev How to Lynx)

[David Woolley]

> 
> x.  the precedence header.  it has been in use for decades now.  it was
>     designed to be meaningful in the context of UUCP, where it
> differentiated between urgent and not-so-urgent items.  given a certain

It's more subtle than that, and comes from military messaging.  I think it
is more to do with what you are allowed to discard under overload.

> x.  mail-followup-to.  this header, together with reply-to, implements

I repeat.  Which standards track RFC (or preferabley STD) defines this?
Microsoft take the position that they are only obligated to implement
things that their marketing people request or which are in starndards to
which they claim to conform.  Experimental RFCs and de-facto standards
don't count here.

> i've been operating an automatic rejecter to tell people to keep off my

As I said before, automatic rejectors should never use header addresses.
The envelope address is the only safe one to use, although even that 
will get you removed from lists if you auto-respond to list postings.

Moreover, as most HTML email is likely to be spam, any automatic 
response is dangerous (although envelope sender has to be OK, because
non-delivery reports are likely for any spamming) because addresses are
normally chosen to defeat filters, not to give a true address (the
most effective spammers use phone numbers for that).   More generally,
any technique that will inhibit spam blocking will be spoofed by
spammers to avoid that blocking.


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