As a list owner of a number of active lists I get these kinds of messages
regularly.  Since all the mail comes to my mailbox anyway, I use a
combination of procmail and a perl filter to separate such messages.  When I
catch one, the perl filter automatically sends a command to
listserv to set the offender to NOMAIL.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mitch Rerek" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, July 30, 2002 11:10 AM
Subject: Re: Out of office replies (again)


> Russ,
> We have a similar problem here with 'vacation rules'. Our email of choice
is GroupWise(GW). What we have done here is to mount a campaign to educate
end users about 'looping'. At least with GW there is a way of setting up
rules to prevent bounce looping of mail to a list.
> Our problem is when 'outsiders' cause the loop.
> Content filters can help as well as Pete points out but I'm not educated
enough to speak about them intelligently.
> >From what I have read (pg 44 of 1.8e manual) you setup a content filter
to catch several types of instances of auto generated messages. These
include 'out of office', 'on vacation', 'auto reply', etc. The documentation
explains a way of setting up a default template for all lists so that
individual list owners don't have to worry about it. It is a matter of
parsing the subject field for different types of auto generated responses.
> Obviously the other solution is to let the user be 'served off'. Perhaps
this the easiest :)
>
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------
> Mitch Rerek
> Senior Information Technology Consultant
> West Virginia University
> [log in to unmask]
> -------------------------------------------------
>
> >>> [log in to unmask] 07/30/02 9:03:03 AM >>>
> I'm having trouble understanding what Listserv does with these.
>
> Some of them come to me as listowner, identified as errors, of a
> couple of kinds -- sometimes "The enclosed message has been
> identified as a delivery error for the xxx list because it was
> sent to [log in to unmask]"; sometimes because "mail
> origin is listed in  the "Filter=" list header keyword (or its
> default value for the xxx list)."
>
> Some go to the original poster, as Pete suggests:
>
> > If a poster to a list receives an OOO from a subscriber, then
> > indeed, you would not be able to control that via automated
> > facilities.  From time-to-time, YOU should post some
> > productive or administrative message to the list and
> > "experience" these first hand.
>
> And, at least once in the last month, one was distributed to the
> entire list and stored in the archive.  I can't see what the
> factors are that determine what happens when people set these
> things up, and I'd like to be able to advise them how to do it
> to cause the least inconvenience.  Where is this documented?
> Has anybody else run into this?
>
> -- Russ
> St. Thomas University
> http://www.StThomasU.ca/~hunt/
>
>