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]
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>>> [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/