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Date: | Mon, 19 Jul 1993 17:15:13 +0200 |
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listname-request is a very old Internet convention for the standardized
mailbox to which one should send all administrative requests. It can be
argued whether "subscribe foobar" is an administrative request or a
command, but one thing that is clear is that "Hello, my name is Joe Smith
and I work at the <....> Thanks in advance!" is definitely a valid
administrative request, and deserves a better answer than "Unknown
command - HELLO". Unfortunately, a number of list managers alias these
mailboxes to the command processor, sometimes with a filter that tries to
detect English requests and pass them to the list owner, sometimes
without. LISTSERV is used in at least 37 countries, with a corresponding
number of natural languages, and many LISTSERV users have mail systems
which insert a letterhead-looking header at the top of the mail message,
with the person's snail-mail address, phone number, and so on. This means
you can't base your filter just on the first line, if you want to support
people with Macs or All-in-One or PROFS. On the other hand, a normal
letter is not unlikely to contain something that looks like a valid
command in the first 20 lines or so. I have already proposed a separate
convention such as listname-processor or listname-manager, which would
provide a standardized way for users to send commands without having to
know the name of the mailing list manager while removing this ambiguity,
but of course all I can do is suggest.
Eric
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