On Mon, 21 Aug 2006, Xinxin Wu wrote:

>We configured a bottom banner for HMTL posting and plain text posting.
>However, when people start to reply to a posted message, the bottom banner
>gets added for each reply. At the end, we have messages with multiple bottom
>banners, which are somewhat annoying and ugly. Is there a way to only
>include bottom banner once no matter how many time a message has been
>replied?

I dealt with this problem many years ago by writing a Listserv exit.
Basically, each post is run through a C program and Unix scripts that
looks for various things, such as, banned subjects, excessive quoting,
braindead mailers that spit postings back to the list, out-of-office
messages, etc. One of the things it checks for is the number of bottom
banners. If it's two or more, the item is rejected and the subscriber is
emailed a rejection notice. The code/scripts have gotten a little complex
over the years, but it works and keeps my list clean. Unfortunately,
you have to be a Listserv maintainer to install an exit.

A solution for you and other list owners is to be more strict! I find many
list owners don't set down rules and stick to them. Basically, they let
the subscribers do what they want. Not on my lists!  They know the rules.
You send an out-of-office notice to a subscriber, you get set to NOMAIL.
If your site's mailer starts sending me excessive nuisance notices, you
get unsubscribed until your admins fix their mailer. You bounce mail
because your inbox is full, you get set to NOMAIL. It sounds strict, but I
have 4000+ subscribers with over 200 posts per day. Just one subscriber
with a full mailbox, gets me 200 bounces in MY inbox per day.  Lay down
the law. Advise your subscribers that replying with out stripping out
excessive text, will get them 1 warning, and then the next violation they
get set to NOPOST or REVIEW. Be consistent and they will conform.

Darren Evans-Young
IBM-MAIN List Owner, 20th Anniversary
The University of Alabama