LSTOWN-L Archives

LISTSERV List Owners' Forum

LSTOWN-L

Options: Use Monospaced Font
Show Text Part by Default
Show All Mail Headers

Topic: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]

Print Reply
Nathan Brindle <[log in to unmask]>
Fri, 16 Oct 1998 13:18:31 EDT
text/plain (20 lines)
Sorry, but this is not a bug (it is at most a feature).  If we were
to change this it would go against years of previous usage not only
by LISTSERV but by just about every other serious list management
application on the Internet.  The convention has been for years that
to contact the list owner you write to listname-request.  All LISTSERV
administrative mail that expects a reply to the list owners is set up
so that replies should point back to these addresses.  It is unfortunate
that some badly-implemented mail packages pick up the RFC821 MAIL FROM:
address as the originator of the mail for reply purposes (as opposed to
bounce purposes, which is what that field is supposed to be used for),
but some people write mail programs without regard for standards.  We
adhere to standards and listname-request is (if not a standard per se)
at least the customary address to which people should write if they
want to get hold of the list owners.  If I'm not mistaken (and I may
be) the -request convention actually predates LISTSERV.  In any case
the first reference to it in LISTSERV history seems to be in the release
notes for version 1.7d, and I'm sure it originated before that.

Nathan

ATOM RSS1 RSS2