The documentation you seek is to be found in the user manuals for each of the hundreds of different mail reader clients in use hither and thither all over the electronic universe.  If you can find out exactly what version and release and patch level of which particular product each of your subscribers uses to read your lists, and take the time to become expert yourself in all of those products, then you can advise - supposing, of course, that every potential user of an auto-reply option is actually able to tell you correctly what their product really is, and also follow correctly the advice given.  And supposing that they consult you in advance of turning on their vacation reply option.  And that they actually care enough about what happens, to bother with reading your advice in the first place.

It is a war that cannot be won . . . perhaps a battle here and there . . .  but so long as software producers are allowed to distribute programs with silly and/or bizarre and/or stupid and/or incorrect logic in them . . . well, nevermind, the conclusion I was going to describe just isn't pretty.  And since there is no 'training requirement' for buying and using a personal computer and subscribing to various online services, the results are often about the same as if there were no minimum competency criteria for a motor vehicle driver's license - at least the driver test keeps many of the idiots off the highway some of the time.

>>> [log in to unmask] 07/30/02 09:03AM >>>
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?