On Thu, 6 Aug 1992 20:22:30 +0200 Eric Thomas said:
>>  Subject: LSTOWN-L: error from ALBERT.PHYSICS.ARIZONA.EDU
>>    or     LSTOWN-L: bounce from ALBERT.PHYSICS.ARIZONA.EDU
>>                     ----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|
>>                             10        20        30        40
>
>"Error from"  sounds vague, "bounce" is  list owner jargon. Once  we have
>removed everything, some people will still complain that they only see 23
>characters and we should  remove the list name :-) At  least you now have
>the address in the mail header, and don't need to scroll forward.
 
Point taken.  It was just a thought.  There must be a good pithy word for
these messages.  "trash from..."?  "grief from"?  "whine from"??
(I exclude some perfectly good short Anglo-Saxon words as being offensive
to some readers. :-)  "problem at"?
 
>>Also,  can  we have  something  similar  for  bounces of  messages  from
>>LISTSERV itself unrelated to any  list (bounced to postmasters)? Perhaps
>>the same format with "LISTSERV:" instead of "listname:" (since you can't
>>have a list woth the same name as the server).
>
>Do you get many of these?  "LISTSERV: error report from DAH.EDU" does not
>sound very straightforward. The mail comes  from LISTSERV, so why does it
>start  with "LISTSERV:"?  Many postmasters  don't run  any list,  so they
>wouldn't understand the logic.
 
Do I get many?  Oh, yes.  Our LISTSERV gets a lot of file requests, many from
site behind email gateways with pitifully small mail size limits, and may more
with unusable return addresses.  Unfortunately, when no file (or no response
at all) comes back, many users just submit the request again.  At least when
list-related bounces have another subject, the "Delivery error message sent to"
subject will mean the bounce was directly back to LISTSERV, even if I don't see
the bounce location.  (List-related bounces directed to LISTSERV, like
new-subscriber messages for illegal addresses, will use the list-related
subject, I assume.  My question was only about bounces which cannot be
associated with any particular list and so go to the postmasters.  However,
without looking at the code I would have guessed that it would be easier to
change all "Delivery error message sent to <...>" messages to "<...>: error..."
messages without special-casing LISTSERV.)
 
--Mark