--On Friday, February 22, 2002 11:01 AM -0500 Dave <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> If not, is there at least some specifics I can give my subscribers
> about why it is their fault that this is happening?

Here is L-Soft's stance on this problem:

http://www.lsoft.com/manuals/owner-faq.stm#16

In my experience, there are some very well-behaving vacation programs
(autoresponders) and some very poor-behaving ones.  Typically, the
ones that are UNIX-based (vacation, procmail, etc.) are designed to
send the response back to the appropriate address and they maintain
a local database to prevent more than a single response going to the
same return address.  On the other hand, most of the "corporate" mail
systems (i.e. Exchange, Notes, Groupwise, etc.) are almost always
responsible for generating loops or sending responses to the address
listed in the From address, which is incorrect -- it should be the
address in the SMTP envelope (the one which the user doesn't see).

I think it is the subscriber's responsibility to do one of these:

1)  Don't use vacation programs at all.  There are no standards
    for them, they cause more problems than they are worth, and
    they typically annoy many people who don't care where you are.

2)  If you have to use one, make sure it is sophisticated enough
    to take measures to prevent mail loops and send its replies
    to the appropriate return address.

3)  Set your mailing lists to NOMAIL when you go on vacation.

Ultimately, if they refuse to do any of these, then it is the
list owner's responsibility to disable them in one of several
ways -- REVIEW, NOMAIL, SERVE OFF, UNSUB, etc. -- until they
return from vacation or comply with the above responsibilities.

Alan