Have any of you had any experience with message wars between LISTSERV
and MULTICS at MIT?  I know (sort of) what happened- when I got a
mailing back from a list I run, I deleted the recipient from the list.
Since I didn't do a QUIET DELETE (stupid me!) LISTSERV sent a file
directly to the user.  GATEWAY@MULTICS bounced the file back to the
sender/from, LISTSERV, which tried to interpret it as a command file.
It sent a rejection to GATEWAY, which rejected it and sent it back to
LISTSERV, until after 10 turns, LISTSERV said, "Enough!"
 
To make matters worse, MULTICS sends rejected mail back in two parts:
an explanation, and the offending note.  So LISTSERV was actually
getting back and rejecting two notes for each note it sent out, and
since the explanation has a slightly different from than the actual
offending note that gets returned, LISTSERV was warring with two
"accounts" at MULTICS.
 
I don't know how common this sort of war with MULTICS is; certainly
I'll try to be more careful about dealing with MULTICS.  Mostly, this
note is an informational posting, not a call for action or anything.
If this problem is common, then perhaps we ought to try to figure
out how to beat it.
 
Nick