I've received  a question  that had  been forwarded thrice,  and to  so many
people, that I've decided  to reply to the list instead  of keying in hundreds
of [log in to unmask]
 
  The problem was  that someone sent mail  to the SAS-L list and  got an error
mailfile from some VAX node complaining about some !E-MAIL%whahahaha%nianiania
error parsing  '::VAXD!SDEZRG!%' (it probably  means 'Disk full' or  'Coke has
been  poured in  the CPU'  but  VAXes always  have  a funny  way of  conveying
messages  to human  (?) people).  Anyway  the problem  was not  the VAX  error
itself, but the fact that it had been forwarded to the 'From:' address instead
of the 'Sender:' field.
 
  From my past  experience with the BITNIC  lists, back in the  days when they
were running  BITNIC's code, you  were almost  certain to receive  about three
such notices  when sending  mail to  XMAILER or  MAIL-L or  LINKFAIL. Notably,
there  was some  user called  CHAMPAIGN at  some node  I have  forgotten which
always caused  a rejection  notice to  be bounced  to me.  It would  seem that
*some* VAX  mail packages have  their own  understanding of RFC822  and bounce
mail back  to the 'From:' address  (maybe only when  the moon is in  its third
phase).  Anyway I  don't think  it's  a LISTSERV  problem --  if the  mailfile
received by the  VAX site had the  proper person in the  'From:' and 'Sender:'
fields, it's the mailer's fault.
 
  Eric