On 20 Feb 2001, at 13:11, Fred Karp wrote:

>Someone goes out on the road for a week or three and wants an autoreply to
>his or her email.  We want first either to set that person to NoMAIL for
>each list or to exclude those lists from the autoreply.

This discussion probably needs an "autoresponder" list to move to but....

I think a well-designed autoresponder should send mail to defined "safe"
or desirable recipients _only_, as opposed to the existing crocks that
I'm aware of that respond to everything except (maybe) clearly ID'ed
"not-safe" recipients.  Screening messages with an RFC821 "from:" that
starts "owner-" will screen all LSoft Listserv messages, even obscure
or forgotten ones in other domains.  But then you have lists transmitted
by Majordomo, Listproc, PostOffice etc plus Cousin Remus wrote-it-hisself
that get inappropriate (possibly loop inducing) responses.  And the usual
non-list inappropriate recipients of auto-responders like spammers (bounce)
forgers (possible loops) and creepy people who decide to drop by your home
to play with your stuff while you're on vacation.

                                                        -Kary