DEAN@Usc-Ecl@sri-unix (09/04/82)
From: Jeff Dean <DEAN@Usc-Ecl> Date: 1 Sep 1982 0134-PDT During the past week or so, I sent out a couple of messages to these mailing lists. Ever since then, I have been inundated with messages from mailer daemons and the like, complaining about things like "service not available" or "service refused" or "unknown mailbox" or some other such problem. ALL of these messages have come from sites on CSNET or uucp. I'd like to make a request and ask a question. Request: PLEASE help keep mailing lists up to date. If your account is removed, please let the mailing list maintainers know. Also, if a site is removed from a routing table, please make sure that this information is propagated. Question: With CSNET and uucp networks growing continually expanding, this seems like a real problem. If I send a message to an individual, then yes, I want to hear about delivery problems. If I send a message to a mailing list, then I don't want to hear about all the stuff that is undeliverable. There has got to be some way of minimizing this problem - maybe by returning such messages to the mailing list maintainer, or maybe (even better) improving the reliability and robustness of the networks. The Arpanet doesn't seem to have these problems (though of course, DoD has spent millions to achieve this). Does anyone have ideas that might solve this problem (especially ideas that could be put to work "today")? Drowning in a sea of messages (and this message may only make it worse), Jeff -------
wmartin (09/08/82)
The ARPANET DOES indeed have just the same sort of problems; there has been quite a bit of discussion about the problem and ways to fix/avoid it on ARPANET lists like MSGGROUP. Essentially, it requires an intelligent-enough mailing-list automatic forwarding mechanism which will generate the proper entries (in ARPANET message headers, at least) which show the "List-request" address as the source, so auto replies about mail problems go there, but the "Reply-to" field contains the list name itself, so individuals' replies go to the list as is correct. If you are interested and can get to the ARPANET, peruse the extensive MSGGROUP archives on USC-ECLC. The most recent discussion was in May and June, '82. Will Martin