gnu@sun.UUCP (John Gilmore) (11/11/83)
If the news<->mail gateway would add "Errors-To: Unix-Emacs-Request@wherever" to the headers of newsitems which are being posted to the Arpanet, at least the volume of garbage coming back would be returned. If Sendmail can't deliver a message, and it contains an Errors-To line, it gets sent there rather than to the poor submitter. Of course, if the mailer which has trouble is not Sendmail, we're out of luck. Arpanet folks who maintain redistribution lists (eg, Unix-Emacs) are encouraged to add this line to each message you redistribute, too. And if many mailing lists start using Errors-To:, maybe some of the mailers other than sendmail will get modified to use it. Then we would all be happier.
knutsen@sri-unix.UUCP (11/22/83)
The ARPAnet has a specific mechanism for designating an error
recipient; the information is passed by the SMTP mail transfer
protocol, and is kept out of the message. The Usenet <> ARPAnet
gateway for net.emacs currently sets this to an appropriate mailbox.
However, not all sites on the net pay attention to this data.
Due to the public inconvenience this causes, most (including the one
the message in question came from, I think) are making some effort to
fix things up. Expecting a site which does not honor the SMTP return
address (part of the official protocol) to parse "Errors-To:" seems a
bit unreasonable...
Andrew Knutsen
knutsen @ sri-unix
{ sri-unix, vortex } !paral-a!andrew