[net.news] USENET sites that don't forward mail

dmmartindale (02/23/83)

Sites that forward news but bounce mail are really a pain, both to people
who try to reply to articles and for internal news functions like the
"senduuname" control.  Someone is probably going to think that we didn't
reply to the control and are thus down or nonexistent because of this:

	From watmath!utzoo!decvax!harpo!MAILER-DAEMON Wed Feb 23 01:59:04 1983
	Date: Tue Feb 22 02:18:27 1983
	To: decvax!utzoo!watmath!watcgl!uucp
	Subject: Unable to deliver mail
	
	   ----- Transcript of session follows -----
	
	   ----- Unsent message follows -----
	Date: Mon Feb 21 08:12:15 1983
	To: watmath!utzoo!decvax!harpo!npoiv!hou5f!hou5b!hou5c!hou5e!hou5a!hou5d!houxz!ihnp4!laidbak!trsvax!gordon
	Subject: response to your senduuname request
	Subject: edited uuname output enclosed
	watdaisy
	watmath
	
	
I'll bet that in many cases it would cost the site less to forward the mail
than to mail it back to its author, and it certainly costs sites on the
mailback path to forward it back to the author.