ietf-822
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Re: IETF Draft: Good Mailing List Behaviour

1999-02-25 05:09:05
In <v04020a02b2f9946b849d(_at_)[130(_dot_)237(_dot_)150(_dot_)138]> Jacob Palme 
<jpalme(_at_)dsv(_dot_)su(_dot_)se> writes:


3.1.1 To Subscribe

Common commands are: sub, subscribe, join. Best is to support all of
them.

Sometimes the name of the requestor (not the e-mail address) is
specified after this command, for example "Subscribe Mary Woodfence".

Surely the common case where "subscribe" is followed by the email address
of the subscriber needs to be mentioned, especially when it turns out to
be different to the From address or the SMTP address. In such cases a
human needs to look at it. Note that there are often good reasons for this
to happen, such as when a subscriber intends to gateway the list into a
local newsgroup for his own convenience.

4.    Who may Post to a Mailing List

The checking on who may submit to a list is done on the SMTP sender of
the message, not on the names in From: or Sender: fields in the
heading.

What about messages arriving other than by SMTP (even uucp is still around
in some places)? In any case, if lists are nested, the SMTP address that
arrives may be from another list, whereas you may actually want to filter
according to the actual posters to that other list.

8.    Loop Control

I would have thought the simplest means of detecting a loop would be to
add a Resent-Message-ID header containing a msg-id in some easily
recognisable form. Or else a recognizable Resent-From or Resent-Sender.

10.   Header Munging

Apart from what is specifed in sections 8. Loop Control and 9. List
Headers, a mailing list expander should not in any way modify the
heading of a message. In particular, the list should not change the
Message-ID, not add "Resent-", "From:", "Sender:", "Auto-Submitted:"
or "Reply-To:". The practice to add the e-mail address of the list in
a "Reply-To:" header is common, but is not recommended. Instead, use
the "List-Post:" command from [RFC2369].

I don't think you can deprecate the addition of Resent-* headers when they
are explicitly blessed by DRUMS as the proper way to do things.

11.   Spam Control

Yes, but even more importantly you need to add a section on Mailbombing,
pointing out the desirability for subscription requests to be returned to
the subscriber for confirmation, preferably with a code to be sent back
with the confirmation.

12.   Groupware

Does groupware include gateways from Netnews? I think these are common
enough that some explicit mention is necessary.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
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