At 02:38 PM 12/29/00 -0500, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
Lots of people keep saying "Gee, well, exchange lets you turn off
sending out of office messages to the internet. That's the problem --
misconfiguration." Why is this next message NOT an example of
misconfiguration?
...
It is not an example of misconfiguration because I NEVER SENT ED KLEIN
A MESSAGE. I sent a message to an exploder.
Maybe, and yes.
You DID sent the message and it DID go to Ed. Ed got it from you.
Although there is a line of argument that, actually, Ed got it from the
mailing list service, the typical end-user view is that the message came
from you and that the list service is just a convenient enhancement to the
transfer service. (Here I am talking about end-users and not email
technical architecture.)
That's how we get to the behavior that sends automatic responses to
messages. Send them to the From. Without qualification.
The error, then, is really that the software has not been made to pay
proper attention to a broader range human realities.
The rule "if the recipient is not cited in the
message header To or CC (and if there is no BCC)
then do not sent an automatic response" embodies
the distinction between personal mail and bulk mail.
It is a heuristic, but a good one. (A local project mailing list might
want the vacation notice, but probably not.)
So, it is NOT a configuration error, in that the software is doing a
user-to-user service, without having the proper behavior for typical
user-to-user message situations. MAYBE it is a configuration error in that
it might be ok to have a configuration switch controlling this.
And that said, it's clear we need a standard covering automated responses.
THEN it will quite clearly NOT be a matter of configuration...
d/
=-=-=-=-=
Dave Crocker <dcrocker(_at_)brandenburg(_dot_)com>
Brandenburg Consulting <www.brandenburg.com>
Tel: +1.408.246.8253, Fax: +1.408.273.6464