Bounce messages when you post

[Alan Deikman <alan@electra.znyx.com>]

Hello, everyone.  I just got back from Interop and had 999 messages
in my inbox, so if you have been trying to reach me please be patient.

I got several messages from posters complaining about getting bounce
messages when they post to pci-sig.  Unfortunately, there is little I
can do about it other than cause the list software to completely strip
the poster's e-mail address from the header.

It seems that there is no 'bounce message' standard that everyone
follows.  Each pci-sig posting generates an average of about 12-20 
bounce messages which end up in MY inbox; a big fraction of the 999 
total above.  (I don't have to deal with them normally -- they get
filtered by my Eudora mailer).  The bounce messages you see when
YOU post are from the various mail software systems in use that
send bounce messages back to just about any address in the headers
that it can find, rather than just the usual "Reply-To:" header
that is set to pci-sig-request@znyx.com by the list software.

This is also the reason why the "Reply-To:" header is not set
to the posting address, pci-sig@znyx.com.  Otherwise it would be
difficult to filter bounce messages from getting posted to the
list.  Just one failure would then in turn generate even more 
bounce messages in a positive-feedback loop, and everyone would
get them all!

The mailing list software waits for several bounces from the same
address before automatically removing it from the list.  This is to
keep temporary problems on the 'net from deleting otherwise good 
addresses.  Currently there are about 1500+ on the list, and the
current bounce rate is actually considered normal.

So for now, bounce messages are simply an overhead we have to bear
from posting to pci-sig!

Regards,

--------------------------------
  Alan Deikman, ZNYX Corporation
  alan@znyx.com
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