From: Rick McGowan (rick@unicode.org)
Date: Sat Nov 02 2002 - 14:11:17 EST
Thomas Lotze <thomas.lotze@uni-jena.de> wrote on 2002-11-02 00:56:14 -0800:
> Hi,
>
> is there a reason mails from the Unicode list don't have a Reply-To
> header pointing to unicode@unicode.org? Sorry to those who have received
> private mail from me which was actually meant for the list...
>
> Cheers, Thomas
>
For what it's worth... an explanation. The mail server takes about 3
seconds (wall time) to receive a message and blast it out to the whole
list. Reply-to, if present in a list message and interpreted by a broken
sender -- e.g., a dumb vacation program or invalid account reply or some
such bounce message -- can result in huge snarling mail loops that
inconvenience hundreds or thousands of users and clog the server. Such
things have happened before, historically, when this list did have a
Reply-to header that went to the list. If some human isn't monitoring the
list in real-time when such a situation occurs, it can result in hundreds
or thousands of looping messages to the list within a matter of an hour. In
the past this has resulted in pretty wild traffic jams on several
occasions, and more than once it has taken more than a day to cleanse the
loops and return traffic to normal.
We don't do that any more.
Rick
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 14:42:23 EST