[Mailman-Users] Handling Auto-Receipt Notifications

[Mark Sapiro]

Richi Plana wrote:
>
>I'm setting up Mailman for an organization where it's common practice to
>have mail user agents automatically send back receipt notifications. In
>other words, there's no getting around auto-receipt notification.


Bummer :-(


>How does one handle the case where a subscriber's MUA automatically
>sends Receipt replies to each email received including emails from
>mailing lists? I've gone through the admin configuration scripts and
>can't seem to find anything. Closest I found was in the Bounce options.


To what address is the auto-receipt sent?

If it is the envelope sender or the Sender: header, there may or may
not be a problem. The receipt will go to the listname-bounces address
and will be handled as a bounce. As long as it isn't VERPed, it will
likely be unrecognized and will be discarded or forwarded to the list
owner depending on bounce_unrecognized_goes_to_list_owner. If it is
VERPed, it will be scored as a bounce for the VERPed address, which is
a problem.

If, as is more likely, it is sent to the Reply-To: or From:, it is a
problem for the poster who gets all the receipts or for whatever the
Reply-To: might be set to.

In short, there's not really anything you can do with Mailman settings
to compensate for this except turning off
bounce_unrecognized_goes_to_list_owner in the one case where this
might help.

The real solution is to train the recipient MUA to not send a receipt
for "Precedence: list" mail, or as long as the list is not fully
personalized, to not send a receipt for mail of which the recipient is
not a direct addressee. Or better yet, not send receipts at all.	

-- 
Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net>        The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan