[Mailman-Users] mailing list address

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Benjamin_Joyner at ao.uscourts.gov writes:

 > When I send a message out through the mailing list, the "sent by"
 > address alwayse seems to be "listname-bounces at hostname".  Is it
 > possible to remove the "bounces apendation from the sent name so
 > that it only shows listname at hostname?

It's technically possible, but you really don't want to do that,
because then all the various automatically-generated admin traffic,
which now can be automatically handled *because* "listname-bounces"
is a different mailbox, will be distributed to list members.[1]

The underlying issue is that the mail clients your list members are
using are poorly behaved by design (they do things differently from
all other clients in the history of email).  What well-behaved mail
clients do is display the From field (the actual author), and suppress
the Sender field and the envelope sender.[2]

I wish I could recommend switching email programs (they're most likely
Microsoft products, which are an attractive nuisance in several ways),
but it's not worth it.



Footnotes: 
[1]  Strictly speaking some of it will get caught by the "administrivia"
filter and the list owner will have to deal with it.  But it's pretty
much certain that a fair amount will make it through to the members,
confusing and annoying them, and possibly revealing somewhat private
information like So-and-so isn't reading their mail and their mailbox
overflowed.

[2]  This behavior makes a lot of sense, it's not just traditional.
It's quite analogous to the way that secretaries discretely indicate
that they sign routine correspondence on behalf of their bosses by
appending a slash and their initials (in lower case, even).  What
Microsoft email programs do is the equivalent of the secretary signing
letters with

             Lowly Secretary on behalf of Bigname Lawyer

Of course it's possible to find out the sinder information (with a
halfway decent mail program, anyway), but you only want to do that
when you're having mail problems.