Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!mcnc!rti!talos!kjones
From: kjones@talos.UUCP (Kyle Jones)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.headers
Subject: Re: Mail header wishlist
Summary: Errors-To: not universally supported
Message-ID: <359@talos.UUCP>
Date: 2 Dec 88 14:27:20 GMT
References: <1005@asylum.sf.ca.us>  <2696@sultra.UUCP> <1320@ksuvax1.cis.ksu.edu> 
Reply-To: kjones@talos.UUCP (Kyle Jones)
Organization: Philip Morris Research Center, Richmond, VA
Lines: 19

In  Karl Kleinpaste writes:
[concerning Bounced-By: header]
>That would be unnecessary if mailing lists would all make sure that,
>when distributing out to the list's recipients, an Errors-To:
>listname-request@listname-host-machine header were included.

This works only if everyone runs a mailer that supports this header.
There is no mention of Errors-To: in RFC822.  Sendmail claims to
support this header, but smail (2.5) certainly does not.  I say
'claims' because I recently had a mailing list that I run flooded with
returned mail from a host running sendmail.  An Errors-To: line was
present in the message in question.

For my money, the right way to avoid bounced mail hitting an entire
mailing list is to make the From: header say -request
instead of .  This means that recipients must edit the To:
line if they want to reply to the list, but that's a small price to pay.

kyle jones      ...!uunet!talos!kjones