Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!gatech!bbn!diamond.bbn.com!mlandau
From: mlandau@bbn.com (Matt Landau)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: Posting for the rest of us
Message-ID: <10944@jade.BBN.COM>
Date: 7 May 88 01:03:43 GMT
References:  <4203@dasys1.UUCP> <259@ateng.UUCP>
Reply-To: mlandau@bbn.com (Matt Landau)
Organization: BBN Laboratories Incorporated, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 25
Keywords: piontlessness and commonality

In news.misc (<259@ateng.UUCP>), chip@ateng.UUCP (Chip Salzenberg) writes:
>I get at least 50% success on replies.  Part of it is examining the message
>before I send it.  Sometimes I get stupidities like:
>
>	To: foobar@xyzzy.UNM.EDU.UUCP
>
>If you can't R)eply, complain to your postmaster!  Making it work (mostly!)
>is his job.

Actually, in a case like this, I'd say "Complain to usenet@xyzzy.unm.edu"
and tell him or her that the local news system is generating bogus headers.
There are a tremendous number of sites that just can't seem to get their
acts together well enough to generate sensible From: lines in the first
place.  Rather than try to get the replying site to compensate for brain
damaged senders, let's all put pressure on the senders make sure their
news installations are doing things correctly.

Of course, this still doesn't deal with things like mixed-mode addresses 
in the From: or Path: lines or mailers that don't grok internet style 
addresses or uucp-style addresses.  THESE are issues to discuss with your
local Postmaster -- if you can't reply to a properly-formed From: line,
then your mail system is arguably broken.
--
 Matt Landau	       Let not a man glory in this: that he loves his country.
 mlandau@bbn.com        Let him glory rather in this: that he loves his kind.