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.