[Web4lib] Vacation messages

[Michael Silver]

Howdy,

I sent this to David and forgot to include the list...

> Getting an Out of Office post on a listserv is a personal pet peeve
> of mine. I hate the messages in general, even within my workplace, 
<snip>

I'm split on the issue. If I send an email to someone who is on
vacation, I like to know they aren't going to get it for a couple of
weeks so I can contact someone else if it's a matter that can't wait. On
the flip side, that doesn't apply to list traffic.

> One of the problems may be that many of us are using Microsoft
> Outlook.
<snip>

As much as I dislike Microsoft, I can't blame them for this one.
Historically, vacation messages were sent if there was a vacation file
in the user's home directory. There wasn't any processing beyond "Does
the file exist? If so, send it." It's not a client thing, it's a server
thing (although Outlook will automatically respond if it's configured to
do so and is left running on a workstation while the user is away). I've
never worked with Exchange so I can't speak to it.

The best solution would be to set up the server to skip sending
automated responses to messages with a Precedence: header of bulk or
list. I've never explored that option in detail. 

HEY! I just googled - you can easily configure Mailman to treat messages
with Precedence: bulk headers as spam, and simply drop them! In Privacy
options -> Spam filters, add a rule that matches Precedence: bulk to
various actions - hold for approval, defer, reject, discard or accept.
This should catch most (if not all) vacation messages. 

The downside is it may cause announcement messages to also be discarded.
However, if there are limited companies or people that post
announcements wanted on the list, they can be added as spam rules above
the Precedence: bulk rule to allow them to go through. List admins,
would this work for web4lib?

What I've done is to set up a second address specifically for lists. On
the other hand, I also forgot to change one of my lists so I recently
sent a vacation message to ipac-l because I used the wrong address for
it. Using the above setting in mailman would catch user errors like
that.

Michael

Michael Silver, Network Advisor
Parkland Regional Library
5404 56 Avenue Lacombe, AB T4L 1G1
Phone: 403.782.3850    Fax: 403.782.4650
http://www.prl.ab.ca/  msilver at prl.ab.ca