Re: What's happening with Majordomo

[Robert Houk - SMCC Bos Desktop Hardware <rdh@UrQ.East.Sun.COM>]

   > Has everyone else been getting lots of double postings?  I've also been

   Dan's on vacation. Steve Buchholz and I are filling in.

   I have seen a couple of double-posts, but this has been an
   ongoing problem for many moons. I don't think anything out
   of the ordinary is happening.

First, make sure that you aren't simply receiving two separate replies
(one post and one email). Check the mail header, and see if "you" are
explicitly named in the "To:" or "Cc:" headers. For example, by simply
"r"eplying to this quattro list mail message, my mailer automatically
replies to all of the original "people" involved. In this particular
case, that is:

 To: duane@zk3.dec.com
 CC: rmyers@wvit.wvnet.edu, quattro@coimbra.ans.net

The original sender was M. Duane, originally addressed to M. Myers, with
the quattro list "cc"ed, as shown by the original mail's headers:

 Return-Path: <owner-quattro@coimbra.ans.net>
 X-Authentication-Warning: coimbra.ans.net: majordom set sender to owner-quattro using -f
 From: Andrew Duane USG/PE <duane@zk3.dec.com>
 Subject: Re: What's happening with Majordomo
 To: rmyers@wvit.wvnet.edu (Robert Myers)
 Date: Wed, 14 Aug 1996 10:45:13 -0500 (EDT)
 Cc: quattro@coimbra.ans.net (Quattro List)

This is fairly typical of mailers. What it means is that unless I take
explicit manual action to remove M.s duane and rmyers from *MY* outgoing
mail "reply", they will each receive quantity:one email directly from me,
and quantity:one email courtesy of the quattro mailing list. Voila, the
proverbial "duplicate" mailing. Typically, I [try to remember to] re-
move all the extraneous folks from my replies, thus addressing solely the
quattro list; sometimes I misremember to so do, and so a few [un]lucky
folks will get two copies of my "reply". In the particular case of this
reply, I have explicitly left M.s duane and rmyers on the reply, to de-
monstrate what I mean. They will each receive two copies of my reply,
whilst everyone else on the quattro list (myself included) should only
receive one email (this message) from me.

If you look more deeply into the mail message headers (your mailer per-
mitting...), you can typically distinguish the two cases. For example,
from the original message headers above, the "Return-path:" field will
clearly identify the actual sender as the quattro list, as distinct from
the "From:", "To:", and "Cc:" folks.

   As for the entire digest contents being reposted with a few
   lines of reply, many people do this. It has been commented on
   before as being somewhat rude and wasteful.

Common courtesy (and netiquette) is that folks should trim the reply
inclusions to be enough text to form the context of the reply (usually
indented, prefixed with ">" characters, or otherwise set off from the
reply text itself). Usually, this is a few to several lines, and not
the whole ******* original mail message. Some people are just plain
idiots, or just plain rude. However, I have seen at least one (stupid
PC) mail program that includes the entire original without telling
you, so all you "see on the screen" is the reply text, and not the
original message . . .

All of the above is not to say that mailing lists ("the computer")
don't sometimes burp or perform other socially-undesireable actions
(like sending a reply to everybody on the list for each body on the
list...n-squared emails flooding the net...**it happens...), but more
often than not, the root determinate is still the human driving the
whole process.

Personally, I wholeheartedly encourage people to engage the brain before
putting the fingers in gear! (Go back and reread the entire message you
are about to post...is it really what you want to post?)

					-RDH