Re: Out of office/vacation messages

["Laurence F. Sheldon, Jr." <larrysheldon () cox net>]

Mark Prior wrote:
> Why do so many supposedly clueful people have their vacation message
> system respond to mailing list email?
>
> Now I'll get to see who also doesn't keep a list of addresses that have
> already been sent the out of office message :-)

Among the ones I found when I looked into the question with some
rigor a few years ago were that mailing list traffic often no longer
has a useful "precedence" value that was used to screen such mail.

Another is the modern MUA and MUA-like programs don't know how to
use any of the intelligence available to make the determination, or
the interest in making it if the intelligence is there.

One of the fun things is dealing with an MTA pair that don't think
"time-to-live" applies to their important stuff that serve an MUA-like
device that is certain that every one will want to know the finest 
details if their important master's travels, no matter what.

In short--I don't think the protocol supports the notion of
"vacation auto responders" any more, and the mineset of the modern
customer is that their stuff is so important that surely everyone
will need to know all there is to know.