Re: Lyris

["John Buckman" <jbuckman @ shelby . com>]

> Unfortunately, this is a gratuitous rewriting of the original
> poster's message.  If I address mail to foo@somewhere.com, I
> expect messages to arrive at the user saying that.  If you wish
> to do address detection, put it in a user-defined header.

The main reason we rewrite the To: is that people often have
multiple email addresses, with forwarding instructions so that email
goes to different places it was originally sent.  In such a case, the
recipient of list-generated email message doesn't know what email
address is registered at the list server.

This causes a problem when a user wants to unsubscribe a mailing
list, because they are not sure what email address is subscribed. The
usual result is that the user writes the list owner asking to be
removed, and the list owner then has to figure out what email address
the person is subscribed with, and manually remove them (sometimes
this is quite difficult).  

If the user is list server savvy, they can do a search of the
subscriber list.  However, if you allow users to search the
subscriber files, you also end up allowing spammers to read the
subscriber list, and add all the members to their list (which, 
unfortunately, is a common practice).  That's why, with Lyris, we 
decided not to allow the "review" command to show the subscriber 
list.

Another common problem is caused when a person subscribes with one
email address, and then tries to post a message from a different
email address.  The list server doesn't know that they're the same
person, and cannot accept the posting.

If the person can no longer send mail from the originally subscribed 
address, that person once again writes the list admin, and asks that 
the old address be removed and the new one added.

Regardless of the various scenarios, list servers which put the
listname on the To: line have problems with people not knowing what
email address the list server knows them by, and in general, ask the
list admin to help them out.  If the list server can do something to 
help out, and save the list admin some time, it's probably worth 
trying.

So, we've done things differently, to try and fix this problem.  

By making the To: in each email message be who the message is being
sent to, the recipient is clear what email address the list server
knows them by.  Hopefully, the list admin will get a few less
personal requests.  If the user cannot send email from the old email
address, they can go to the web interface and change it. If Lyris
gets a posting from someone who's email address is not on the list,
but who's name, as extracted from the message header, is on the list,
Lyris will return the posting, but with a note that Lyris knows this
person by a different email address.  

Every approach has its good and bad sides.  We're trying to solve
one particular problem with how list servers work.  The compromise is
that the To: address is rewritten (and does not say the list name),
but we think the lower request load on the list admin is worth it.

> Do you realize that this basically breaks all incoming mail
> filtering that sorts messages based on recipient headers?  

The Reply-To:, Sender:, and X-Lyris-List: lines in the mail header 
all identify the mailing list, and can be read by most mail filtering 
programs.  

In my experience, the To: is not always the list name with other
list servers either.  For instance, the listname might be the CC:
address, and the To: might be the email address of the message being
replied to.  Or, the listname could be the BCC: address, in which
case it isn't even visible (even with other list servers).  My
personal experience has been that the Reply-To header is a reliable
way to filter incoming mail, and that works with Lyris well.

John 

john@shelby.com, Shelby Group Ltd., http://www.shelby.com/