Date: Tue, 02 Jan 1996 10:30:10 -0500
From: John C Klensin <klensin@mail1.reston.mci.net>
Subject: Re: Header to label lists (was untitled)
To: Eric Thomas <ERIC@LSOFT.COM>
Cc: drums@cs.utk.edu
Message-id: <0DKK8EK60000BN@a4.jck.com>
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At 09:24 1/2/96 -0500, Eric Thomas wrote:
>You  can identify  that a  message has  been through  a mailing  list (as
>opposed to  a multi-user  alias like  your average  'postmaster' address,
>which isn't really a mailing list)  by looking at the Return-Path: field.
>For a mailing list it will  be either owner-xxx, xxx-request or xxx-owner
>in all but a  few very rare cases. This works today  and is as widespread
>as your new tag is ever likely to get. The reason vacation programs don't
>handle mailing lists well is that they haven't been updated since the day
>they were first compiled. I don't see how a new header would help.

I tend to agree with Eric (and Keith and Harald)...

(1) The heuristic above is likely to work much better, for a long time if
not forever, than inventing a new header and trying to guess whether the new
header is absent because
  * it isn't a list
or
  * the list-generator hasn't been updated to generate that header.

(2) This is out of scope for DRUMS

     john