[META] Out of Office Replies to List Contributions

The email I just sent to the list produced four "out of office" replies,
the first two, at least, from Microsoft email software.

It is important that anyone who is subscribed to a public mailing list 
should disable auto-replies for that mailing list.  Although the 
W3C mailing lists set many headers that would stop competent email
programs from auto-responding, the only way to do this with Outlook/
Exchange is to craft individual rules.  In particular, the W3C lists
set:

Precedence: list

but Microsoft don't honour this because it is not in a (standards track?)
RFC (or at least that was what was once claimed).

For the common Microsoft email software, the only simple approach is to
unsubscribe from all mailing lists, or not turn on auto-responses.

The auto-response typically give out company structure information and
the likelihood that the person's home will be unattended.  They typically
fail to give adequate alternative contact information, e.g. they fail to
give email addresses or they give national phone numbers, without clearly
indicating the country, or even just extension numbers.

One moderated mailing list that used to have upwards of 80 responses 
switched to reply to list and will unsubscribe anyone who auto-responds.

Received on Sunday, 21 August 2005 08:27:22 UTC