[Mailman-Users] Out of the Office Mailman-Users Digest, Vol 42, Issue 27

Your out-of-office auto-reply went out to the entire mailing list.
This is not appropriate.

I've set you to NOMAIL and moderated, and when you get back in the
office you can come talk to us about the problems your auto-responder
has caused -- please send a note to postmaster at python.org. If we can
be convinced that this problem will not recur, we will allow you to
be unmoderated and to start receiving mail again from the list.

And yes, I did mean for a copy of this response to be posted to the
list as well.

Am I missing something? What problems did his auto-responder cause? I just
want to know in case I forget to disable any lists that I am on. Or is it
something specific to him because he is a co-moderator of this list?

Dawn Kolb

Everyone on the list got a copy. All auto-responders should be set
up so that they do not respond to any list traffic.

He's a digest user, so if he were to see another digest, he'd
generate another auto-response to the whole list. If he weren't a
digest user, he'd be generating an auto-response for every single
post to the list -- including all of his own auto-responses. Imagine
if two such people were on the list, so that they both replied to all
posts on the list, including the auto-responses from the other guy.

That's one of the quickest possible ways to kill a mailing list, and
to bury all the mailing list recipients with hundreds of thousands or
millions of copies of the same damn stupid auto-response.
He's not the co-moderator, I am.

And I kill subscriptions from people with bad auto-responders, with
extreme prejudice.