From: Brad Templeton (brad@clari.net)
Date: Thu Sep 04 1997 - 18:12:34 CDT
On Sep 04, 1997 at 04:50:30PM -0600, Greg Berigan wrote:
> Field? It's just a string. It is data, not a token standing for some
> other string.
Right, I'm saying we need to make it an official token that is understood
by software that might issue replies, so that software knows to not
attempt to reply, and instead issue an error.
>
> And checking for the presence of a simple string like "nobody" would be a
> lot easier than doing DNS lookups on:
>
> > user@domain.invalid
> > user@invalid.domain
> > invalid-*@domain
There would be no DNS lookup on the token or pattern that indicates an
invalid address. The software would say, "This user did not provide a
valid reply address, so I will not reply, I will issue an error to the
person who wanted to reply"
The idea is to avoid having the reply drafted and mailed to a non-existent
address, wasting the user's time and system resources. A local nobody
is just as bad for that as a remote one.
>
> talking about "Reply-To: nobody" to prevent replies. It makes just as much
> sense as "Followup-To: poster", IMO.
Well, I view "followup-to: poster" as an indication that the poster would
prefer to receive private replies, and not a declaration that the user
can't do a followup if the user desires it. However, I do not see a
need to allow an ordinary poster to prevent replies, I only see a need
for that on postings by moderators.
I would consider the preventing of replies by an ordinary poster to be
extremely rude, and would almost surely killfile such messages. If you
don't have the time to read my reply, I don't have the time to read your
message. That is of course just my opinion, so I would not want to
force people to follow such a rule. As such an official address that
means "this is not an address" should be defined, and software should
be able to recognize it. Because some people will wish to stylize such
addresses, I advise a pattern rather than a single address. Having
a domain is necessary to make the address conform and to not have it
conflict with local addresses. We surely are not going to allow
"Reply-to: postmaster" as a valid line, which would direct replies to the
local postmaster at each recipient site...
> Nothing _needs_ to be said just as nothing _needs_ to be said with
> Followup-To: poster. Identity (or intentional lack thereof which I oppose)
> is already established by the From header. We don't need to (effectively)
> put comment blocks INSIDE addresses in a Reply-To field!
Well, if a person has an authentic from but for some reason wants to
have a non-authentic reply-to, I'm not for it but I guess we can permit it,
as long as the address is so tagged.
We need a rule -- any invalid address used in any line -- from, sender,
reply-to -- must be tagged as an invalid address in some reliable fashion
which software can detect, and which of course doesn't conflict with
valid addresses.
I propose that any address of the form user@domain.invalid be the rule for
such an address, though there are other possible forms, as I noted.