Subject: Re: -A"Precedence: junk" and bad habit

From: [email-masked] (Bob Weissman)
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 1995 11:40:40 PST

On Mar 8,  3:42pm +0100, [email-masked] (Stephen R. van den Berg) wrote:
> Mail sent by a person is usually considered to be more important than
> autoreplies generated by some daemon.
> One way to express the lower priority of autoreplies is by adding
> a "Precedence: junk" field.
> 
> Another point is: other autoreply services, like "vacation".  They try
> to make an effort not to accidentally reply to a message generated  by
> another deamon (e.g. yours).  One way they detect this is by looking
> at the Precedence field.  If it contains "junk", they know, this is
> not something we should respond to.

Well, hrumph.  I manage several SmartList mailing lists, and I've edited
rc.submit to add "Precedence: bulk" instead of "Precedence: junk".  The
messages through SmartList are from real people, and nobody wants their
mail to be categorized as junk.  "bulk" should be equivalent to "junk"
to all concerned programs, right?

-- Bob

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From: "J. Daniel Smith" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 95 16:20:10 -0500

Bob Weissman ([email-masked]) writes on  8 March 1995 at 11:40:40 PST
>mail to be categorized as junk.  "bulk" should be equivalent to "junk"

The value in the Precedence: header says absolutely NOTHING about the
contents of the message itself, it merely suggests a priority level to
the mail system.  From pp. 668 of the ORA "sendmail" book, bulk
typically has a value of -200 while "junk" -100; thus a message with
"Precedence: junk" will get *higher* priority than that of
"Precedence: bulk" (although this can be changed in the sendmail.cf
file).

Other than on heavily loaded machines, this value won't matter anyway,
since all mail will be quicly processed.

   Dan
----------------------- message is author's opinion only ----------------------
J. Daniel Smith <[email-masked]>                   http://www.bristol.com/~dan
Bristol Technology Inc.	                        +1 203 438 6969, 438-5013 (FAX)
Ridgefield, Connecticut (USA)                           {info,[email-masked]
                                --------
 Von guten Maechten wunderbar geboren, erwarten wir getrost, was kommen mag.
 Gott ist mit uns am Abend und am Morgen, und ganz gewiss an jedem neuen Tag.
	- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

---

From: Adam Shostack <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 1995 17:53:58 -0500 (EST)

Almost.  The priorities most sendmails recognize are:

first-class=0
special-delivery=100
list=-30
bulk=-60
junk=-100

The lower the priority, the later the message gets dealt with.  A
smart vacation program will ignore anything with a list, bulk, or junk
priority.

Adam

| Well, hrumph.  I manage several SmartList mailing lists, and I've edited
| rc.submit to add "Precedence: bulk" instead of "Precedence: junk".  The
| messages through SmartList are from real people, and nobody wants their
| mail to be categorized as junk.  "bulk" should be equivalent to "junk"
| to all concerned programs, right?
| 
| -- Bob
| 

-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
						       -Hume