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

From: [email-masked] (Stephen R. van den Berg)
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 1995 15:42:39 +0100

Adrenalized Megadeth <[email-masked]> wrote:
>On Mon, 6 Mar 1995, Stephen R. van den Berg wrote:
>> > What if  _-A"Precedence: junk"_ is removed?

>> That won't stop the reply from being generated, but would be bad practice.
>Mind explaining to me why is it a bad habit, please?

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.  This allows mail transport agents to make
educated decisions about which mail to forward first (in case the
mailqueue gets clogged).

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.

-- 
Sincerely,                                  [email-masked]
           Stephen R. van den Berg (AKA BuGless).

This signature third word omitted, yet is comprehensible.