[JDM] Breakthrough on understanding what LN is doing to list replies

[Jeffrey Goldberg <jeffrey+lists@goldmark.org>]

There is a lot of technical stuff in here for Derrick, but toward the end
there is something useful for list members too.

Still so far no one other than myself of Livia has succeeded in sending a
message to the list.  I think that I now know why (but if I am correct, I
don't understand why there aren't more problems more often.

When someone on notes replies to a message from Livia and does (as
instructed) a reply to all the send mail to Livia, but also Cc'ed to the
following two addresses

 JDM_Course@Cranfield.ac.uk
 owner-som-jdm-course@Cranfield.ac.uk

The first address is entirely bogus and won't go anywhere.  The second
will go the the list manager (me) but not to the list.

First the easy part.  LN appears to be taking the SMTP envelope "from"
(which normally shouldn't be seen by users and is an address for automatic
delivery error reports) and putting that into a place which does get
caught by "reply all".

Now the mystery, the first address.  Livia has sent her mail with a To
line like

 To: JDM Cource <som-jdm-course@Cranfield.ac.uk>

This is a typical and standards based set up for address which can have

   Real Name <user@some.dom.ain>

Now Lotus Notes has a different notion of email addresses from Internet
standards and would allow something like

  Real Name

to be an address (Derrick, am I right about this?) and so when presented
with  

 JDM Cource <som-jdm-course@Cranfield.ac.uk>

It constructs and address

   JDM Course

But newer versions of Lotus Notes know that the world doesn't like spaces
in the address part of an address so it is kindly adding a _ .  I have no
idea of what it has done with the rest of the address.

So it passes off the address JDM_Course to the main Cranfield mail hub
(which is no longer managed by me, but I do know how it works as well as
anyone) which will say "Hey, this address doesn't have an @some.dom.ain
thingy in it.  I don't like those, and would normally reject those, but
since the mail comes from a friend (the SoM email/LN gateway) I will just
give it my own, Cranfield.ac.uk."  So that then will then complete the
address, JDM_Course@Cranfield.ac.uk, which, I suspect will bounce.

If this is a correct guess, then the thing to do is to NOT do "reply to
all", but do a reply and then manually add in the address

    som-jdm-course@Cranfield.ac.uk

as one of the recipients.

What puzzles me is that if I have diagnosed the situation correctly, how
come it hasn't come up before.  Surely Notes users are participants in
Internet based email discussion lists and surely people have tried "reply
to all" for messages that had addresses in the 
   Real Name <user@dom.ain>
form before.  Yet those would have failed just like these.

So I am not at all that confident about my analysis.  Derrick or list
managers:  Do you have any ideas?

Again, for the time being would list members just manually put in the
address

 som-jdm-course@Cranfield.ac.uk

to send to the list and see that their replies go to the list.  Sorry for
the trouble.  I'll see if there is anything that can be done on the CCC
side of things to smooth this out.

I will also tell Livia to just send to that address without the "Real
Name" part.

-j

PS:  On a discussion list it is usually a bad idea to append the entire
message you are responding to.  Imagine if everybody did that!

-- 
Jeffrey Goldberg
 Note:  I am moving and changing many addresses, please see
 http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/contact.html
Relativism is the triumph of convention over truth, authority over justice