[R] A question about r-help-bounce

[Peter Dalgaard]

apjaworski at mmm.com writes:

> Could somebody please tell me what does the r-help-bounce address do?
> 
> When I try to respond to an r-help post, my mailer (Lotus Notes) generates
> the r-help bounce return address automatically in addition to the original
> sender address and the r-help address.  I responded to an r-help message
> last night and I never saw my response posted.  Could this be due to the
> r-help-bounce being there?
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> 
> Andy

As far as I know (Martin may know better), the situation is this:
r-help-bounce appears as the Sender: and Errors-to: fields on messages
from r-help. Non-defective software replies to the content of the
From: field, and wide replies should go to the union of the "From:",
"To:", and "Cc:" fields (unless Reply-To: is set, but it generally is
not). If your mailer tries to reply to the Sender: field, it is
defective and/or misconfigured (OK, that's a bit strong. RFC2822 says
that you SHOULD use the From: field for replies and that the Sender:
field is used when, for instance a secretary sends a letter on
someone's behalf.)

The bounce address is used to catch error messages and suchlike. These
are only scanned by the list manager and never sent on to r-help, so as
not to inform everyone on a 2000+ subscriber mailing list that one of
the 2000+ computers involved is malfunctioning. However, if r-help is
among the recipients, things should get through (unless caught by the
spam filter).

By the way, your mailer (or yourself) also attached your mail to a
completely unrelated thread. 

-- 
   O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             Blegdamsvej 3  
  c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     2200 Cph. N   
 (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen   Denmark      Ph: (+45) 35327918
~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk)             FAX: (+45) 35327907