Digital Copyright Canada
Approving Bounced Messages
All managers of discussion groups on FLORA occasionally receive bounced messages addressed to owner-listname, where listname is the name of the discussion group that the message bounced from. The bounced message will include the message headers (the information email programs use to get email messages where they are supposed to go) of the original message and, often, the message body.
Discussion group managers can expect to see two basic categories of bounced message:
- Messages sent from the discussion group and bounced from an individual's email address
- Messages sent to the discussion group:
- By a non-member when "restrict_post" is set.
- Containing an administrative command when "administrivia = yes" is set
- When "moderate = yes" is set
- That exceed the specified length when "maxlength = " is set
This help file deals with the second category of bounced message and describes how to pass appropriate messages on to the discussion group. Some examples of appropriate messages for approval are:
- An on-topic informational message from a source that would not normally be a participating member of the discussion group
- A first message from a new reader of the newsgroup or web version of an auto-moderated discussion group
- A message that exceeds the maximum length set for a group, but that would be a valuable contribution to the discussion.
- A message containing a word such as
subscribe or unsubscribe
Some examples of inappropriate messages are:
- Unsolicited bulk advertising
- Administrative commands such as
subscribe or unsubscribe mistakenly sent to the discussion group address
From owner-hbln-forum@flora.ottawa.on.ca Thu Dec 4 14:40:10 1997
Received: from mean (ttyA19.ott.igs.net [206.248.17.27]) by lists.flora.ottawa.on.ca (8.8.3/8.8.3) with SMTP id OAA19773 for ; Thu, 4 Dec 1997 14:40:08 -0500
Message-Id: <1.5.4.32.19971204194104.0066f028@mailbox.flora.org>
X-Sender: nobody@mailbox.flora.org (Unverified)
X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Light Version 1.5.4 (32)
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Date: Thu, 04 Dec 1997 14:41:04 -0500
To: hbln-forum@flora.org
From: Jane Doe <nobody@flora.org>
Subject: Sample Bounce message
This is a sample bounce message.
To approve a message such as the above for posting to a discussion group:
- If your email program uses a greater than sign when forwarding, use an editor of your choice to save the bounced message text, including the headers, to a temporary file.
If your email program does not use a greater than sign when forwarding, start to forward the bounced message. Use the address for the discussion group and select Edit Before Forwarding (or the equivalent for your email program). Delete all the forwarding information up to the start of the headers in the body of the bounced message.
- It is very important when working with approvals that you either turn off line wrap or set line length to a very large number in your email software. Every email package handles this differently. Read the documentation for your package to find out how to do this. The approval process looks for standard information at the start of each line of the bounce header. If lines wrap inappropriately, the approval process cannot find the information it needs.
- You must also turn off your signature, if you have one set up.
- Add the following line before the first header in the bounced message text:
Approved: password
where password is the password for your discussion group.
For example:
Approved: password
From owner-hbln-forum@flora.ottawa.on.ca Thu Dec 4 14:40:10 1997
Received: from mean (ttyA19.ott.igs.net [206.248.17.27]) by lists.flora.ottawa.on.ca (8.8.3/8.8.3) with SMTP id OAA19773 for ; Thu, 4 Dec 1997 14:40:08 -0500
Message-Id: <1.5.4.32.19971204194104.0066f028@mailbox.flora.org>
X-Sender: nobody@mailbox.flora.org (Unverified)
X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Light Version 1.5.4 (32)
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Date: Thu, 04 Dec 1997 14:41:04 -0500
To: hbln-forum@flora.org
From: Jane Doe <nobody@flora.org>
Subject: Sample Bounce message
This is a sample bounce message.
- Copy the edited bounce message into a new mail message addressed to your discussion group and send it,
or
send your edited forward.
The message would then be sent out through the discussion group and appear to your discussion group members as if it had been sent directly to the discussion group from the original sender.
If you have questions not answered by this document post to the FLORA.org helpdesk.
Last Modified: January 7, 1998 by sph
Join the Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign