[lug] NETSCAPE USERS - A note from the list administrator

[J. Wayde Allen]

I've mentioned this before, but we still get a good number of people
posting to the list using netscape mail who generate bounced
messages.  You need to know that netscape has a bad habit of putting a
"sender:" line in your mail messages that contains a bogus e-mail
address.  This is usually just your username.  This causes the list to
burp since it only allows postings from subscribed addresses.

The work around for this is to shutdown your netscape mailer and make the
changes specified below.  If you don't shutdown netscape before editing
the files the changes won't stick.

> "Some of your users may experience problems sending mail to a
> members-only list, if they are using Netscape Communicator as their
> MUA.  Communicator 4.6 on Linux has been observed to insert bogus
> unqualified Sender: headers -- i.e. Sender: headers with only the
> username part of the email address.  Other version of Netscape may
> also have the same bug.

My experience is that version 4.7 does this too.

> Members-only lists use Sender: as the first field to authenticate
> against, so if Sender: exists in the email message, but it is
> unqualified, it will never match a mailing list member's address, and
> their post will always be held for approval.
> 
> In the future, Mailman will improve its algorithm for finding a
> matching address, but in the meantime, M. A. Lemburg <mal at lemburg.com>
> provides the following advice.  You can send this snippet to any user
> whose posts are being held for seemingly no reason.
> 
>     Edit the two .js files in your .netscape directory (liprefs.js and
>     preferences.js) to include the function call: 
> 
>     user_pref("mail.suppress_sender_header", true); "

If you use netscape to post to the BLUG list, please make this change.

- Wayde
  (wallen at its.bldrdoc.gov)