precedence field and mailing lists

[Keith Moore]

> However, I've suddenly realized that the fault for some of the vacation
> messages rests with the people running this list.  Notice that they
> are not including a "Precedence: bulk" or "Precedence: bulk" lines
> which tell at least some `vacation` programs to do the obvious.  

nor should they.  Precedence is not a standard header field, and it's
used in so many different ways by different pieces of software
(to do everything from setting queueing priority to telling peered
mailing lists not to forward the message) that it's better to omit it.

> In other words, the IETF itself is not above some standads bending..

what standard are you referring to?

Keith