>>>>> "e" == egonle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
e> This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
e> --------------545DEDB24E6140B98CBA8EC2
e> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
e> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>> unsubscribe
>>
e> Dear maintainer of the list,
e> is it not possible to get rid of these unsubscribe messages?
e> It is really anoying to get all the time these.
Let me explain how these unsubscribe messages got here: SmartList (which is
the mailing list software we are using, is trying very hard to filter out
any "meta" messages such as requests to subscribe, requests to unsubscribe,
requests to retrieve archived messages, even requests to "unsuscribe" and
various variation of that. However, we cannot just scan for "subscribe" or
"unsubscribe" or "get" or "remove" (etc.) in the subject and body lines of
posted messages as that would kill more messages than we really mean to
suppress (each message posted to the mailing list contains unsusbscribe
instructions, for example; this message contains the word "subscribe" a
couple of times). Thus, SmartList will check that these "meta" words occur
only in certain places in a message: A message with just a subject line and
subscribe or unsubscribe in it is fine and will not be sent to the mailing
list at large but rather be dealt with properly by SmartList; a message
with "subscribe" (or "unsubscribe") as the very first word (with arbitrary
amounts of space and empty lines in front of it) is also caught.
Now, if SmartList finds words like "subscribe" in the message body and
other text preceeding it, it assumes that that message is a plain mail
intended for the mailing list. Likewise if there is a Subject line
containing "subscribe" (or any of the other "meta" words) and additional
text in the body. This last condition is the trouble spot with those
"unsubscribe" message you have been seeing on this list: While most people
using this (and other) mailing list send their messages in plain text,
some people use HTML encoded messages or MIME-multipart messages that
contain an HTML-version of the messages along with a plain text
version.
Now, each MIME-multipart message contains a sentence like "This is a
multi-part message in MIME format." as the very first sentence of the
body. Remember the bit about SmartList checking whether there is text in
front of words like "unsubscribe"? Well, those HTML or MIME-multipart
messages all have this sentence in front of the real content of the
message (the word "unsubscribe", for example). Thus, SmartList decides to
pass those messages on.
What can we do about this? Two approaches are possible:
(a) reject all those messages that contain a text/html MIME part,
most of the unsubscribe messages that made it to the list will
then be rejected by.
(b) Come up with a set of smart regular expressions that will
filter catch those messages.
For the time being and because HTML messages are more often than not rather
annoying I've taken approach (a)---in most cases those HTML messages are
created by browsers such as Netscape or Internet Exploder, and one can
configure those browsers to generate plain text messages. Approach (b)
is more time-consuming to figure out and currently I don't have that time.
(perhaps someone on the list has tackled this problem already and would be
willing to share the set of SmartList regexps?).
Regards,
Dirk
--
Dr. Dirk Husemann Phone +41 1 724 8573
OpenCard Framework FAX +41 1 724 8955
Post/News/WebMaster Email [EMAIL PROTECTED]
---
> Visit the OpenCard web site at http://www.opencard.org/ for more
> information on OpenCard---binaries, source code, documents.
> This list is being archived at http://www.opencard.org/archive/opencard/
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