Please read this message, and please give me a chance to explain myself
before you get upset.  In the interest of making the Internet a tidier place,
I'd like to bring something to your attention: the Mail-Followup-To email
header field (MFT, for short).  MFT is defined outside the RFCs, but it is
nonetheless useful and supported by some mail programs.  This message is
meant to raise awareness and to encourage further support - *not* to
criticize you for missing it, in case that's what you were thinking.  Some
people have gotten upset about this automated notification from me, but that
isn't my goal.
 
I prefer not to receive personal copies of messages to mailing lists; if I
get one, I ignore it and read the copy from the list.  I express this
preference in my postings via MFT.  You can learn more about MFT, including
exactly what it means, what problems it solves, why it's better than dropping
duplicates, and what programs already support it, at
<URL:http://cr.yp.to/proto/replyto.html>.
 
Chances are, you didn't write the mail program that you use.  But you can ask
those who did to add support for MFT.  If you ignore my MFT field (or more
likely, if your mail program does), then you'll receive a bounce like this
and you'll contribute to the problems described on the web page above.  But
beyond that, you're free to consider this a non-problem.  You don't need to
bother asking me not to send these bounces; you can simply ignore them, just
as I would have ignored the extra copy of your message if MFT had not been
invented.  Please don't get upset that I have sent this message; I am only
trying to encourage more support for MFT, since it is clearly useful.
However, I welcome any comments on how the text of this message could be
improved.
 
You might have responded to a message of mine that didn't have an MFT field.
Some program (a mailing list processor, a mail -> news gateway, etc.) may
have removed it.  If that happened, please report it as a bug to the
maintainer of the program; such programs should not remove header fields they
don't recognize.
 
Also, I may have just subscribed to the list; I may have sent a message to
the list before I configured my mail program to add MFT (my mistake), and I
may have activated these bounce messages before you sent your response.  In
that case, I apologize for the inconvenience to you.  But if you notice
several messages from me with no MFT, and you get these bounces when you send
me extra copies, then that probably means I've screwed up my configuration.
Please let me know if this happens so I don't waste our bandwidth and your
time by sending further bounces.