From list-managers-owner Wed Feb 2 09:53:07 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA28689; Wed, 2 Feb 2000 09:47:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.sparknet.net (mail.sparknet.net [207.67.22.140]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id JAA28682 for ; Wed, 2 Feb 2000 09:47:20 -0800 (PST) Received: from z (z.sparklist.com [207.250.191.2]) by mail.sparknet.net (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id LAA06712 for ; Wed, 2 Feb 2000 11:59:01 -0600 (CST) Message-Id: <4.2.0.58.20000202115714.00977ca0@207.67.22.140> X-Sender: chriss@207.67.22.140 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.2.0.58 Date: Wed, 02 Feb 2000 12:00:39 -0600 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Christopher Knight Subject: Re: Remarq? --> acquired by CP.net In-Reply-To: <20000131191254.B19930@akamai.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 07:12 PM 1/31/00 -0500, David Shaw wrote: >Can anyone out there tell me anything about Remarq.com? >They seem to be doing odd things with subscribing pseudo-users.. >I just got a subscription for a "Q_1003036_m1key@lists.remarq.com". >David Hey David, They were just acquired by Critical Path: http://www.cp.net/media/pr_jan31_00.html Cheers, Christopher M. Knight, CEO SparkLIST.com Corporation =95 The Business Email List Experts =95 --------------------------------------------------------------- SparkLIST Email List Hosting, Promotions & Management Service Tel: +1 888-SparkNET, ext 212 or +1 920-490-5901, ext 212 Private Fax: +1 920-490.5909 =95 http://SparkLIST.com/ --------------------------------------------------------------- From list-managers-owner Sat Feb 5 12:08:01 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA19896; Sat, 5 Feb 2000 11:07:57 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id LAA19888 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sat, 5 Feb 2000 11:07:54 -0800 (PST) Received: from smtp-out2.bellatlantic.net (smtp-out2.bellatlantic.net [199.45.39.157]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA16031 for ; Tue, 1 Feb 2000 15:38:06 -0800 (PST) Received: from SOUTINE2K (adsl-151-202-20-126.bellatlantic.net [151.202.20.126]) by smtp-out2.bellatlantic.net (8.9.1/8.9.1) with SMTP id SAA24923 for ; Tue, 1 Feb 2000 18:52:18 -0500 (EST) From: "Tom Neff" To: Subject: Re: Remarq Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2000 18:52:31 -0500 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) In-Reply-To: <200002010900.BAA05122@honor.greatcircle.com> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2919.6700 Importance: Normal Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk David Shaw asked: > Can anyone out there tell me anything about Remarq.com? > > They seem to be doing odd things with subscribing pseudo-users.. > > I just got a subscription for a "Q_1003036_m1key@lists.remarq.com". These are not pseudo-users (in the sense of artificial addresses used for archiving, spam extraction, etc); they are Remarq users who have signed up for your list using Remarq's web interface and are reading it through same. One of your lists is known to Remarq: http://www.remarq.com/search?q=sex%2Dwizards&si=board&so=board&nav=FIRST but they require that you be personally subscribed (in Remarq userid form) to the actual list, in order to read and post via their website: http://www.remarq.com/subscribe.q?g=1003036&ss=1&v=doconfirm If I did this, and my Remarq userid was Kumquat, then you would get a subscription for Q_1004827_Kumquat@lists.remarq.com . From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 6 08:09:25 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA04863; Sun, 6 Feb 2000 08:01:22 -0800 (PST) Received: from mtiwmhc03.worldnet.att.net (mtiwmhc03.worldnet.att.net [204.127.131.38]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA04856 for ; Sun, 6 Feb 2000 08:01:15 -0800 (PST) Received: from preferreduser ([32.100.41.38]) by mtiwmhc03.worldnet.att.net (InterMail v03.02.07.07 118-134) with SMTP id <20000206161619.WSHA2478@preferreduser> for ; Sun, 6 Feb 2000 16:16:19 +0000 Message-ID: <003101bf70bd$648179c0$26296420@preferreduser> From: "Paul Kaytes" To: References: <200002060900.BAA28050@honor.greatcircle.com> Subject: Finding a home Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2000 11:15:25 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2314.1300 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I've been reading this digest for several weeks now, and am chiming in with a question. I'm planning on being a list manager, but unfortunately, the .edu server that I was going to use has decided that it doesn't want to host mailing lists anymore, so I'm stuck. I've subscribed to a Onelist mailing list just to see how it works, but don't want to deal with advertising, and don't want my subscribers to, either. And now that Esosoft has merged with Topica, I fear that it too may go down the advertising path. Actually, if it was just me dealing with advertising that would be OK, I just don't want my subscribers dealing with it, and the inevitable spam lists it'll get you put on. Could anybody point me in a direction where I might find a home for my list (it's about live music, bands, trading, no bootleg selling or selling of anything, actually). Free would be best, of course, but I wouldn't mind paying for it if I have to. Thanks for your time, Paul From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 7 06:39:29 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA20278; Mon, 7 Feb 2000 06:27:12 -0800 (PST) Received: from argo.gifrance.com (argo.gifrance.com [212.208.161.67]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id GAA20271 for ; Mon, 7 Feb 2000 06:27:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from gifrance.com (alcor.gi.fr [192.168.2.93]) by argo.gifrance.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 62C075FE0 for ; Mon, 7 Feb 2000 15:42:25 +0100 (CET) Message-ID: <389EDADF.17D54711@gifrance.com> Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2000 15:46:55 +0100 From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?S=E9bastien?= Fibra X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en] (WinNT; I) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: MLM, your opinion ? Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hi, I was wondering whether you guys could tell me what you think of some MLMs I'm considering right now... The platform I intend to install the MLM on is Solaris 2.6, and I still haven't made up my mind between Mailman 1.1 and Sympa 2.4. In addition, I really need a product that will enable my application to deal with foreign languages, especially french. Would you mind sharing your own experience about it ? Do you think another product would be suitable and/or better ? Thanks, Seb. From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 7 06:54:32 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA20475; Mon, 7 Feb 2000 06:51:24 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail02.rapidsite.net (mail02.rapidsite.net [207.158.192.68]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id GAA20468 for ; Mon, 7 Feb 2000 06:51:19 -0800 (PST) Received: from www.jadebox.com (207.158.243.143) by mail02.rapidsite.net (RS ver 1.0.53) with SMTP id 09938 for ; Mon, 7 Feb 2000 09:47:29 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <00a401bf717a$417aaa10$9ebbf1d1@tacintel.com> From: "Roger Smith" To: References: <200002060900.BAA28050@honor.greatcircle.com> <003101bf70bd$648179c0$26296420@preferreduser> Subject: Re: Finding a home Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 09:47:28 -0500 X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2314.1300 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300 X-Loop-Detect: 1 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > Could anybody point me in a direction where I might find a home for my list > (it's about live music, bands, trading, no bootleg selling or selling of > anything, actually). Free would be best, of course, but I wouldn't mind > paying for it if I have to. If you expect your list to be a moderate sized list (less than a couple thousand subscribers at most) and you're running Windows, you might consider using Arrow (http://www.jadebox.com/arrow/). Arrow uses a standard e-mail account (POP3/SMTP) -- Roger Harry Nilsson's "The Point!" on DVD? Maybe! http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00003CXC2/theharrynilssowe/ From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 7 07:09:45 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA20651; Mon, 7 Feb 2000 07:02:52 -0800 (PST) Received: from sws5.ctd.ornl.gov (sws5.ctd.ornl.gov [128.219.128.125]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id HAA20644 for ; Mon, 7 Feb 2000 07:02:46 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 1079619 invoked by uid 3995); 7 Feb 2000 15:18:15 -0000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <14494.57910.986717.250719@sws5.ctd.ornl.gov> Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 10:18:14 -0500 (EST) From: Dave Sill To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Finding a home In-Reply-To: <003101bf70bd$648179c0$26296420@preferreduser> References: <200002060900.BAA28050@honor.greatcircle.com> <003101bf70bd$648179c0$26296420@preferreduser> X-Mailer: VM 6.75 under 21.1 "20 Minutes to Nikko" XEmacs Lucid (patch 2) Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab, Oak Ridge, Tenn., USA X-Face: "p~Q]mg{;e*}YR|)&Q/&Q\*~5UWfZX34;5M wrote: >... Actually, if >it was just me dealing with advertising that would be OK, I just don't want >my subscribers dealing with it, and the inevitable spam lists it'll get you >put on. I've never gotten spam due to subscription to Egroups lists. The web archives cloak e-mail addresses, and spammers are too lazy to subscribe to lists for harvesting addresses. -Dave From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 7 11:10:27 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA23529; Mon, 7 Feb 2000 11:07:02 -0800 (PST) Received: from ikkoku.maison-otaku.net ([207.195.149.217]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA23522 for ; Mon, 7 Feb 2000 11:06:57 -0800 (PST) Received: from godai.maison-otaku.net (godai.maison-otaku.net [216.122.4.241]) by ikkoku.maison-otaku.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id F300DAF8A7; Mon, 7 Feb 2000 11:32:37 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (loki@localhost) by godai.maison-otaku.net (8.7.4/8.7.3) with ESMTP id LAA14594; Mon, 7 Feb 2000 11:20:17 -0800 X-Authentication-Warning: godai.maison-otaku.net: loki owned process doing -bs Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 11:20:17 -0800 (PST) From: Jeremy Blackman To: =?iso-8859-1?Q?S=E9bastien?= Fibra Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: MLM, your opinion ? In-Reply-To: <389EDADF.17D54711@gifrance.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=X-UNKNOWN Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Mon, 7 Feb 2000, [iso-8859-1] S=E9bastien Fibra wrote: > In addition, I really need a product that will enable my application to > deal with foreign languages, especially french. Then Sympa is honestly your best bet; at the moment, its localization support is unmatched. I also would discourage you from using Mailman; from everything I have seen, Mailman development has died off... perhaps unfortunate, since it was nice to see an MLM with the backing of the FSF, but... Mailman also has very little localization support, from my admittedly limited experience playing with it. Localization seems to be a big weakness of many MLMs, my own Listar included, unfortunately. Sympa is best for your needs, I think, since it already has localization and comes with a French language file. Hope that helps! :) --=20 Jeremy Blackman - loki@maison-otaku.net / loki@listar.org / jeremy@lith.com Lithtech Team, Monolith Productions -- http://www.lith.com Listar Developer -- http://www.listar.org From list-managers-owner Tue Feb 8 00:38:06 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id AAA01748; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 00:02:54 -0800 (PST) Received: from listes.cru.fr (listes.cru.fr [195.220.94.165]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id AAA01740 for ; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 00:02:47 -0800 (PST) Received: from home.cru.fr (home.cru.fr [195.220.94.79]) by listes.cru.fr (8.9.2/jtpda-5.3.2) with ESMTP id JAA03066 for ; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 09:18:08 +0100 (MET) Received: from home.cru.fr (IDENT:salaun@localhost.cru.fr [127.0.0.1]) by home.cru.fr (8.9.3/jtpda-5.3.1) with ESMTP id JAA15166 for ; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 09:18:07 +0100 Message-Id: <200002080818.JAA15166@home.cru.fr> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0.3 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: MLM, your opinion ? In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 07 Feb 2000 15:46:55 +0100." <389EDADF.17D54711@gifrance.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2000 09:18:07 +0100 From: Olivier Salaun - CRU Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Sebastien Fibra wrote : > I was wondering whether you guys could tell me what you think of some > MLMs I'm considering right now... > The platform I intend to install the MLM on is Solaris 2.6, and I still > haven't made up my mind between Mailman 1.1 and Sympa 2.4. > In addition, I really need a product that will enable my application to > deal with foreign languages, especially french. Sympa has a complete french translation and is widely used by french universities. Sympa 2.4 also comes with german and spanish NLS catalogues. Next version will include italian and chinese (BIG5 chinese, and GB chinese). -------------- Olivier Salaun Comite Reseaux des Universites From list-managers-owner Tue Feb 8 10:39:30 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA11452; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 10:36:43 -0800 (PST) Received: from shell7.ba.best.com (shell7.ba.best.com [206.184.139.138]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA11445 for ; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 10:36:37 -0800 (PST) Received: (from cnorman@localhost) by shell7.ba.best.com (8.9.3/8.9.2/best.sh) id KAA25647; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 10:52:09 -0800 (PST) Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 10:52:09 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <200002081852.KAA25647@shell7.ba.best.com> From: Cyndi Norman To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM CC: cnorman@best.com Subject: Oversized emails? Reply-to: cnorman@best.com Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I'm in need of a reality check and figured you guys would be the perfect people for it. I belong to a barter network. I also used to do some internet/web consulting for them but they don't listen to me (took me and another web person working with them about a dozen emails to convince them not to use a third "internet person" who was about to spam the universe with their ads, but that's another story). They've recently been bought out by a national company and the obnoxiousness factor has gone up several notches. Yesterday I recieved their usual weekly newsletter (in HTML since they laugh at me when I tell them text is the better default). It included an 800k attachment, a picture of leather furniture one of their members sells. Of course it translated to over 11 thousand lines of junk on my system. And the rest of the message was mostly unreadble (as always) cause of really bad HTML. I complained. I was not very nice about it. I was pissed. Their reaction was to PHONE me twice at like 7:30 in the morning (my machine got it) and say that they'd be happy to cancel my membership and they can't believe a web design person would not be able to recieve attachments that were under a meg (said as if that were small) and I should upgrade my email. Obviously, my email arrangements are not the issue. I can view attachments if I want to by forwarding them to another account. They tell me I'm the only one who complains and don't seem to get that by suggesting changes (which I have always done very nicely and politely in the past) I am giving them free help on how to improve things for all their customers. Their view is that the attachment "sells lots of leather furniture" so it's okay. So... Given that they are running a mailing list (announcement only) for their customers, is my assessment of their choices off the mark? Do note that they send this newsletter to all of their customers for whom they have an email address (and now their fees are lower if you give them an email address) and don't ask permission first, let alone about preferences for HTML or attachments. They also fax a version out but I finally got removed from that list since they were calling at 2 in the morning when my fax-modem/computer was off. Anyway, validation would be nice. Thanks, Cyndi -- _______________________________________________________________________________ "There's nothing wrong with me. Maybe there's Cyndi Norman something wrong with the universe." (ST:TNG) cyndi@consultclarity.com http://www.tikvah.com/ _________________ Owner of the Immune Website & Lists http://www.immuneweb.org/ From list-managers-owner Tue Feb 8 13:24:45 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA13490; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 13:18:51 -0800 (PST) Received: from hostigos.otherwhen.com (mavery-gw.pernet.net [205.229.2.17]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA13483 for ; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 13:18:40 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.otherwhen.com (mavery2.pernet.net [205.229.2.19]) by hostigos.otherwhen.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id PAA37842; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 15:32:27 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from mavery@mail.otherwhen.com) Received: from PORKY/SpoolDir by mail.otherwhen.com (Mercury 1.47); 8 Feb 00 15:34:06 -0600 Received: from SpoolDir by PORKY (Mercury 1.47); 8 Feb 00 15:34:02 -0600 From: "Mike Avery" To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 15:33:55 -0600 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Oversized emails? Reply-to: mavery@mail.otherwhen.com CC: cnorman@best.com Message-ID: <38A03763.22629.43116C@localhost> In-reply-to: <200002081852.KAA25647@shell7.ba.best.com> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk HTML BAD!!! Big messages BAD!! Sending that crap without asking permission first - VERY BAD!!! All in all, it sounds like they are clueless, and that it's time to move on to another service. Mike On 8 Feb 2000, at 10:52, Cyndi Norman wrote: > I'm in need of a reality check and figured you guys would be the > perfect people for it. > > I belong to a barter network. I also used to do some internet/web > consulting for them but they don't listen to me (took me and another > web person working with them about a dozen emails to convince them not > to use a third "internet person" who was about to spam the universe > with their ads, but that's another story). > > They've recently been bought out by a national company and the > obnoxiousness factor has gone up several notches. Yesterday I > recieved their usual weekly newsletter (in HTML since they laugh at me > when I tell them text is the better default). It included an 800k > attachment, a picture of leather furniture one of their members sells. > Of course it translated to over 11 thousand lines of junk on my > system. And the rest of the message was mostly unreadble (as always) > cause of really bad HTML. > > I complained. I was not very nice about it. I was pissed. > > Their reaction was to PHONE me twice at like 7:30 in the morning (my > machine got it) and say that they'd be happy to cancel my membership > and they can't believe a web design person would not be able to > recieve attachments that were under a meg (said as if that were small) > and I should upgrade my email. > > Obviously, my email arrangements are not the issue. I can view > attachments if I want to by forwarding them to another account. They > tell me I'm the only one who complains and don't seem to get that by > suggesting changes (which I have always done very nicely and politely > in the past) I am giving them free help on how to improve things for > all their customers. Their view is that the attachment "sells lots of > leather furniture" so it's okay. > > So... > > Given that they are running a mailing list (announcement only) for > their customers, is my assessment of their choices off the mark? Do > note that they send this newsletter to all of their customers for whom > they have an email address (and now their fees are lower if you give > them an email address) and don't ask permission first, let alone about > preferences for HTML or attachments. They also fax a version out but > I finally got removed from that list since they were calling at 2 in > the morning when my fax-modem/computer was off. > > Anyway, validation would be nice. > > Thanks, > Cyndi > > -- > ______________________________________________________________________ > _________ "There's nothing wrong with me. Maybe there's > Cyndi Norman something wrong with the universe." (ST:TNG) > cyndi@consultclarity.com > http://www.tikvah.com/ > _________________ Owner of the Immune Website & Lists > http://www.immuneweb.org/ -- Mike Avery MAvery@mail.otherwhen.com (409)-842-2942 (voice) (409)-842-4352 (FAX) ICQ: 16241692 * Spam is for lusers who can't get business any other way * A Randomly Selected Thought For The Day: Code: (v.) process of concealing bugs by programming. From list-managers-owner Tue Feb 8 13:54:30 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA13818; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 13:48:53 -0800 (PST) Received: from kachina.jetcafe.org (kachina.jetcafe.org [205.147.43.2]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA13811 for ; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 13:48:48 -0800 (PST) Received: from ee-nt (eckert@netcom4.netcom.com [199.183.9.104]) by kachina.jetcafe.org (8.9.1/8.9.1) with SMTP id OAA21442; Mon, 7 Feb 2000 14:04:18 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.20000208135912.00979dc0@pop.climber.org> X-Sender: eckert@pop.climber.org X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2000 13:59:12 -0800 To: cnorman@best.com From: SRE Subject: Re: Oversized emails? Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <200002081852.KAA25647@shell7.ba.best.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 10:52 AM 2/8/00 -0800, Cyndi Norman wrote: >them text is the better default). It included an 800k attachment, a >picture of leather furniture one of their members sells. Of course it >translated to over 11 thousand lines of junk on my system. And the rest of >the message was mostly unreadble (as always) cause of really bad HTML. Demime home page: http://scifi.squawk.com/demime.html Demime perl script: http://scifi.squawk.com/demime.stable Demime config file: http://scifi.squawk.com/demime_junkmail.cf Put it in a pipe for the posting alias, and all HTML gets turned into plain text. Non-text attachments are deleted and a note is left where they were. Freebie account footers can be stripped if you set that up. It's boinked a couple of viruses on my server, and it's helped some MSOutlook users communicate with the server (I put it in the server command alias also, so the server doesn't get formatted text.) Stripping is a much better solution than bouncing. It took me a few years to reach that conclusion... SRE mailto:eckert@climber.org | http://www.climber.org/eckert/ Info on peak climbing email lists mailto:info@climber.org Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie!'... until you can find a rock. From list-managers-owner Tue Feb 8 14:09:27 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA13876; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 13:53:12 -0800 (PST) Received: from smtp1.vnet.net (smtp1.vnet.net [166.82.1.31]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA13867 for ; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 13:53:06 -0800 (PST) Received: from katie.vnet.net (katie.vnet.net [166.82.1.7]) by smtp1.vnet.net (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id RAA06701; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 17:08:38 -0500 (EST) Received: from localhost (murr@localhost) by katie.vnet.net (8.9.1b+Sun/8.9.1) with ESMTP id RAA29860; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 17:08:37 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 17:08:37 -0500 (EST) From: murr rhame To: Cyndi Norman cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Oversized emails? In-Reply-To: <200002081852.KAA25647@shell7.ba.best.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Tue, 8 Feb 2000, Cyndi Norman wrote: > Given that they are running a mailing list (announcement > only) for their customers, is my assessment of their choices > off the mark? Do note that they send this newsletter to all > of their customers for whom they have an email address (and > now their fees are lower if you give them an email address) > and don't ask permission first, let alone about preferences > for HTML or attachments. They also fax a version out but I > finally got removed from that list since they were calling at > 2 in the morning when my fax-modem/computer was off. Sending unsolicited faxes is illegal in the US under federal law. There is a fairly stiff penalty per incident (a few hundred bucks as I recall). Do a web search on "junk fax" is you want more info. Sending unsolicited emails is not illegal. Sending unsolicited email is called spam. Most Internet service providers have strict policies against spamming. Because of this, many spammers steal services by secretly directing their spam through unprotected email servers to conceal the identity of the spammer. If this company is sending unsolicited email, I would contact their ISP and complain. If you don't know who they get their Internet services from, I can help you track this down. As for the size of their emails and the choice of using the HTML format, I consider this rude, clueless and arrogant. Doesn't make good business sense to tick off your potential customers. There are a few unusual mailing lists that regularly distribute large attachments. I would expect a warning that the list distributes big files and hope that they had a no-attachment subscription option. BTW: 800k for a single photograph is absurd. A 100k Jpeg will produce a large sharp photograph. They must have sent a bitmap file. - murr - From list-managers-owner Tue Feb 8 14:39:36 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA14380; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 14:37:35 -0800 (PST) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA14371 for ; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 14:37:30 -0800 (PST) Received: from [17.216.27.198] (A17-216-27-198.apple.com [17.216.27.198]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id OAA69592 ; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 14:51:24 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <38A03763.22629.43116C@localhost> References: <38A03763.22629.43116C@localhost> Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 14:52:16 -0800 To: mavery@mail.otherwhen.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Oversized emails? Cc: cnorman@best.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 3:33 PM -0600 2/8/2000, Mike Avery wrote: > HTML BAD!!! > > Big messages BAD!! > > Sending that crap without asking permission first - VERY BAD!!! One our of three isn't bad. HTML isn't bad. big messages aren't bad. sending either without the person saying it's okay -- that's bad, although even then, the answer is "it depends". When Amazon moved their update subscriptions to supporting HTML, they converted all their subscriptions to HTML, and gave people a way to change back. Another service that's currently working on adding the same functionality, but which shall remain nameless, looked at the same issue, and decided to leave everyone on the text version of the publication, and to set things up to make it easy to switch to HTML if they want it. it all comes down to which choice is better for your audience. I know, for instance, that a recent survey of subscribers to a certain mailing list system on what those subscribers wanted, 50% asked for an HTML version, and 20% didn't care, leaving only 30% who preferred the text-only option. And frankly, if you're sure 70-80% of your users are going to want to change to HTML, then it *does* make sense to switch everyone over and ask the others to switch back, on the principle of doing what is best for the largest part of your population. Yes, you'll honk off some folks -- but whatever you do, including nothing, will honk off some part of a group. So decisions need to get made by the principles of least-harm/most-good. to say "html bad" is very, oh, 1996. maybe 1997. HTML, when well done, is very good. In fact, for a general audience, I could make a good argument that not even bothering with a text-only list would be okay. Yes, 20% of users prefer text-only, but the percentage of those who'd do without is much smaller than that, depending mostly, of course, on how interesting the content is. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Tue Feb 8 15:39:35 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA14996; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 15:27:36 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.beenz.com (web1.beenz.com [209.67.222.56]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA14988 for ; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 15:27:30 -0800 (PST) Received: from beenz.com (beenzldn [195.167.135.2]) by mail.beenz.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id SAA22076; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 18:42:42 -0500 Message-ID: <38A0A9F1.D070F032@beenz.com> Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2000 23:42:41 +0000 From: Richard Leyton Organization: beenz.com inc. X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en] (X11; I; SunOS 5.6 sun4u) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Jeremy Blackman CC: =?iso-8859-1?Q?S=E9bastien?= Fibra , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: MLM, your opinion ? References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Jeremy Blackman wrote: > Then Sympa is honestly your best bet; at the moment, its localization > support is unmatched. I also would discourage you from using Mailman; > from everything I have seen, Mailman development has died off... perhaps > unfortunate, since it was nice to see an MLM with the backing of the FSF, > but... I beg to differ. The author is looking like he's about to release the first beta of what might ultimately become 1.2/2.0. > Mailman also has very little localization support, from my admittedly > limited experience playing with it. Agreed, it's a bit of a pain to tweak some aspects, but the subscriber facing sections/web pages are very customisable, and that's often what it boils down to. If all else fails, use the source Luke! But that depends on how keen you are to roll up your sleeves. Regards, Richard. -- Richard Leyton mailto:richard@beenz.com From list-managers-owner Tue Feb 8 15:54:32 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA14964; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 15:24:48 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA14957 for ; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 15:24:41 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id PAA35440; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 15:39:50 -0800 (PST) To: cnorman@best.com cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Oversized emails? In-reply-to: Your message of Tue, 08 Feb 2000 10:52:09 -0800. <200002081852.KAA25647@shell7.ba.best.com> Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2000 15:39:50 -0800 Message-ID: <35438.950053190@monkeys.com> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message <200002081852.KAA25647@shell7.ba.best.com>, cnorman@best.com wrote: >I belong to a barter network... >... >They've recently been bought out by a national company and the >obnoxiousness factor has gone up several notches. Just in case it ain't already obvious to everybody, let me just say that the `obnoxiousness factor' has gone up several notches throughout the Internet in the past few years. This can be attributed to several factors, but two in particular seem important. First, there is the `gold rush' mentality. Rightly or wrongly, advertisers, i.e. anyone who wants to `push' something, have come to view the Internet the same way that people in the oil business view Alaska's north slope, i.e. a great new natural resource to be `mined' ruthlessly until it's exhausted. Second, as any psychologist will tell you, the bigger the crowd, the less people feel that they are (or should be) accountable. And the Internet now represents a VERY big crowd. Large crowds lend an aura of anonymity. You might be tempted to dance with a lampshade on your head at a huge frat party attended by a couple of hundred people, but you would never do it at a small dinner party of a dozen people. >So... > >Given that they are running a mailing list (announcement only) for their >customers, is my assessment of their choices off the mark? No. They are being `push mentality' bozos. >Do note that >they send this newsletter to all of their customers for whom they have an >email address (and now their fees are lower if you give them an email >address)... Hehe. Recently, the Albertson's supermarket near me got bought/exchanged, and now it is a Ralph's supermarket. Ralph's is doing essentially the same thing... they have crappy prices on everything _unless_ you show them your red `Ralph's card'. Of course, they then use your card number (together with checkout scanner data) to insure that all of your purchases are tabulated. So Ralph's knows if you are rou- tinely buying condoms or baby wipes or whatever. But I got the better of them, and their system, and I'm pretty proud of it. It was simple actually. When they first took over the store, they were handing out the red cards, and with each one they would also hand you a form to fill out, upon which you are SUPPOSED to fill in your name, address, phone number, e-mail address, etc., etc. I kept the red card and threw away the form. I've been using the card ever since to get the lower prices. Nobody has ever called me on it, so I guess that their software isn't sophisticated enough yet to alert the checkout clerks that there is no actual personal data on file for that card number... which is fine by me. Somewhere in some obscure mainframe, there is a detailed record of the purchasing habits of a man without a name, address, etc., etc. :-) >Anyway, validation would be nice. Validated. As data mining and the `push mentality' become more and more invasive, there's going to be a progressively bigger and bigger backlash. It's starting already: http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_07/b3668065.htm From list-managers-owner Tue Feb 8 16:09:31 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA15210; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 15:45:44 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA15203 for ; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 15:45:38 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id QAA35519; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 16:00:31 -0800 (PST) To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Cc: abuse@get.topica.com Subject: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2000 16:00:31 -0800 Message-ID: <35517.950054431@monkeys.com> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Awhile ago, I posted here some info explaining why egroups/onelist got their e-mail blacklisted for this domain. Just to show that I don't play favorites, I've also now blacklisted TOPICA.COM here on the basis of the abusive OPT-OUT spam message included below, and I'm recommending to all of you that if you are looking or a place to host your list, that you look around for alternatives other than TOPICA. Note that this message was sent to one of my many ``spam trap'' addresses, specifically one that had been dead/defunct for well over a year. Note also TOPICA is using the exact same abusive OPT-OUT approach as all other spammers do... The default is that you ARE subscribed (whether you like it or not) to whatever list they want to put you on, and then you have to request to be removed. I've already informed the people at TOPICA that this is actionable spam under current California law, and since both they (TOPICA) and the server they sent this to are located in California, pressing the matter in the courts (which I *will* do if they continue to spam) will be a piece of cake. -- rfg P.S. The absolute unmitigated gall of spammers never ceases to amaze me. If you read the following spam, you'll see it quite clearly. In effect, the following message says ``You've been subscribed to this list, whether you like it or not, and oh, by the way, we really care a lot about spam.'' Yea. Right. P.P.S. IF TOPICA cares so much about spam, then one must wonder why they allow the mysterious `Natasha' (who has no phone number and no last name) to sign their abusive ``you have been subscribed'' messages. Perhaps she's too busy working with Boris to get squirrel and moose to take phone calls from disgruntled people have have been optted-in to TOPICA's lists without their consent. ========================================================================== >From support_bounce@get.topica.com Mon Feb 7 19:12:-- 2000 Received: from outmta006.topica.com (outmta006.topica.com [206.132.75.208]) by -------.--- (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id -------- for <------@------.--->; Mon, 7 Feb 2000 19:12:-- -0800 (PST) To: ------@------.--- From: Osama Subject: Welcome to Taha Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2000 19:14:-- -0800 Message-ID: <----------------------------------@----------> Reply-To: skinsense-unsubscribe@topica.com Osama, the owner of the mailing list 'Taha', has added you to this list at Topica. Here's the description of the list: The secrets you need to know about having and keeping soft, smooth, clean and healthy skin, hair and nails. Straight from the experts. If you do NOT want to be added to this list, simply reply to this message, and you will be immediately removed. You can unsubscribe from this list at any time by sending a blank message to skinsense-unsubscribe@topica.com . You can reach the list owner at marketingdreamz@yahoo.com. Topica cares about your privacy, and we take great measures to fight "spam." If you feel that someone is abusing the Topica system or is using your email address without your consent, please let us know by reporting it to abuse@get.topica.com. Thank you, Natasha Topica Customer Support From list-managers-owner Tue Feb 8 16:24:29 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA15631; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 16:20:53 -0800 (PST) Received: from thwack.nas.nasa.gov (thwack.nas.nasa.gov [129.99.34.57]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id QAA15624 for ; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 16:20:42 -0800 (PST) Received: (from chrystal@localhost) by thwack.nas.nasa.gov (8.9.3/NAS8.8.7n) id QAA19727 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 16:36:13 -0800 (PST) Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 16:36:13 -0800 From: "Chrystal M. Cowdrey" To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Oversized emails? Message-ID: <20000208163613.D16301@thwack.nas.nasa.gov> References: <200002081852.KAA25647@shell7.ba.best.com> <38A03763.22629.43116C@localhost> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.6i In-Reply-To: <38A03763.22629.43116C@localhost> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I randomly ended up on a couple of mailing lists that do this. I have not attempted to be removed from them. Mostly from fear of being added to the ah-ha-this-address-works! list. I have just added them to my .procmailrc file and trash the messages before I ever see them. It's possible that the customers that _do_ care are just too jaded by this kind of stupidity to even bother anymore. I'd be willing to bet that if they bothered to _ask_ people for their preferences when they harvest their addresses they would find that things are very different from their assumptions. I'm just glad I don't have to budget for and administrate the monster mail system that they must to have to handle this load. :-) -chrystal -- <> Chrystal M. Cowdrey NAS Desktop Support <> <> 650/604-4271 Sterling Software <> <> 650/604-4377 (fax) chrystal@nas.nasa.gov <> On Tue, 08 Feb 2000, Mike Avery wrote: > HTML BAD!!! > > Big messages BAD!! > > Sending that crap without asking permission first - VERY BAD!!! > > All in all, it sounds like they are clueless, and that it's time to move > on to another service. > > Mike > From list-managers-owner Tue Feb 8 16:39:27 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA15765; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 16:30:27 -0800 (PST) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id QAA15754 for ; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 16:30:13 -0800 (PST) Received: from [17.216.27.198] (A17-216-27-198.apple.com [17.216.27.198]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id QAA17064 ; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 16:43:33 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <38A0A9F1.D070F032@beenz.com> References: <38A0A9F1.D070F032@beenz.com> Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 16:44:25 -0800 To: Richard Leyton , Jeremy Blackman From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: MLM, your opinion ? Cc: Sébastien Fibra , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 11:42 PM +0000 2/8/2000, Richard Leyton wrote: > I beg to differ. The author is looking like he's about to release the first > beta of what might ultimately become 1.2/2.0. I like most of Mailman -- but it's written in Python, and that means that using it requires installing (and, ultimately), learning yet another programming language. Sympa is in perl, which most sites will have installed, so that's one less detail to worry about, and I know perl, so I can at least dink with it if I need to, and I didn't think mailman brought enough extra to the trough to warrant the extra work needed to use it. That's not a criticism of mailman, but stuff to keep in mind while evaluating it. Your mileage may vary, especially if you know python and like using it. > If all else fails, use the source Luke! But that depends on how keen you are > to roll up your sleeves. I live for it, but learning another language? (sigh....) -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Tue Feb 8 16:54:27 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA15813; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 16:36:08 -0800 (PST) Received: from shell7.ba.best.com (shell7.ba.best.com [206.184.139.138]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id QAA15806 for ; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 16:36:02 -0800 (PST) Received: (from cnorman@localhost) by shell7.ba.best.com (8.9.3/8.9.2/best.sh) id QAA04332; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 16:51:33 -0800 (PST) Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 16:51:33 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <200002090051.QAA04332@shell7.ba.best.com> From: Cyndi Norman To: murr@vnet.net CC: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, cnorman@best.com In-reply-to: (message from murr rhame on Tue, 8 Feb 2000 17:08:37 -0500 (EST)) Subject: Re: Oversized emails? Reply-to: cnorman@best.com Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 17:08:37 -0500 (EST) From: murr rhame Sending unsolicited faxes is illegal in the US under federal law. There is a fairly stiff penalty per incident (a few hundred bucks as I recall). Do a web search on "junk fax" is you want more info. Others have mentioned this so I should note taht I agreed to get the faxes; they were not unsolicited. They told me they would add me to the fax list when I signed up and I agreed. Same for the email list (though I'm not sure every member is aware of their options). What I didn't ask for was middle of the night faxes (because they use an auto sender and before I got DSL my fax line was busy all day) or 800k messages. As for the size of their emails and the choice of using the HTML format, I consider this rude, clueless and arrogant. Doesn't make good business sense to tick off your potential customers. I agree. If I felt like talking to them I'd suggest making a weekly specials website with all the pictures and text formating they want. Then send everyone on the list a text-only teaser with the URL. BTW: 800k for a single photograph is absurd. A 100k Jpeg will produce a large sharp photograph. They must have sent a bitmap file. It was a .jpg. I agree, 800k is ridiculous. I didn't look at it but I assume it was big because it was from a Photo-CD or something. Those come back huge (file and physical size both) because they are initial scans. Then you are supposed to edit them! Thank you everyone who has written. I'm feeling much better! Cyndi -- _______________________________________________________________________________ "There's nothing wrong with me. Maybe there's Cyndi Norman something wrong with the universe." (ST:TNG) cyndi@consultclarity.com http://www.tikvah.com/ _________________ Owner of the Immune Website & Lists http://www.immuneweb.org/ From list-managers-owner Tue Feb 8 17:09:27 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA15927; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 16:48:55 -0800 (PST) Received: from hostigos.otherwhen.com (mavery-gw.pernet.net [205.229.2.17]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id QAA15920 for ; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 16:48:47 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.otherwhen.com (mavery2.pernet.net [205.229.2.19]) by hostigos.otherwhen.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id TAA38116 for ; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 19:02:37 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from mavery@mail.otherwhen.com) Received: from PORKY/SpoolDir by mail.otherwhen.com (Mercury 1.47); 8 Feb 00 19:04:13 -0600 Received: from SpoolDir by PORKY (Mercury 1.47); 8 Feb 00 19:04:07 -0600 From: "Mike Avery" To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 19:04:03 -0600 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Oversized emails? Reply-to: mavery@mail.otherwhen.com Message-ID: <38A068A4.12458.1037D9C@localhost> In-reply-to: References: <38A03763.22629.43116C@localhost> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 8 Feb 2000, at 14:52, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > At 3:33 PM -0600 2/8/2000, Mike Avery wrote: > > HTML BAD!!! > > Big messages BAD!! > > Sending that crap without asking permission first - VERY BAD!!! > One our of three isn't bad. HTML isn't bad. big messages aren't bad. > sending either without the person saying it's okay -- that's bad, > although even then, the answer is "it depends". True, it does depend. However, in genral purpose mailing lists HTML increases the size of the email by a factor apprpoaching 3. Some people don't like that. Also, many people have email clients that won't support html - people in companies with mini's or mainframes and dumb terminals, for example. The see the html code in it's raw state, and that's a pain. Worse, many of the programs that generate html based email do a very crufty job of it, and if you don't have the same email program, you might not be able to read the email. And your email client might lock up. All in all, unless you are sure your HTML will be welcome, you are better off not sending it. Sending large graphics, or any large file, without asking first is also rude. I get a lot of press releases, and there's not much that will hose my morning as badly as an 8 meg or so press release. It's rude to send large files without getting people's approval first. Nothing in Cyndi's (perhaps biased) note led me to believe that they had asked for permission. All in all, it seems pretty tacky to me. Mike -- Mike Avery MAvery@mail.otherwhen.com (409)-842-2942 (voice) (409)-842-4352 (FAX) ICQ: 16241692 * Spam is for lusers who can't get business any other way * A Randomly Selected Thought For The Day From 'The Code of The West, A Cowboy's Guide to Life' by Texas Bix Bender Don't get mad at somebody who knows more'n you do. It ain't their fault. From list-managers-owner Tue Feb 8 21:23:07 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA18496; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 21:21:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA18489 for ; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 21:21:11 -0800 (PST) Received: from [209.239.169.197] (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id VAA33638 ; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 21:39:22 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <38A068A4.12458.1037D9C@localhost> References: <38A03763.22629.43116C@localhost> <38A068A4.12458.1037D9C@localhost> Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 21:28:30 -0800 To: mavery@mail.otherwhen.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Oversized emails? Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 7:04 PM -0600 2/8/2000, Mike Avery wrote: > True, it does depend. However, in genral purpose mailing lists HTML > increases the size of the email by a factor apprpoaching 3. Some > people don't like that. Some won't like it, others are screaming for it. #1 on my hit parade, that's for sure. I'll bet if you survey your users, you'll probably be surprised at the answer. > Also, many people have email clients that > won't support html - people in companies with mini's or mainframes > and dumb terminals, for example. Rapidly hitting the same level as lynx browsers for HTTP. there's been a huge shift in the last six months here. Six months ago, I'd have probably agreed with you. today -- not nearly as true. > Worse, many of the programs that generate html based email do a > very crufty job of it, and if you don't have the same email program, > you might not be able to read the email. And your email client might > lock up. Bad engineering isn't a reason to not do it. It's a reason to do it right. > All in all, unless you are sure your HTML will be welcome, you are > better off not sending it. Comes down to knowing your audience. > Sending large graphics, or any large file, without asking first is also > rude. definitely agreed. IMHO, ship the HTML, and have them load graphics off of a server. That's what amazon and infobeat do, and it means if someone doesn't want to spare the bandwidth for graphics, they still have the choice. There's really no good reason to stuff multipart-mime with embedded graphics in it. Use a server. No, that's not quite true. Apple's iCards does exactly that -- because each iCard is generated uniquely and on the fly. But there's also a lot of work done to keep file size down because of that, but in THAT case, storing it on a server doesn't make much sense. But if you're doing customized stuff at that level, the rules tend to change. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Wed Feb 9 08:10:32 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA27352; Wed, 9 Feb 2000 08:06:30 -0800 (PST) Received: from online.no (pilt-e.online.no [148.122.208.24]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA27344 for ; Wed, 9 Feb 2000 08:06:22 -0800 (PST) Received: from a2 (ti34a64-0336.dialup.online.no [130.67.76.80]) by online.no (8.9.3/8.9.1) with ESMTP id RAA13072 for ; Wed, 9 Feb 2000 17:22:01 +0100 (MET) Message-Id: <200002091622.RAA13072@online.no> From: "Annie" Organization: Geocities To: list-managers-digest@GreatCircle.COM Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 17:29:31 +0100 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: CGI-scripts Reply-to: nacelebs@online.no X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12b) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hi guys, I've been looking at cgi-scripts that you can administer a mailing list with, right down to sending mail. I don't know if this is what you call MLM, or if it's such a bad solution you won't even talk about it ? We're talking about newsletters here, NOT discussion lists. Anyway, I have a twofold need. I need one program that will enable me to build several to many mailing list. This can be something as simple as subscribe (unsubscribe optional) on a webpage, and then a flat file I retrieve and use in my regular mailer. These lists will typically have less than 300 subscribers, and probably not more than 60. The other need is for one mailing list per domain, but this one will probably go into the thousands. The reason for using scripts is that I can bypass the advertisements of the free services. I have no idea how big these lists will become, but hopefully thousands, like I said. I've been looking at nomodomo for the multiple lists (not using the administration script), but don't know about the other one. I found a list of scripts at http://cgi.resourceindex.com/ One of my servers is a bit cranky, I can't seem to get every script to work. Either that or I'm missing something! I haven't tried these mailing list scripts yet, but quite a few other scripts - hit and miss! Regards Annie From list-managers-owner Thu Feb 10 14:57:12 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA21771; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 14:44:00 -0800 (PST) Received: from waltz.rahul.net (waltz.rahul.net [192.160.13.9]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA21764 for ; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 14:43:54 -0800 (PST) Received: by waltz.rahul.net (Postfix, from userid 511) id CF71499E0D; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 14:59:47 -0800 (PST) To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Oversized emails? In-reply-to: Date: Thu, 10 Feb 100 14:59:47 -0800 From: Michelle Dick Message-Id: <20000210225947.CF71499E0D@waltz.rahul.net> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Chuq wrote: > At 7:04 PM -0600 2/8/2000, Mike Avery wrote: > > Also, many people have email clients that > > won't support html - people in companies with mini's or mainframes > > and dumb terminals, for example. > > Rapidly hitting the same level as lynx browsers for HTTP. there's > been a huge shift in the last six months here. Six months ago, I'd > have probably agreed with you. today -- not nearly as true. I think there is also a shift towards people accessing the internet and their email from more than one platform, which increases the chance that one will want to read email with a non-html-enabled reader at some point in time. I myself read variously from a fully networked PC, a dial-up ppp linux box, telnet via AOL connection at family members house, one friend's house who only runs Windows 3.1 and doesn't want to install PPP-type software (so I dial in direct to the unix shell), and another friend with a new mac. Some are capable of html, some not, but to preserve access, I use MH from the unix shell to read mail. Certainly, though, there is a much larger proportion of new internet user now who only access the internet from one or two points and have the newest programs. I am seriously considering something like demime (should I be able to get it working) instead of doing what I do now (which is reject html postings and advise the poster to send plain text). That is indeed starting to become frequent enough that I want to change the way I handle such mail. Converting to text, rather than rejecting it would be much more graceful and useful to all. -- Michelle Dick artemis@rahul.net East Palo Alto, CA From list-managers-owner Thu Feb 10 16:13:50 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA22587; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 16:07:11 -0800 (PST) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id QAA22580 for ; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 16:07:05 -0800 (PST) Received: from [17.216.27.198] (A17-216-27-198.apple.com [17.216.27.198]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id QAA46584 ; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 16:21:35 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <20000210225947.CF71499E0D@waltz.rahul.net> References: <20000210225947.CF71499E0D@waltz.rahul.net> Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 16:22:25 -0800 To: Michelle Dick , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Oversized emails? Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 2:59 PM -0800 2/10/2000, Michelle Dick wrote: > I am seriously considering something like demime > (should I be able to get it working) instead of doing what I do now > (which is reject html postings and advise the poster to send plain > text). I'm going to run user surveys and see what they want for my discussion lists. if the users are ready for HTML, I'll do it. if not, I'll go with demime as well. Too many users have no clue WHAT's coming out the back end of their mail clients, so telling them to turn it off is less and less useful and doesn't solve the problem, it merely starts the discussion. I give it 50-50 that the lists will choose to allow MIME/HTML based stuff, while not allowing attachments, embedded graphics, or anything that really blows up the size of a message. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Thu Feb 10 17:10:48 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA22951; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 16:59:48 -0800 (PST) Received: from waltz.rahul.net (waltz.rahul.net [192.160.13.9]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id QAA22943 for ; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 16:59:42 -0800 (PST) Received: by waltz.rahul.net (Postfix, from userid 511) id 210C999EA2; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 17:15:37 -0800 (PST) To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Oversized emails? In-reply-to: Date: Thu, 10 Feb 100 17:15:36 -0800 From: Michelle Dick Message-Id: <20000211011537.210C999EA2@waltz.rahul.net> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Chuq wrote: > > I'm going to run user surveys and see what they want for my > discussion lists. if the users are ready for HTML, I'll do it. if > not, I'll go with demime as well. Too many users have no clue WHAT's > coming out the back end of their mail clients, so telling them to > turn it off is less and less useful and doesn't solve the problem, it > merely starts the discussion. True. Although in one case (involving a winmail.dat poster) the discussion resulted in pointers to a fix and much thanks from the poster since she had gotten complaints elsewhere about it as well. In my case, I'm not just interested in how many prefer html versus don't, my less harm/most good criterion takes more into account actual functionality than emotional preference. Having to expend a good deal of effort to read the html email is lack of actual functionality. Prefering html formatting in my very text-oriented list is just emotional preference for my list. For example, lets assume that 80% of the list actually does prefer html versus 20% prefering plain text. Not giving 80% their preference for html is better than, say, having 5% of the 20% of the non-html preferers not being able to use the list at all. The 80% can still use the list as they always have in a non-html list, while the 5% couldn't reasonably in an html-enabled list. So, by least harm, most good, a simple yes-no preference survey doesn't address the issue *for my list*. Especially since my list has been around over 7 years and many of the original subscribers are still around and contributing and more likely to be in that 5% rather than the new 80% which are internet newcomers with the latest tools. As it is, very small html posts do get through to my list as is (since I effectively filter out 95% of html based on size alone) and I'd guess about half result in one or more complaints to me asking why it got through and could I fix it. What would be nice, in addition to using a demime filter for email distribution, would be to save html versions of the messages for the list web archives. Seems a shame to throw away the part of the message that is most suitable for use in a web archive. It could be done, but would require more work to implement than I have to give at this point. On a related note, I made my list much more prominant on my website and noticed a huge increase in the number of unsuccessful confirmation attempts. More internet newcomers learned about the list (great!) but they weren't able to follow the email instructions (not good). I quickly added a simple cgi that would generate a proper confirmation email and included the url in each confirmation request. That solved that problem handily. I haven't gotten an unsuccessful subscribe yet and the cgi is used about 95% of the time now. The only downside is that among the new subscribers there is a much higher percentage of not quite as literate posters, resulting in more incoherent sentences, comments not on topic, etc. We've also had a number of new valuable posters as well. Gotta take the bad with the good, I guess. No one has complained to me about it, though, so maybe its not as bad as I think it is. Certainly the internet culture is changing rapidly and I'm struggling with how to continue to nurture the list-community in the most accessible, yet convenient to use ways, and without imposing on myself too much (very important). -- Michelle Dick artemis@rahul.net East Palo Alto, CA From list-managers-owner Thu Feb 10 18:55:44 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA23974; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 18:44:24 -0800 (PST) Received: from benge.graphics.cornell.edu (benge.graphics.cornell.edu [128.84.247.43]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id SAA23965 for ; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 18:44:19 -0800 (PST) Received: from benge.graphics.cornell.edu (mkc@localhost) by benge.graphics.cornell.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id WAA37007; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 22:00:13 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from mkc@benge.graphics.cornell.edu) Message-Id: <200002110300.WAA37007@benge.graphics.cornell.edu> To: Michelle Dick cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Oversized emails? In-Reply-To: Message from Michelle Dick of "Thu, 10 Feb 0100 17:15:36 PST." <20000211011537.210C999EA2@waltz.rahul.net> Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 22:00:12 -0500 From: Mitch Collinsworth Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >Certainly the internet culture is changing rapidly and I'm struggling >with how to continue to nurture the list-community in the most >accessible, yet convenient to use ways, and without imposing on myself >too much (very important). My solution was to stop reading my own lists. :-) -Mitch From list-managers-owner Thu Feb 10 19:26:05 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA24365; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 19:16:01 -0800 (PST) Received: from gw.tssi.com (gw.tssi.com [198.147.197.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA24358 for ; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 19:15:56 -0800 (PST) Received: from celery.tssi.com (nolan@celery.tssi.com [198.147.197.6]) by gw.tssi.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id VAA31781 for ; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 21:31:46 -0600 Received: (from celery.tssi.com) by celery.tssi.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id VAA14558 for list-managers@GreatCircle.com; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 21:31:44 -0600 From: Mike Nolan Message-Id: <200002110331.VAA14558@celery.tssi.com> Subject: Re: Oversized emails? To: list-managers@GreatCircle.com (List Managers) Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 21:31:43 -0600 (CST) Reply-To: nolan@tssi.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL2] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > I'm going to run user surveys and see what they want for my > discussion lists. if the users are ready for HTML, I'll do it. if > not, I'll go with demime as well. Too many users have no clue WHAT's > coming out the back end of their mail clients, so telling them to > turn it off is less and less useful and doesn't solve the problem, it > merely starts the discussion. Chuq, it would not surprise me if some percentage of your subscribers think HTML is the virus that causes AIDS. The solution I would like is a subscription process which recognizes whether a new subscriber can handle HTML or not and sends HTML-based messages out in HTML or plaintext, accordingly. However, I'm not sure that current subscription protocols have the ability to do that level of discrimination yet. And that doesn't necessarily deal with users who read mail from multiple locations, though many of them are sophisticated enough that if a no-HTML subscription option was available they could choose for themselves. I'm almost to the point where I would like a web-based subscription form, with appropriate security measures to guard against automated mass attacks and e-mail confirmation, of course. And if I use cookies, I could then permit web-based users to post to my lists. Right now my web readers are read-only unless they subscribe via e-mail. (I don't think I would go to a web-only subscription form, but I could see that being the primary subscription vehicle.) -- Mike Nolan From list-managers-owner Thu Feb 10 21:24:26 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA25336; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 20:57:59 -0800 (PST) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id UAA25328 for ; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 20:57:53 -0800 (PST) Received: from [209.239.169.197] (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id VAA17332 ; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 21:16:29 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <20000211011537.210C999EA2@waltz.rahul.net> References: <20000211011537.210C999EA2@waltz.rahul.net> Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 21:08:10 -0800 To: Michelle Dick , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Oversized emails? Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 5:15 PM -0800 2/10/2000, Michelle Dick wrote: > In my case, I'm not just interested in how many prefer html versus > don't, my less harm/most good criterion takes more into account actual > functionality than emotional preference. Heck if I can argue that. if that's what you feel is best for your list, I'm all for it. > Especially > since my list has been around over 7 years and many of the original > subscribers are still around and contributing and more likely to be in > that 5% rather than the new 80% which are internet newcomers with the > latest tools. you might check that first because the results might surprise you. Or amybe not... > On a related note, I made my list much more prominant on my website > and noticed a huge increase in the number of unsuccessful confirmation > attempts. More internet newcomers learned about the list (great!) but > they weren't able to follow the email instructions (not good). Which is why, for some lists, confirmations got disabled -- yes, there are some problems with a non-confirmed list, but not as many as caused BY the confirmation. So least-harm wins again -- although I do hope, like Michelle, to move back to some really easy confirmation system again and get the best of both worlds. > Certainly the internet culture is changing rapidly and I'm struggling > with how to continue to nurture the list-community in the most > accessible, yet convenient to use ways, and without imposing on myself > too much (very important). Yeah. I'm on about my fifth round of "stuff I wrote that was perfectly good for my users a year ago needs to be fixed and improved". Not because the users are getting stupid, but because they're getting more naive about how this stuff operates, and to a good degree, simply don't CARE how they operate, and shouldn't have to. That's my job.... -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Thu Feb 10 21:27:59 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA25361; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 20:59:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.vjs.org (cc50165-b.hwrd1.md.home.com [24.9.159.241]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id UAA25354 for ; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 20:59:21 -0800 (PST) Received: from [192.168.1.5] (192.168.1.5) by mail.vjs.org with ESMTP (Eudora Internet Mail Server 2.2); Fri, 11 Feb 2000 00:15:12 -0500 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <35517.950054431@monkeys.com> References: <35517.950054431@monkeys.com> X-Organization: Little to None X-Mailer: Eudora 5.0 for Cray T3E-1200 Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 00:15:10 -0500 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Vince Sabio Subject: Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM Cc: abuse@get.topica.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk ** Sometime around 16:00 -0800 02/08/2000, Ronald F. Guilmette sent us: >Awhile ago, I posted here some info explaining why egroups/onelist got >their e-mail blacklisted for this domain. > >Just to show that I don't play favorites, As if we care ... >I've also now blacklisted >TOPICA.COM here on the basis of the abusive OPT-OUT spam message >included below, Yawn. >Osama, the owner of the mailing list 'Taha', >has added you to this list at Topica. This is endemic of mailing lists and list owners, Ron, and has nothing to do with Topica, per se. Osama could be running a mailing list on a LISTSERV or a Majordomo somewhere, and decide to add you to his/her mailing list -- and you wouldn't necessarily even receive notification of that fact (until you received mail from the list). [1] Topica needs to provide a means for list owners to make *legitimate* additions to their mailing lists -- and, what do you know, but such a mechanism can be abused by Bad Bad People. Shocker of the century, Ron. As I said, *yawn*. It isn't the first time that a legitimate mechanism has been abused, it won't be the last time, and quite frankly I'm much more concerned about ORBS routinely spamming my mail server than I am about some dink at Topica abusing the subscriber-add feature. Career suggestion: Don't go into investigative reporting, Ron. You're boring. [1] Hmmmm, maybe we should ban ALL sites that run list servers, because they can be abused by Bad People. Or maybe we should simply write to the SERVER ADMINISTRATORS at those sites to tell them that their list owner(s) are abusing the services. Huh, yeah, there's an idea. Hey, waddyaknow, Topica has an abuse address! Maybe we could simply write to Topica's abuse address to tell them that one of their list owners is abusing the service. Nah, no sense in doing that -- Topica is a Big Bad Internet Business, so maybe we should go for the knee-jerk reaction and simply ban the site, instead. Yeah, that's the ticket. __________________________________________________________________________ Vince Sabio Got Bounces? vince-lists@vjs.org Got Jokes? Got Spam? From list-managers-owner Thu Feb 10 21:54:23 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA25672; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 21:27:02 -0800 (PST) Received: from ivan.iecc.com (ivan.iecc.com [208.31.42.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id VAA25665 for ; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 21:26:57 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 29966 invoked by uid 100); 11 Feb 2000 00:37:21 -0500 Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 00:37:19 -0500 (EST) From: John R Levine To: nolan@tssi.com cc: List Managers Subject: Re: Oversized emails? In-Reply-To: <200002110331.VAA14558@celery.tssi.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > The solution I would like is a subscription process which recognizes > whether a new subscriber can handle HTML or not and sends HTML-based > messages out in HTML or plaintext, accordingly. However, I'm not sure that > current subscription protocols have the ability to do that level of > discrimination yet. Seems simple enough. Send a confirmation message in multipart/crud, er, multipart/alternative format with one confirmation URL in the text part and a different one in the HTML part, with mailback instructions in the part above the first MIME. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 From list-managers-owner Thu Feb 10 21:56:45 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA25495; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 21:06:41 -0800 (PST) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA25478 for ; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 21:06:33 -0800 (PST) Received: from [209.239.169.197] (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id VAA20170 ; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 21:25:08 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <200002110331.VAA14558@celery.tssi.com> References: <200002110331.VAA14558@celery.tssi.com> Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 21:22:20 -0800 To: nolan@tssi.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM (List Managers) From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Oversized emails? Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 9:31 PM -0600 2/10/2000, Mike Nolan wrote: > Chuq, it would not surprise me if some percentage of your subscribers > think HTML is the virus that causes AIDS. I think I understand your sentiment here (and if not, we'll pretend I do and not get into it...), but we've found, for whatever it's worth, that the more naive the user, the more you can guarantee they're using an HTML capable mail reader, even if they don't realize it. Newer users don't often get hooked up to lynx and mailx. > The solution I would like is a subscription process which recognizes > whether a new subscriber can handle HTML or not and sends HTML-based > messages out in HTML or plaintext, accordingly. However, I'm not sure that > current subscription protocols have the ability to do that level of > discrimination yet. Funny you should mention that. You're right, you really can't tell. You can't even assume that the mail client someone uses to subscribe is the one they'll use to read mail, even if the mail client identifies itself in the mail header. Not with all of the forwarding systems out there, and if your lists are like mine, 10-15% of your list forwards to someone through hotmail, and up to 20% of your list goes through SOME forwarding/webmail system, whether it's hotmail, bigfoot, yahoo, or name your favorite. I'd love to do this. I have people who'd really, really love to have it. Someday, I'll figure out a way, at least for some class of users. But -- it's actually fairly easy to fix this, especially with VERP technology. Simply sign someone up to HTML, ship out the HTML in a MIME part, and in the message outside of the MIME area, put a "if you see this message, then your mail client doesn't support HTML" warning, and with VERPing, you can even include an encoded URL they can use to tweak your database with a single click. I wish I could say I thought this up, but Infobeat does most of this, and I think it's a neat way to handle it -- especially if you add in the fix-me URL with user encoding in it. that, IMHO, removes almost all of the issue with whether to set people up with HTML or not, because they can easily switch back if we break something. now, for discussion lists like Michelle's or the ones I run, it's still an issue, but if you really wanted, you could run parallel lists, one HTML, the other textonly and run through demime, and simply make sure stuff gets posted to both. In fact, now that I think about it, maybe when I make the move to Sympa I'll do just that. > And that doesn't necessarily deal with users who read > mail from multiple locations, Which is a very large number. > though many of them are sophisticated enough > that if a no-HTML subscription option was available they could choose > for themselves. Given how endemic hotmail is, and how widely it's used by the techno-naive, that's not a safe assumption. Trust me on that. > I'm almost to the point where I would like a web-based subscription >form, with > appropriate security measures to guard against automated mass attacks and > e-mail confirmation, of course. Funny, I'm not convinced the "of course" is a given. email confirmations aren't a panacea. The busier the list, the more necessary they are, but you have to be careful you aren't just moving the problem to soe other place. > And if I use cookies, I could then > permit web-based users to post to my lists. you know,there's a nice idea in there. > Right now my web readers are > read-only unless they subscribe via e-mail. that's one reason I moved my web archives to web crossing. The downside is that it uses it's own validation setup. The good news is that it allows for external and LDAP authentification, so I can (someday) write my own subscription/membership module and export mailing list data and web authentifications out to everything from a single source. Which'd be really cool. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Thu Feb 10 23:34:33 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA26632; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 23:15:42 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id XAA26625 for ; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 23:15:37 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id XAA48127 for ; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 23:31:33 -0800 (PST) To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM In-reply-to: Your message of Fri, 11 Feb 2000 00:15:10 -0500. Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 23:31:33 -0800 Message-ID: <48125.950254293@monkeys.com> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message , Vince Sabio wrote: >** Sometime around 16:00 -0800 02/08/2000, Ronald F. Guilmette sent us: >This is endemic of mailing lists and list owners, Ron, and has >nothing to do with Topica, per se. That's bull. >Osama could be running a mailing >list on a LISTSERV or a Majordomo somewhere, and decide to add you to >his/her mailing list OK smart ass. Simple question: If the spammer COULD HAVE just used his own majordomo, then why didn't he? Why did he go to all of the trouble to have Topica do his spamming for him? Maybe when you manage to puzzle that out, you will figure out why I have blacklisted Topica locally. From list-managers-owner Thu Feb 10 23:50:15 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA26691; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 23:29:12 -0800 (PST) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id XAA26684 for ; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 23:29:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from [209.239.169.197] ([17.254.136.14]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id XAA23816 ; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 23:43:25 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: <35517.950054431@monkeys.com> Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 23:41:17 -0800 To: Vince Sabio , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM Cc: abuse@get.topica.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 12:15 AM -0500 2/11/2000, Vince Sabio wrote: abused, it won't be the last time, and quite frankly I'm much more concerned about ORBS routinely spamming my mail server Have you considered putting ORBS in your blocking files? I'm redoing stuff to use tcpwrappers, and I'll probably block their stuff at that level once I'm done. I wonder if that'll qualify me for their database or something, since I won't let them whack at my servers without my permission any more. Horrors, that. Of course, from my experience, the number of sites that actually connect to ORBS is so tiny, I don't even pay attention to it any more. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Fri Feb 11 04:26:32 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id EAA02309; Fri, 11 Feb 2000 04:17:20 -0800 (PST) Received: from bangkok.digi-net.com ([63.75.34.110]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id EAA02302 for ; Fri, 11 Feb 2000 04:17:15 -0800 (PST) Received: from [199.78.178.88] (unverified [199.78.178.88]) by bangkok.digi-net.com (Rockliffe SMTPRA 3.4.6) with SMTP id for ; Fri, 11 Feb 2000 07:28:09 -0500 Message-ID: Subject: Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM Date: Fri, 11 Feb 00 07:33:10 -0500 x-sender: tanny@63.75.34.110 x-mailer: Claris Emailer 1.1 From: tanny To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >[1] Topica needs to provide a means for list owners to make >*legitimate* additions to their mailing lists -- >[1] Topica needs to provide a means for list owners to make >*legitimate* additions to their mailing lists -- Hmm, this is admittedly a tricky issue, and there is no sent from God absolute right solution for every circumstance. That said, I'd have to say that it's my belief that giving large groups of users the unsupervised ability to bulk add addresses to their lists is begging for just the kind of reputation crushing controversy we are seeing develop here. Vince is an experienced responsible Internet citizen and all round good guy so if he was hosted on my server I'd have no trouble accepting his definition of *legitimate* additions. That said, Vince you gotta admit there are as many different definitions of "legitimate additions" out there as there are list owners. I know the folks at Topica and they aren't spammers, they are simply trying to be helpful to legitimate list owners by offering the unsupervised bulk add feature. The problem with these good intentions is that they will certainly be abused and thus the reputations of all the truly legitimate list owners at Topica will be adversely affected. The thread that is developing here, regardless of its exact merits, is evidence enough of that. Phil From list-managers-owner Fri Feb 11 08:10:50 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA04508; Fri, 11 Feb 2000 08:03:04 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.visi.com (baal.visi.com [209.98.98.3]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA04501 for ; Fri, 11 Feb 2000 08:02:58 -0800 (PST) Received: from infinia (clift.dsl.visi.com [209.98.142.42]) by mail.visi.com (8.8.8/8.7.5) with SMTP id KAA22094; Fri, 11 Feb 2000 10:18:39 -0600 (CST) Posted-Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 10:18:39 -0600 (CST) Message-Id: <200002111618.KAA22094@mail.visi.com> From: "Steven Clift" Organization: http://www.e-democracy.org/do To: list-moderators@list-moderators.com, List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 10:15:04 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Filtering Advice for Subscribers Reply-to: slc@publicus.net X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.11) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I became aware of the following site: http://www.positivespace.com/new/business/filter.htm They give advice on how to filter your e-mail in: America Online Eudora (Light or Pro v3.1) Hotmail Microsoft Outlook 98 Microsoft Outlook Express Netscape Yahoo Mail Does anyone know of a generic similar resource or advice in text on how to filter in these and other programs (like Pegasus mail, Lotus Notes, ccMail, PINE)? Steven Clift - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Steven Clift - E: clift@publicus.net T:+1.612.822.8667 Info - http://publicus.net DO - http://e-democracy.org/do Web White & Blue - http://webwhiteblue.org - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - From list-managers-owner Fri Feb 11 10:10:50 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA05677; Fri, 11 Feb 2000 09:53:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from ns.secondary.com (ns.secondary.com [208.184.76.39]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id JAA05670 for ; Fri, 11 Feb 2000 09:53:19 -0800 (PST) Received: from laptop (ip12.proper.com [165.227.249.12]) by ns.secondary.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA18931 for ; Fri, 11 Feb 2000 10:06:14 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <4.2.1.20000211100625.00c00a70@mail.imc.org> X-Sender: phoffman@mail.imc.org X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.2.1 Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 10:10:22 -0800 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Paul Hoffman / IMC Subject: Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM In-Reply-To: References: <35517.950054431@monkeys.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 11:41 PM 2/10/00 -0800, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: >Have you considered putting ORBS in your blocking files? I'm redoing stuff >to use tcpwrappers, and I'll probably block their stuff at that level once >I'm done. I wonder if that'll qualify me for their database or something, Most likely, yes. AboveNet blackholed ORBS for some of their customers, and ORBS has blackholed all of AboveNet. Of course, they don't say that on the site; why should they explain the rules to everyone? See for details. > since I won't let them whack at my servers without my permission any > more. Horrors, that. Of course, from my experience, the number of sites > that actually connect to ORBS is so tiny, I don't even pay attention to > it any more. Because we are colocated at AboveNet, we had some problems with users to our mailing lists bouncing everything. It turns out "some" was "virtually none", like maybe two companies out of the tens of thousands we have on our lists. When I realized this, I had a good chuckle. Oh, and after you've been blackholed by them, don't bother sending them mail. They use their own list to blackhole and expect you to get a Hotmail account in order to talk to them. Great planning, that... --Paul Hoffman, Director --Internet Mail Consortium From list-managers-owner Fri Feb 11 11:25:58 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA06751; Fri, 11 Feb 2000 11:20:08 -0800 (PST) Received: from Kitten.mcs.net (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA06739 for ; Fri, 11 Feb 2000 11:19:59 -0800 (PST) Received: from Mercury.mcs.net (dattier@Mercury.mcs.net [192.160.127.80]) by Kitten.mcs.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id NAA39535 for ; Fri, 11 Feb 2000 13:35:55 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from dattier@mcs.net) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Mercury.mcs.net (8.9.3/8.8.2) id NAA91871 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Fri, 11 Feb 2000 13:35:55 -0600 (CST) Message-Id: <200002111935.NAA91871@Mercury.mcs.net> Subject: Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 13:35:55 -0600 (CST) From: "David W. Tamkin" To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <48125.950254293@monkeys.com> from "Ronald F. Guilmette" at Feb 10, 2000 11:31:33 PM X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL3] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Authentication-Warning: The true sender is dattier@Mercury.mcs.net. Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Ron Guilmette asked Vince Sabio, | Simple question: If the spammer COULD HAVE just used his | own majordomo, then why didn't he? Why did he go to all of the trouble | to have Topica do his spamming for him? Because for many it is less trouble to set up a list at a big public listhost than to get an OS that runs list server software, get list server software, and do all the low-level administrative type things that a big listhost has already automated for its users. If they can get their spam out hit-and-run before the listhost's abuse department closes the list down, that's good enough. Maybe they could have set up Majordomo or another list management package, but it was much easier to turn the keys and press the buttons on a public listhost. Another possibility -- not having the mind of a spammer [such as it is] I can only guess how such jerks think -- is that a spammer can set up an account with false personal information on a free ISP, create a list on a publicly accessible listhost, and hit and run; whereas running a list man- agement package on its own machine would give away its IP address and leave it vulnerable to (well-deserved, granted) sanctions. But every time it's been suggested that Onelist or eGroups drop the function to add people to lists without their needing to confirm, other listowners get up in arms that there are some very important members of their lists who never could have managed to join if they had had to confirm, for whom it is too daunting to have to use the Reply and Send functions of their mail cli- ents to answer a confirmation request, yet without whom the list cannot prop- erly serve its purpose. From list-managers-owner Fri Feb 11 14:40:10 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA08898; Fri, 11 Feb 2000 14:30:41 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA08885 for ; Fri, 11 Feb 2000 14:30:30 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id OAA50702; Fri, 11 Feb 2000 14:07:30 -0800 (PST) To: "David W. Tamkin" cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM In-reply-to: Your message of Fri, 11 Feb 2000 13:35:55 -0600. <200002111935.NAA91871@Mercury.mcs.net> Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 14:07:30 -0800 Message-ID: <50700.950306850@monkeys.com> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message <200002111935.NAA91871@Mercury.mcs.net>, you wrote: >Ron Guilmette asked Vince Sabio, > >| Simple question: If the spammer COULD HAVE just used his >| own majordomo, then why didn't he? Why did he go to all of the trouble >| to have Topica do his spamming for him? > >Because for many it is less trouble to set up a list at a big public listhost >than to get an OS that runs list server software, get list server software, >and do all the low-level administrative type things that a big listhost has >already automated for its users. If they can get their spam out hit-and-run >before the listhost's abuse department closes the list down, that's good >enough. Maybe they could have set up Majordomo or another list management >package, but it was much easier to turn the keys and press the buttons on a >public listhost. Yes. And that was exactly my point. TOPICA is making life easy for spammers. >But every time it's been suggested that Onelist or eGroups drop the function >to add people to lists without their needing to confirm, other listowners >get up in arms that there are some very important members of their lists who >never could have managed to join if they had had to confirm, for whom it is >too daunting to have to use the Reply and Send functions of their mail cli- >ents to answer a confirmation request, yet without whom the list cannot prop- >erly serve its purpose. And that, of course, is pure horse pucky. Any six-year old kid of average intelligence can figure out (or be taught) how to relay to an e-mail message. If this (using e-mail) was rocket science, then millions of ordinary people wouldn't be doing it. From list-managers-owner Fri Feb 11 15:39:48 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA09471; Fri, 11 Feb 2000 15:29:46 -0800 (PST) Received: from hen.scotland.net (phys-hen2.scotland.net [194.247.65.128]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA09464 for ; Fri, 11 Feb 2000 15:29:30 -0800 (PST) Received: from [148.176.237.89] (helo=becky) by hen.scotland.net with smtp (Exim 2.12 #2) id 12JPif-0004g2-00 for List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM; Fri, 11 Feb 2000 23:43:26 +0000 Message-ID: <03d901bf74e9$a5d70f40$ceedb094@becky> From: "becky vacara" To: References: Subject: Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 23:42:15 -0000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2615.200 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > I know the folks at Topica and they aren't spammers, they are > simply trying to be helpful to legitimate list owners by offering > the unsupervised bulk add feature. The problem with these good > intentions is that they will certainly be abused and thus the > reputations of all the truly legitimate list owners at Topica > will be adversely affected. Granted that everyone who works for Topica is not the head of the company, nor do they have any say in decisions. However those that do certainly have shown that there way of doing business is to step on the little people. How many list has Topica bought? There policy when buying out these companies is that the server they are buying from must not give notice to it's list-owners until the last minute. Thousands of list-owners had their list taken hostage by Topica and their lives turned upside-down. How is this good business? Do you realise that there are many people who have wanted to sue Topica in the last couple months? Becky (One of those thousands left homeless by Topica) From list-managers-owner Fri Feb 11 16:24:33 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA09973; Fri, 11 Feb 2000 16:18:25 -0800 (PST) Received: from waltz.rahul.net (waltz.rahul.net [192.160.13.9]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id QAA09966 for ; Fri, 11 Feb 2000 16:18:21 -0800 (PST) Received: by waltz.rahul.net (Postfix, from userid 511) id 0F3C699E2D; Fri, 11 Feb 2000 16:34:26 -0800 (PST) To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM In-reply-to: <50700.950306850@monkeys.com> Date: Fri, 11 Feb 100 16:34:25 -0800 From: Michelle Dick Message-Id: <20000212003426.0F3C699E2D@waltz.rahul.net> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Ronald wrote: > > Any six-year old kid of average intelligence can figure out (or be taught) > how to relay to an e-mail message. Whether or not it is "easy" enough to reply by email to a confirmation request is now a moot question. This is because the same folks who have trouble composing and sending a proper email confirmation reply generally now have html-enabled mail readers. All that need to be done to request a confirm is to include something like: Click here to activiate subscription in the list's email response to the subscription request. The confirm cgi url should contain all the info needed to process the confirmation (cookies, etc) so the prospective list member need make one click to confirm, no filling out forms, no nothing other than one click. If they can't even READ the email -- then there really IS no reason to have them on the mailing list in the first place. "One Click Confirmation" No excuses anymore. Even I, a non-programmer, was able to write a cgi that would generate a proper confirm email and get it to the right place. -- Michelle Dick artemis@rahul.net East Palo Alto, CA From list-managers-owner Fri Feb 11 17:55:10 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA10608; Fri, 11 Feb 2000 17:39:52 -0800 (PST) Received: from raven.a001.sprintmail.com (raven.prod.itd.earthlink.net [209.178.63.9]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id RAA10601 for ; Fri, 11 Feb 2000 17:39:46 -0800 (PST) Received: from earthlink (sdn-ar-006waseatP225.dialsprint.net [168.191.237.241]) by raven.a001.sprintmail.com (8.8.7/8.8.5) with SMTP id RAA09437; Fri, 11 Feb 2000 17:55:49 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <004501bf74fc$46d359a0$0100a8c0@earthlink> Reply-To: "Chris McEwen" From: "Chris McEwen" To: "David W. Tamkin" , References: <200002111935.NAA91871@Mercury.mcs.net> Subject: Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 17:55:43 -0800 Organization: Socrates Press, Keyport WA MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2615.200 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk The fact that anyone can create a Topica mail list, import a few thousand names, spam the snot out of the world and disappear is reason enough for Topica to restrict the function to import names. There is no reason to delete this function, just limit it to a certain number of names per hour, day or whatever. No spammer worth his salt is going to bother with a system that restricts the names he can add to his hit-list to a few dozen a day. Few legitimate list owners will need to add more than this except on a special basis. And they can deal with customer service on such occassions. -- Chris McEwen ----- Original Message ----- From: David W. Tamkin But every time it's been suggested that Onelist or eGroups drop the function to add people to lists without their needing to confirm, other listowners get up in arms that there are some very important members of their lists who never could have managed to join if they had had to confirm, for whom it is too daunting to have to use the Reply and Send functions of their mail cli- ents to answer a confirmation request, yet without whom the list cannot prop- erly serve its purpose. From list-managers-owner Sat Feb 12 05:57:08 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id FAA19374; Sat, 12 Feb 2000 05:49:15 -0800 (PST) Received: from halifax.chebucto.ns.ca (chebucto.ns.Ca [192.75.95.75]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id FAA19367 for ; Sat, 12 Feb 2000 05:49:09 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (user: 'potter', uid#5005) by halifax.chebucto.ns.ca id ; Sat, 12 Feb 2000 10:05:07 -0400 Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2000 10:05:06 -0400 (AST) From: "David L. Potter" To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <200002120900.BAA13994@honor.greatcircle.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 13:35:55 -0600 (CST) > From: "David W. Tamkin" > Subject: Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM > > Ron Guilmette asked Vince Sabio, > > > But every time it's been suggested that Onelist or eGroups drop the function > to add people to lists without their needing to confirm, other listowners > get up in arms that there are some very important members of their lists who > never could have managed to join if they had had to confirm, for whom it is > too daunting to have to use the Reply and Send functions of their mail cli- > ents to answer a confirmation request, yet without whom the list cannot prop- > erly serve its purpose. > > ------------------------------ Spammers would almost always be someone wanting to set up a large list bulk subscribe and use it immediately. Listowner/subscriber convenience and spam prevention could be accomodated by simply having a max number of un-confirmed subscriptions per day, and/or a waiting period of x days before a list-owner could start bulk subscribing... AND.. all of these could be waived for known list-owners, i.e. those who have had other lists operating for several months, etc... And the argumet that some people couldn't handle the confirm process certainly wouldn't apply to large percentages of list subscribers. --- Another possibility is to apply a 'real' spam filter to mail addressed _to_ a new /istowner/list list for the first 90 days... that would cure most of the spam problems right there. david potter From list-managers-owner Sat Feb 12 15:26:01 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA24022; Sat, 12 Feb 2000 15:11:32 -0800 (PST) Received: from karat.cip.informatik.uni-muenchen.de (karat.cip.informatik.uni-muenchen.de [141.84.220.26]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA23964 for ; Sat, 12 Feb 2000 15:03:49 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (zimmerma@localhost) by karat.cip.informatik.uni-muenchen.de (8.8.8+Sun/8.8.8) with ESMTP id AAA08402 for ; Sun, 13 Feb 2000 00:20:26 +0100 (MET) X-Authentication-Warning: karat.cip.informatik.uni-muenchen.de: zimmerma owned process doing -bs Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2000 00:20:26 +0100 (MET) From: Alexander Zimmermann Reply-To: Alexander Zimmermann To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: New majordomo version Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hi folks, just wanted to ask how many of you have done the upgrade to Majordomo 1.94.5 and if any of you had any problems with it? I don't expect much trouble, but my listserver has grown big over the years and I just want to know if I should test the new version before activating it. Alex -- Alexander Zimmermann http://www.informatik.uni-muenchen.de/~_zimmerma/ From list-managers-owner Sat Feb 12 18:11:04 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA25341; Sat, 12 Feb 2000 18:03:14 -0800 (PST) Received: from scifi.squawk.com (glock.squawk.com [208.176.124.157]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id SAA25334 for ; Sat, 12 Feb 2000 18:03:09 -0800 (PST) Received: from tpad.squawk.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by scifi.squawk.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 34A59350B9 for ; Sat, 12 Feb 2000 21:19:23 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.20000212172749.0357e350@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: njs@127.0.0.1 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2000 17:27:49 -0500 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Nick Simicich Subject: Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM In-Reply-To: <200002111935.NAA91871@Mercury.mcs.net> References: <48125.950254293@monkeys.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 01:35 PM 2/11/00 -0600, David W. Tamkin wrote: >Ron Guilmette asked Vince Sabio, >But every time it's been suggested that Onelist or eGroups drop the function >to add people to lists without their needing to confirm, other listowners >get up in arms that there are some very important members of their lists who >never could have managed to join if they had had to confirm, for whom it is >too daunting to have to use the Reply and Send functions of their mail cli- >ents to answer a confirmation request, yet without whom the list cannot prop- >erly serve its purpose. There is also the issue of moving an extant list - if you claim the list is pre-existing and that you are moving it, you would be expecting to add a large number of subscribers just as soon as you crank up. It is also likely that you would not be expecting to force each subscriber to re-confirm. -- That which does not kill us, makes us stronger. That which does kill us makes us smell stronger, after a few days, anyway. Nick Simicich mailto:njs@scifi.squawk.com http://scifi.squawk.com/njs.html -- Stop by and Light Up The World! From list-managers-owner Sat Feb 12 20:26:15 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA26489; Sat, 12 Feb 2000 20:20:24 -0800 (PST) Received: from ivan.iecc.com (ivan.iecc.com [208.31.42.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id UAA26480 for ; Sat, 12 Feb 2000 20:20:18 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 5950 invoked by uid 100); 12 Feb 2000 23:36:34 -0500 Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2000 23:36:28 -0500 (EST) From: John R Levine To: Nick Simicich cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.20000212172749.0357e350@127.0.0.1> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > There is also the issue of moving an extant list - if you claim the list is > pre-existing and that you are moving it, you would be expecting to add a > large number of subscribers just as soon as you crank up. It is also > likely that you would not be expecting to force each subscriber to > re-confirm. This doesn't impress me as an intractable problem. When someone wants to move a list, accept the list, pick out some moderate number of addresses at random, say 50, and send each of them a message like "You're receiving this message because you're on the EPIGLOTTIS-LOVERS mailing list that has recently been moved to OffTopica.com, and we're spot checking the contents of the list. If you are a member of the list and wish to continue to be on the list click HERE, if you are a member but no longer wish to be on the list click HERE, or if you are not a member of the list click HERE." If you get back a significant number of "not on the list" responses, you know it's dodgy. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 13 00:47:28 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id AAA28322; Sun, 13 Feb 2000 00:27:57 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id AAA28315 for ; Sun, 13 Feb 2000 00:27:47 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id AAA58565; Sun, 13 Feb 2000 00:43:56 -0800 (PST) To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Cc: dru@redwoodsoft.com, dru@egroups.net Subject: Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM In-reply-to: Your message of Sat, 12 Feb 2000 23:36:28 -0500. Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2000 00:43:56 -0800 Message-ID: <58563.950431436@monkeys.com> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message , John R Levine wrote: >> There is also the issue of moving an extant list - if you claim the list is >> pre-existing and that you are moving it, you would be expecting to add a >> large number of subscribers just as soon as you crank up. It is also >> likely that you would not be expecting to force each subscriber to >> re-confirm. > >This doesn't impress me as an intractable problem. When someone wants to >move a list, accept the list, pick out some moderate number of addresses at >random, say 50, and send each of them a message like "You're receiving this >message because you're on the EPIGLOTTIS-LOVERS mailing list that has >recently been moved to OffTopica.com, and we're spot checking the contents of >the list. If you are a member of the list and wish to continue to be on the >list click HERE, if you are a member but no longer wish to be on the list >click HERE, or if you are not a member of the list click HERE." > >If you get back a significant number of "not on the list" responses, you >know it's dodgy. Yep. This is _exactly_ what I proposed to the folks at egoups/onelist. No word yet if they have implemented it or not. Unfortunately, my general impression is that with a lot of companies in that are in the Internet game these days, unless an idea can be translated directly into an obvious increase in bottom-line dollars, they will refuse to take the time to do it. What that means is that in the case of these ``professional'' (and I use the word loosely) list management companies, they are effectively declaring the problem of spammers who abuse them and get them to do their spamming for them to be sombody else's problem. From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 13 12:38:15 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA06824; Sun, 13 Feb 2000 12:27:57 -0800 (PST) Received: from Kitten.mcs.net (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA06817 for ; Sun, 13 Feb 2000 12:27:51 -0800 (PST) Received: from Mars.mcs.net (dattier@Mars.mcs.net [192.160.127.85]) by Kitten.mcs.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id OAA81231 for ; Sun, 13 Feb 2000 14:44:15 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from dattier@mcs.net) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Mars.mcs.net (8.9.3/8.8.2) id OAA86189 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Sun, 13 Feb 2000 14:44:15 -0600 (CST) Message-Id: <200002132044.OAA86189@Mars.mcs.net> Subject: Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2000 14:44:15 -0600 (CST) From: "David W. Tamkin" To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <58563.950431436@monkeys.com> from "Ronald F. Guilmette" at Feb 13, 2000 12:43:56 AM X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL3] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Authentication-Warning: The true sender is dattier@Mars.mcs.net. Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Ron continued, | This is _exactly_ what I proposed to the folks at egoups/onelist. | | No word yet if they have implemented it or not. I don't know about Topica, nor really about the current egroups.com setup, but the onelist.com branch of eGroups has a limit of ten addresses that can be added without confirmation at a time; any more, say, to move an existing list, have to be cleared with and handled by staff. As Chris McEwen and David Potter have said, that would help stymie spammers, who are not in- terested in entering their victims' addresses ten at a time. I've more to say in reply to posts on this thread, but my time this week is unwontedly constrained, so I'll get back to it in a couple days. From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 13 12:53:18 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA06851; Sun, 13 Feb 2000 12:34:36 -0800 (PST) Received: from ivan.iecc.com (ivan.iecc.com [208.31.42.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id MAA06844 for ; Sun, 13 Feb 2000 12:34:31 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 7140 invoked by uid 100); 13 Feb 2000 15:50:55 -0500 Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2000 15:50:55 -0500 (EST) From: John R Levine To: "Ronald F. Guilmette" cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: moving lists, was Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM In-Reply-To: <58563.950431436@monkeys.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > Yep. > This is _exactly_ what I proposed to the folks at egoups/onelist. > No word yet if they have implemented it or not. Hey, look what I just got from ListBot: |Date: 13 Feb 2000 18:36:02 -0000 ||Message-ID: <950466962.20588.qmail@ech> |Mailing-List: ListBot mailing list contact center.right-help@listbot.com |From: |To: ListBot Member |Subject: You have been added to | |The owner of this list has moved it to ListBot. If you don't think |you should be on this list, please send a message to | |f-2DA401D9F8A5E095@listbot.com | |The list owner has included the following welcome message: | |We are switching to ListBot for the Center Right newsletter. This |message is simply part of the process. | |______________________________________________________________________ |To unsubscribe, write to center.right-unsubscribe@listbot.com Microsoft may be evil, but they do have the occasional clue. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 14 07:08:44 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA19954; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 06:55:06 -0800 (PST) Received: from hostigos.otherwhen.com (mavery-gw.pernet.net [205.229.2.17]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id GAA19942 for ; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 06:54:56 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.otherwhen.com (mavery2.pernet.net [205.229.2.19]) by hostigos.otherwhen.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id JAA50519 for ; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 09:09:28 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from mavery@mail.otherwhen.com) Received: from PORKY/SpoolDir by mail.otherwhen.com (Mercury 1.47); 14 Feb 00 09:11:24 -0600 Received: from SpoolDir by PORKY (Mercury 1.47); 14 Feb 00 09:11:13 -0600 From: "Mike Avery" To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 09:11:07 -0600 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM Reply-to: mavery@mail.otherwhen.com Message-ID: <38A7C6B5.20463.8F31043@localhost> References: <3.0.5.32.20000212172749.0357e350@127.0.0.1> In-reply-to: X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 12 Feb 2000, at 23:36, John R Levine wrote: > > There is also the issue of moving an extant list - if you claim the > > list is pre-existing and that you are moving it, you would be > > expecting to add a large number of subscribers just as soon as you > > crank up. It is also likely that you would not be expecting to > > force each subscriber to re-confirm. > This doesn't impress me as an intractable problem. When someone wants > to move a list, accept the list, pick out some moderate number of > addresses at random, say 50, and send each of them a message like > "You're receiving this message because you're on the EPIGLOTTIS-LOVERS > mailing list that has recently been moved to OffTopica.com, and we're > spot checking the contents of the list. If you are a member of the > list and wish to continue to be on the list click HERE, if you are a > member but no longer wish to be on the list click HERE, or if you are > not a member of the list click HERE." > If you get back a significant number of "not on the list" responses, > you know it's dodgy. Ya know, I wonder if it's that simple. I took over a moderated humor list for a friend while she was on vacation. I host her list, and as with all lists I host, EVERY message has instructions on how to unsubscribe. Further, unlike me, when someone sends her a note asking to be unsubscribed, she honors the request. (I send them a form letter telling them how to unsubscribe. I refuse to manually add or remove people unless they can tell me why they can't do it themselves. I'm not trying to make money on the lists, but I do want to cut my losses, and dealing with people who can't - or won't - read the instructions is more than I want to deal with.) Shortly after I started sending jokes to her list, I got several tear jerking letters about how "I've been trying to unsubscribe for two years, and I can't do it! PLEASE HELP ME!!!" One person swore they had never subscribed. (Note.... the list server I use only subscribes the senders address. While it doesn't confirm subscriptions {the next version will do that}, you can't subscribe someone else, unless you can forge their address.) Another humor list I co-moderate had someone send a "Please unsubscribe me" note to the list. As per our policy, I dropped her instantly. (Yes, it is irrational, but if you send me an unsubscribe request, you get a form letter. If you send it to the list, I drop you instantly. The difference is the number of people each annoy.) And got back a note about how she felt her prayers had been answered. She'd been putting up with bad jokes for 18 months, and despite endless attempts to "unsuscrib", she was still on the list. How many people are there on your list who aren't quite sure how they got there, why they get all that mail, or how to get off the list? I wonder.... how many lists could really pass the 50 subscriber test. Mike -- Mike Avery MAvery@mail.otherwhen.com (409)-842-2942 (voice) (409)-842-4352 (FAX) ICQ: 16241692 * Spam is for lusers who can't get business any other way * A Randomly Selected Thought For The Day: Tried to play my shoehorn... all I got was footnotes! From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 14 17:32:47 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA28060; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 16:47:44 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id QAA28052 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 16:47:42 -0800 (PST) Received: from smtp-out2.bellatlantic.net (smtp-out2.bellatlantic.net [199.45.39.157]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id RAA09847 for ; Sun, 13 Feb 2000 17:10:06 -0800 (PST) Received: from SOUTINE2K (adsl-151-202-20-126.bellatlantic.net [151.202.20.126]) by smtp-out2.bellatlantic.net (8.9.1/8.9.1) with SMTP id UAA09104 for ; Sun, 13 Feb 2000 20:26:23 -0500 (EST) From: "Tom Neff" To: Subject: Escribe gone missing? Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2000 20:26:30 -0500 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) Importance: Normal In-Reply-To: <200002130900.BAA28728@honor.greatcircle.com> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2919.6700 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Has anyone noticed that http://www.escribe.com now returns a page for somebody's family picnic? Wassup wid dat? From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 14 17:47:35 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA27784; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 16:42:42 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id QAA27774 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 16:42:40 -0800 (PST) Received: from gsp.org (rsk.tidalwave.com [208.211.3.21]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id JAA28488 for ; Wed, 9 Feb 2000 09:37:07 -0800 (PST) Received: (from rsk@localhost) by gsp.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) id MAA12386 for list-managers-digest@GreatCircle.COM; Wed, 9 Feb 2000 12:53:59 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 12:53:57 -0500 From: Rich Kulawiec To: list-managers-digest@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Anyone else seeing probes from inco.com.lb? Message-ID: <20000209125357.A12242@gsp.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0i Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk My majordomo logs are showing entries like: Feb 05 14:20:15 xxxxxxx majordomo[12146] {search_and_find@inco.com.lb} send_confirm subscribe whitewater search_and_find@inco.com.lb [This repeated for a number of mailing lists hosted here; in each case, it looks like they sent a blind subscribe, were sent the confirmation message, but never replied.] and later: Feb 06 02:20:18 xxxxxxx majordomo[14163] {"SEARCH & FIND for services" } help inco.com.lb identies itself (on www.inco.com.lb, which appears to be their home page) as "Inconet". It looks like it's an ISP in Lebanon, but I can't find anything on their site (at least not yet) which would indicate why they're checking out mailing lists. I've dropped them a line asking what they're up to. ---Rsk From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 14 18:03:20 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA27799; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 16:42:56 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id QAA27789 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 16:42:53 -0800 (PST) Received: from central.hub.nih.gov (central.hub.nih.gov [128.231.90.100]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA01731 for ; Wed, 9 Feb 2000 12:58:35 -0800 (PST) Received: by central.hub.nih.gov with Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) id <1JZJF4FB>; Wed, 9 Feb 2000 16:14:15 -0500 Message-ID: <29057D45C11BD211B68600805FEAA1EE060CE8CE@nihexchange3.nih.gov> From: "Keller, Richard (CIT)" To: "'list-managers@GreatCircle.com'" Subject: Help on LISTSERV sendmail statistics Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 16:13:55 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Good Afternoon. We are currently using LISTSERV 1.8d, and are looking at finding a software program to view our sendmail statistics with. We are currently looking for a program that will take our sendmail log information and produce the following information: The volume of incoming/outgoing mail to our server Time frame breakdown (for example, how much mail went out/came in in a 30 second time frame) How long mail takes to be sent out and received by another server Compilation of long term statistics in order to look at averages and comparisions between time periods Daily and hourly peak usages Searching through the Internet, we have yet to find any program that will suit the needs mentioned above. Even the commercial version of Sendmail doesn't offer what we need. If anyone knows of a program that will give us these statistics, please let us know. Richard Keller Listserv Administration National Institutes of Health From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 14 18:19:36 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA27953; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 16:44:59 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id QAA27943 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 16:44:57 -0800 (PST) Received: from waltz.rahul.net (waltz.rahul.net [192.160.13.9]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id WAA26311 for ; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 22:51:42 -0800 (PST) Received: by waltz.rahul.net (Postfix, from userid 511) id D60C699E7F; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 23:07:38 -0800 (PST) To: list-managers@GreatCircle.com Subject: combination web/email lists In-reply-to: <200002110331.VAA14558@celery.tssi.com> Date: Thu, 10 Feb 100 23:07:38 -0800 From: Michelle Dick Message-Id: <20000211070738.D60C699E7F@waltz.rahul.net> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Mike wrote: > > Right now my web readers are read-only unless they subscribe via > e-mail. (I don't think I would go to a web-only subscription form, > but I could see that being the primary subscription vehicle.) Same here. I also have "live" archives in that the web archives are updated as messages appear. Many of my list lurkers unsubscribed when they became available saying they would prefer to read via the web. I'd like to let web users post, but I know that the troll factor (nearly non-existant now) would become a recurring problem. This I know because a hearty proportion of my webmaster mail is such email. Your average troll isn't going to bother requesting dailing email (and then possibly unsubscribing) just to post. A few advertisers have done so in the past, but I can't recall any in the last 4 months. I get about 2 pieces of troll email a day to webmaster. Better there than to the list. Certainly, any user now can request posting priveleges without being on the email list (I have 2 like that), but they still have to email to post. -- Michelle Dick artemis@rahul.net East Palo Alto, CA From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 14 18:35:18 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA28021; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 16:46:26 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id QAA28011 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 16:46:24 -0800 (PST) Received: from daver.bungi.com (daver.bungi.com [207.126.97.2]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id JAA20846 for ; Sat, 12 Feb 2000 09:04:06 -0800 (PST) Received: by daver.bungi.com via sendmail with stdio id for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Sat, 12 Feb 2000 09:20:16 -0800 (PST) (Smail-3.2.0.94 1997-Apr-22 #88 built 2000-Feb-12) Message-Id: From: dlr@above.net (Dave Rand) Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2000 09:20:15 PST In-Reply-To: Paul Hoffman / IMC's message on Feb 11, 10:10. X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.1.1 5/02/90) To: Paul Hoffman / IMC , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk [In the message entitled "Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM" on Feb 11, 10:10, Paul Hoffman / IMC writes:] > At 11:41 PM 2/10/00 -0800, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > >Have you considered putting ORBS in your blocking files? I'm redoing stuff > >to use tcpwrappers, and I'll probably block their stuff at that level once > >I'm done. I wonder if that'll qualify me for their database or something, > > Most likely, yes. AboveNet blackholed ORBS for some of their customers, and > ORBS has blackholed all of AboveNet. Of course, they don't say that on the > site; why should they explain the rules to everyone? See > for details. Actually, orbs has not blocked all of above.net (but I think that they should - all 5,000 of our transi routes should be full blocked, as none of those addresses are reachable from ORBS). They have, on the other hand, blocked address space attributed to us that we do not own nor transit. 207.126.0.0/16, for example. > > > since I won't let them whack at my servers without my permission any > > more. Horrors, that. Of course, from my experience, the number of sites > > that actually connect to ORBS is so tiny, I don't even pay attention to > > it any more. > > Because we are colocated at AboveNet, we had some problems with users to > our mailing lists bouncing everything. It turns out "some" was "virtually > none", like maybe two companies out of the tens of thousands we have on our > lists. When I realized this, I had a good chuckle. > > Oh, and after you've been blackholed by them, don't bother sending them > mail. They use their own list to blackhole and expect you to get a Hotmail > account in order to talk to them. Great planning, that... > Indeed. -- Dave Rand Senior Vice President & CTO, Above.net A subsidiary of Metromedia Fiber Network, Inc. NASDAQ: MFNX From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 14 18:40:53 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA27995; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 16:46:06 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id QAA27985 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 16:46:04 -0800 (PST) Received: from reality.cse.fau.edu (reality.cse.fau.edu [131.91.80.40]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA04542 for ; Fri, 11 Feb 2000 08:07:35 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (lsmith@localhost) by reality.cse.fau.edu (8.9.3/8.8.8) with ESMTP id LAA02941; Fri, 11 Feb 2000 11:22:05 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 11:22:05 -0500 (EST) From: Lisa Smith To: list-moderators@list-moderators.com cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Filtering Advice for Subscribers In-Reply-To: <200002111618.KAA22094@mail.visi.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk For mail programs like PINE (used under unix) there is procmail, a utility for sorting/filtering, forwarding, etc. It is a very powerful little program, though I usually use it for sorting/filter, it can be used for much much more. The documentation seems to be "few and far between", but maybe someone knows a documenation source that I am not aware of. A good place to start is: www.procmail.org. Good luck. On Fri, 11 Feb 2000, Steven Clift wrote: > > I became aware of the following site: > > http://www.positivespace.com/new/business/filter.htm > > They give advice on how to filter your e-mail in: > > America Online > Eudora (Light or Pro v3.1) > Hotmail > Microsoft Outlook 98 > Microsoft Outlook Express > Netscape > Yahoo Mail > > Does anyone know of a generic similar resource or advice in text > on how to filter in these and other programs (like Pegasus mail, > Lotus Notes, ccMail, PINE)? > > Steven Clift > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > Steven Clift - E: clift@publicus.net T:+1.612.822.8667 > Info - http://publicus.net DO - http://e-democracy.org/do > Web White & Blue - http://webwhiteblue.org > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------- > Submit Your Discussion List: http://DiscussionLists.com/ > ------------------------------------------------------------------- > > .................... List-Moderators Discussion List ................. To Join, Email To: mailto:join-list-moderators@list-moderators.com > To Remove, Email To: mailto:remove-list-moderators@list-moderators.com > List-Moderators List Archives: http://List-Moderators.com/archives/ > > > "How far you go in life depends on you being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these." George Washington Carver "To have striven, to have made an effort, to have been true to certain ideals -- this alone is worth the struggle. We are here to add what we can to, not to get what we can from, life." Sir William Osler, 1849-1919 Canadian Physician, Medical Historian "Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on yesterdays." Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882 American Poet and Essayist From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 14 19:35:14 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA29942; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 19:22:40 -0800 (PST) Received: from gw.tssi.com (gw.tssi.com [198.147.197.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA29935 for ; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 19:22:34 -0800 (PST) Received: from celery.tssi.com (nolan@celery.tssi.com [198.147.197.6]) by gw.tssi.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id VAA24231 for ; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 21:39:09 -0600 Received: (from celery.tssi.com) by celery.tssi.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id VAA00147 for list-managers@GreatCircle.com; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 21:39:07 -0600 From: Mike Nolan Message-Id: <200002150339.VAA00147@celery.tssi.com> Subject: Debunking the latest Internet Tax chain letter To: list-managers@GreatCircle.com (List Managers) Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 21:39:07 -0600 (CST) Reply-To: nolan@tssi.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL2] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk My wife just got a copy of a mass e-mailed letter warning about some bill that Congress may be considering to permit toll fees for e-mail. I assume that this is either the latest net rumor or another gross distortion of something that Congress might be considering. Anybody else seen this one and know the real skinny? -- Mike Nolan From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 14 21:21:49 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA00899; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 21:08:08 -0800 (PST) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA00892 for ; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 21:07:59 -0800 (PST) Received: from [209.239.169.197] (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id VAA31060 ; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 21:27:01 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <20000209125357.A12242@gsp.org> References: <20000209125357.A12242@gsp.org> Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 21:08:56 -0800 To: Rich Kulawiec , list-managers-digest@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Anyone else seeing probes from inco.com.lb? Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I've had a couple of recent slam attacks from that site. I'm guessing whoever did it is looking for lists to add to his attack. I've simply blackholed the site. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 14 21:37:41 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA00962; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 21:20:11 -0800 (PST) Received: from ivan.iecc.com (ivan.iecc.com [208.31.42.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id VAA00951 for ; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 21:19:58 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 21412 invoked by uid 100); 15 Feb 2000 00:36:35 -0500 Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 00:36:35 -0500 (EST) From: John R Levine To: nolan@tssi.com cc: List Managers Subject: Re: Debunking the latest Internet Tax chain letter In-Reply-To: <200002150339.VAA00147@celery.tssi.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > My wife just got a copy of a mass e-mailed letter warning about some bill > that Congress may be considering to permit toll fees for e-mail. If it refers to bill 602P, it's a 100% fake bogus phony chain letter. See http://www.usps.gov/news/press/99/99045new.htm It originated in Canada, at some point it jumped to the US and the references to Parliament changed to Congress. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 14 21:52:40 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA00927; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 21:11:39 -0800 (PST) Received: from scifi.squawk.com (glock.squawk.com [208.176.124.157]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA00920 for ; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 21:11:33 -0800 (PST) Received: from tpad.squawk.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by scifi.squawk.com (Postfix) with SMTP id CAC86350BA; Tue, 15 Feb 2000 00:28:08 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.20000215001402.03b67280@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: njs@127.0.0.1 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 00:14:02 -0500 To: Rich Kulawiec From: Nick Simicich Subject: Re: Anyone else seeing probes from inco.com.lb? Cc: list-managers-digest@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <20000209125357.A12242@gsp.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk It is almost certainly a spam. Maybe with su*sc*ibe at the beginning of the line. Is there a "help" message right near that? It ends up being important to log any messages to majordomo, so that you can solve these situations. At 12:53 PM 2/9/00 -0500, Rich Kulawiec wrote: >My majordomo logs are showing entries like: > >Feb 05 14:20:15 xxxxxxx majordomo[12146] {search_and_find@inco.com.lb} send_confirm subscribe whitewater search_and_find@inco.com.lb > > [This repeated for a number of mailing lists hosted here; in each > case, it looks like they sent a blind subscribe, were sent the > confirmation message, but never replied.] > >and later: > >Feb 06 02:20:18 xxxxxxx majordomo[14163] {"SEARCH & FIND for services" } help > >inco.com.lb identies itself (on www.inco.com.lb, which appears to be >their home page) as "Inconet". It looks like it's an ISP in Lebanon, >but I can't find anything on their site (at least not yet) which would >indicate why they're checking out mailing lists. I've dropped them >a line asking what they're up to. > >---Rsk > > -- That which does not kill us, makes us stronger. That which does kill us makes us smell stronger, after a few days, anyway. Nick Simicich mailto:njs@scifi.squawk.com http://scifi.squawk.com/njs.html -- Stop by and Light Up The World! From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 14 23:41:43 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA02273; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 23:37:11 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id XAA02266 for ; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 23:37:05 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id XAA02538; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 23:53:43 -0800 (PST) To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Cc: dlr@above.net (Dave Rand) Subject: Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM In-reply-to: Your message of Sat, 12 Feb 2000 09:20:15 -0800. Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 23:53:43 -0800 Message-ID: <2536.950601223@monkeys.com> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message , dlr@above.net (Dave Rand) wrote: >> Oh, and after you've been blackholed by {ORBS}, don't bother sending them >> mail. They use their own list to blackhole and expect you to get a Hotmail >> account in order to talk to them. Great planning, that... >> > >Indeed. MAPS had the exact same problem some time back... If they backlisted you, you couldn't even send them mail to tell them that you thought they had made a mistake. I called Paul Vixie on that. I don't actually know if he ever fixed it or not. From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 14 23:56:31 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA02303; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 23:41:21 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id XAA02296 for ; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 23:41:16 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id XAA02654; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 23:57:47 -0800 (PST) To: nolan@tssi.com cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM (List Managers) Subject: Re: Debunking the latest Internet Tax chain letter In-reply-to: Your message of Mon, 14 Feb 2000 21:39:07 -0600. <200002150339.VAA00147@celery.tssi.com> Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 23:57:47 -0800 Message-ID: <2652.950601467@monkeys.com> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message <200002150339.VAA00147@celery.tssi.com>, nolan@tssi.com wrote: >My wife just got a copy of a mass e-mailed letter warning about some bill >that Congress may be considering to permit toll fees for e-mail. > >I assume that this is either the latest net rumor or another gross distortion >of something that Congress might be considering. > >Anybody else seen this one and know the real skinny? Sounds like just a variation on the old ``modem tax'' chain letter / rumor. That was 100% bunk. I think it is safe to assume that this is also. From list-managers-owner Wed Feb 16 10:54:57 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA28357; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 10:10:42 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id KAA28347 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 10:10:39 -0800 (PST) Received: from ivan.iecc.com (ivan.iecc.com [208.31.42.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id JAA21515 for ; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 09:21:55 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 20473 invoked by uid 100); 14 Feb 2000 12:38:22 -0500 Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 12:38:22 -0500 (EST) From: John R Levine To: Mike Avery cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM In-Reply-To: <38A7C6B5.20463.8F31043@localhost> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > > If you get back a significant number of "not on the list" responses, > > you know it's dodgy. > > Ya know, I wonder if it's that simple. ... Well, gee, I said "a significant number". > Shortly after I started sending jokes to her list, I got several tear > jerking letters about how "I've been trying to unsubscribe for two > years, and I can't do it! PLEASE HELP ME!!!" One person swore > they had never subscribed. Regardless of the way the list was allegedly collected, if I got a bunch of those I'd want to reconfirm all the subscriptions to get rid of the people who've been trying to get off. Sometimes it's people who just can't get a clue about mailing lists, but sometimes it's mailing list software that doesn't do what its managers think it does. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 From list-managers-owner Wed Feb 16 11:25:32 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA28484; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 10:12:29 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id KAA28474 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 10:12:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from benge.graphics.cornell.edu (benge.graphics.cornell.edu [128.84.247.43]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA23491 for ; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 12:00:23 -0800 (PST) Received: from benge.graphics.cornell.edu (mkc@localhost) by benge.graphics.cornell.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id PAA54596; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 15:16:52 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from mkc@benge.graphics.cornell.edu) Message-Id: <200002142016.PAA54596@benge.graphics.cornell.edu> To: mavery@mail.otherwhen.com cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM In-Reply-To: Message from "Mike Avery" of "Mon, 14 Feb 2000 09:11:07 CST." <38A7C6B5.20463.8F31043@localhost> Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 15:16:52 -0500 From: Mitch Collinsworth Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >Shortly after I started sending jokes to her list, I got several tear >jerking letters about how "I've been trying to unsubscribe for two >years, and I can't do it! PLEASE HELP ME!!!" One person swore >they had never subscribed. (Note.... the list server I use only >subscribes the senders address. While it doesn't confirm >subscriptions {the next version will do that}, you can't subscribe >someone else, unless you can forge their address.) I hope you aren't assuming that therefore this person is just a stupid liar. I have seen cases where domains, particularly schools, create accounts, say for a class, and just recycle them from one generation of the class to the next. Hence the address stays the same, while the current users of it come and go. One user signs up to a list, leaves, new user gets assigned existing account, and "Hey, why am I getting all this mail? I didn't ask for this." -Mitch From list-managers-owner Wed Feb 16 11:41:49 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA28562; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 10:13:54 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id KAA28554 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 10:13:51 -0800 (PST) Received: from gw.tssi.com (gw.tssi.com [198.147.197.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA29895 for ; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 19:19:40 -0800 (PST) Received: from celery.tssi.com (nolan@celery.tssi.com [198.147.197.6]) by gw.tssi.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id VAA24217 for ; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 21:36:12 -0600 Received: (from celery.tssi.com) by celery.tssi.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id VAA00099 for list-managers@GreatCircle.com; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 21:36:10 -0600 From: Mike Nolan Message-Id: <200002150336.VAA00099@celery.tssi.com> Subject: combination web/email lists To: list-managers@GreatCircle.com (List Managers) Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 21:36:10 -0600 (CST) Reply-To: nolan@tssi.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL2] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > From: Michelle Dick > > Same here. I also have "live" archives in that the web archives are > updated as messages appear. Many of my list lurkers unsubscribed when > they became available saying they would prefer to read via the web. I have revised my estimate of the web readership of my largest list up substantially over the last few weeks, since the other 'unofficial' archive for it went away. And some of the folks who have written me for the right URL were long-time subscribers and contributors. We miss their insight. I gotta learn more about cookies. This idea sounds better all the time. (My wife is helping to revise a book on web design for teaching and writes in javascript, I'm the troglodite these days.) Do any of the list management packages support web-based readers via cookies? (I'd prefer not to roll my own again.) > Your average troll isn't going to bother requesting dailing > email (and then possibly unsubscribing) just to post. A few > advertisers have done so in the past, but I can't recall any in the > last 4 months. I still get a few advertisers who try to subscribe, confirm, post, and unsubscribe in one day. But I have a four day waiting period for new subscribers for exactly this reason. And only one of my lists seems to be targeted for this, curiously one of the smaller ones. -- Mike Nolan From list-managers-owner Wed Feb 16 11:55:22 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA28642; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 10:14:55 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id KAA28632 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 10:14:52 -0800 (PST) Received: from smtp-out2.bellatlantic.net (smtp-out2.bellatlantic.net [199.45.39.157]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id CAA05157 for ; Tue, 15 Feb 2000 02:49:03 -0800 (PST) Received: from SOUTINE2K (adsl-151-202-20-126.bellatlantic.net [151.202.20.126]) by smtp-out2.bellatlantic.net (8.9.1/8.9.1) with SMTP id GAA21846 for ; Tue, 15 Feb 2000 06:05:36 -0500 (EST) From: "Tom Neff" To: Subject: FOLLOWUPS on Escribe, "trying for years" and hoax letters Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 06:05:45 -0500 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2919.6700 Importance: Normal In-Reply-To: <200002150900.BAA03069@honor.greatcircle.com> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Several things to follow up on. * A day after I asked about Escribe.com taking visitors to the Naughton Family Picnic, it was back to normal. Someone write me that Escribe had an outage. How that takes you to the family picnic I don't know - could there still be a rogue nameserver out there? * I, too, get occasional messages (sent to the list address, natch) of the form "HELP! I have been trying for MONTHS to leave this list" and I have zero sympathy for them. How do you spend MONTHS trying to leave a list, exactly. Send the same wrong-address unsub command every day, blink dumbly at the "Not a member" response, and wait till the next morning to repeat the whole exercise, in hopes that next time (unlike the previous 20 times) it will suddenly work? Ignoring all the while a Digest footer that tells exactly who to contact in case of trouble with the subscription? Ignoring admin messages from the listmom that also give an address to write to? ... Actually, in every case where I have been able to track down one of these "trying for MONTHS" people, the pattern is more like - August 13: join list - August 15: send in a wrong-address unsub (along with who knows what other random crap) - Next three months: no activity - November 11, 9:05am: send another wrong-address unsub - November 11, 9:09am: post "HELP!!! I have been trying for MONTHS!" to the list addy. :) * On the "modem tax" and other hoax/legend/virus letters thing, will all list managers reading this PLEASE bookmark the Internet Hoax resources: http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html http://kumite.com/myths/myths/ http://www.ih2000.net/ira/hoaxes.htm and consult them whenever something vaguely similar comes around. Avoid the "well, it can't hurt to pass it along" pitfall - it CAN hurt. And pass these URLs on to your readers and/or hoax submitters, in hopes of doing your bit to reduce the overally net.credulousness index. From list-managers-owner Wed Feb 16 12:09:11 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA28807; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 10:17:44 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id KAA28798 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 10:17:40 -0800 (PST) Received: from hostigos.otherwhen.com (mavery-gw.pernet.net [205.229.2.17]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA24467 for ; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 13:04:59 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.otherwhen.com (mavery2.pernet.net [205.229.2.19]) by hostigos.otherwhen.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id PAA51019 for ; Mon, 14 Feb 2000 15:19:27 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from mavery@mail.otherwhen.com) Received: from PORKY/SpoolDir by mail.otherwhen.com (Mercury 1.47); 14 Feb 00 15:21:26 -0600 Received: from SpoolDir by PORKY (Mercury 1.47); 14 Feb 00 15:21:09 -0600 From: "Mike Avery" To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 15:21:02 -0600 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM Reply-to: mavery@mail.otherwhen.com Message-ID: <38A81D6A.25474.A45CDA1@localhost> In-reply-to: <200002142016.PAA54596@benge.graphics.cornell.edu> References: Message from "Mike Avery" of "Mon, 14 Feb 2000 09:11:07 CST." <38A7C6B5.20463.8F31043@localhost> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 14 Feb 2000, at 15:16, Mitch Collinsworth wrote: > >Shortly after I started sending jokes to her list, I got several tear > > jerking letters about how "I've been trying to unsubscribe for two > >years, and I can't do it! PLEASE HELP ME!!!" One person swore they > >had never subscribed. (Note.... the list server I use only > >subscribes the senders address. While it doesn't confirm > >subscriptions {the next version will do that}, you can't subscribe > >someone else, unless you can forge their address.) > I hope you aren't assuming that therefore this person is just a stupid > liar. I have seen cases where domains, particularly schools, create > accounts, say for a class, and just recycle them from one generation > of the class to the next. Hence the address stays the same, while the > current users of it come and go. One user signs up to a list, leaves, > new user gets assigned existing account, and "Hey, why am I getting > all this mail? I didn't ask for this." In each case it was an address selected by the subscriber with a commercial ISP. As in "Myname@ih2000.com". In some cases, I do believe that the entire family uses an account, and a child will subscribe to a mailing list, the contents will offend the parents, and the child denies all knowledge of the mailing list. Result - a kid who can read what s/he wants to if s/he gets to the computer soon enough and frustrated parents. What I find astounding is how many of the parents (or other subscribers) can't read/follow the unsub instructions included in each message.... although we even saw that here very recently. Mike -- Mike Avery MAvery@mail.otherwhen.com (409)-842-2942 (voice) (409)-842-4352 (FAX) ICQ: 16241692 * Spam is for lusers who can't get business any other way * Recently Seen On A Bumper Sticker Near Your Home: It's as BAD as you think, and they ARE out to get you. From list-managers-owner Wed Feb 16 12:26:30 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA00587; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 12:20:32 -0800 (PST) Received: from firewall2.startribune.com (firewall2.startribune.com [132.148.80.211]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id MAA00578 for ; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 12:20:17 -0800 (PST) Received: by firewall2.startribune.com; id OAA06237; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 14:37:46 -0600 Received: from mailserv1.startribune.com(132.148.25.25) by firewall2.startribune.com via smap (V4.2) id xma004693; Wed, 16 Feb 00 14:36:27 -0600 Received: from SMTP (stnave.startribune.com [132.148.90.39]) by mailserv1.startribune.com (8.9.0/8.9.0) with SMTP id OAA27055 for ; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 14:33:56 -0600 (CST) Received: from mail.startribune.com ([132.148.71.49]) by 132.148.90.39 (Norton AntiVirus for Internet Email Gateways 1.0) ; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 20:32:51 0000 (GMT) Received: from STAR-Message_Server by mail.startribune.com with Novell_GroupWise; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 14:35:39 -0600 Message-Id: X-Mailer: Novell GroupWise 5.2 Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 14:35:32 -0600 From: "Andrew Tasi" To: list-managers@GreatCircle.com Cc: brian@gweep.bc.ca Subject: Banning in majordomo Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hello mail list gurus, I run a large majordomo discussion list, and there is a particular user that has been a problem in the past. Sometime last year, I started bouncing all messages from his addresses with taboo_header. It took him a while to catch on. I let him continue reading the list (even though he was not able to post) and that was fine for a while. But now he has taken to misinforming people and trying to pick fights in private. So now I'd like to ban him from both reading and writing. Is there a really easy/simple way to do this if my preference is to keep the current subscriber policy of open+confirm? I realize he could always subscribe from a new address, but he hasn't tried that (yet?). Regards, Andrew From list-managers-owner Wed Feb 16 12:55:34 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA00835; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 12:52:31 -0800 (PST) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA00828 for ; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 12:52:22 -0800 (PST) Received: from [17.216.27.198] (A17-216-27-198.apple.com [17.216.27.198]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id NAA89342 ; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 13:08:00 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <200002150336.VAA00099@celery.tssi.com> References: <200002150336.VAA00099@celery.tssi.com> Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 13:08:47 -0800 To: nolan@tssi.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM (List Managers) From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: combination web/email lists Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 9:36 PM -0600 2/14/2000, Mike Nolan wrote: >And some of the folks who have written me for the right >URL were long-time subscribers and contributors. We miss their insight. yah. All the more reason to stop thinking in terms of distribution technologies and start thinking about distributing information (we traditionally use mail lists or usenet because they exist and have existed. But the key isn't HOW a user access information, but allowing the user to access it. Right?) >I gotta learn more about cookies. This idea sounds better all the time. You know, the more I think about this, the more I think the easy way is if you have a MLM taht supports the "nomail" option. So a person can subscribe and turn off e-mails, and then read via the web. That'd give them posting capability, the admin posting restrictions, and if you use mailback validations, everyone goes through the same basic authentifications. And you only have to maintain one subscriber lists. And it only affects users who want to post. Lurkers can lurk via the web as guests, although I'd still prefer my lurkers not have access to email addresses. You could generate cookies, but doesn't the nomail option solve this as easily? -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Wed Feb 16 13:11:23 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA00875; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 12:57:13 -0800 (PST) Received: from ikkoku.maison-otaku.net (ikkoku.maison-otaku.net [207.195.149.217]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA00868 for ; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 12:57:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from godai.maison-otaku.net (godai.maison-otaku.net [216.122.4.241]) by ikkoku.maison-otaku.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id BA895AF898; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 13:24:48 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (loki@localhost) by godai.maison-otaku.net (8.7.4/8.7.3) with ESMTP id NAA21516; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 13:12:09 -0800 X-Authentication-Warning: godai.maison-otaku.net: loki owned process doing -bs Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 13:12:08 -0800 (PST) From: Jeremy Blackman To: John R Levine Cc: Mike Avery , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Mon, 14 Feb 2000, John R Levine wrote: > Regardless of the way the list was allegedly collected, if I got a bunch of > those I'd want to reconfirm all the subscriptions to get rid of the people > who've been trying to get off. Sometimes it's people who just can't get a > clue about mailing lists, but sometimes it's mailing list software that > doesn't do what its managers think it does. Good point. A Listserv list I help run has recently had problems where it seems to simply selectively ignore unsubscribe commands, unless issued by a listowner. Simply telling users 'unsubscribe yourself' when it doesn't seem to work is not a good solution. :/ -- Jeremy Blackman - loki@maison-otaku.net / loki@listar.org / jeremy@lith.com Lithtech Team, Monolith Productions -- http://www.lith.com Listar Developer -- http://www.listar.org From list-managers-owner Wed Feb 16 14:24:49 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA01745; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 14:11:29 -0800 (PST) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA01738 for ; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 14:11:18 -0800 (PST) Received: from [17.216.27.198] (A17-216-27-198.apple.com [17.216.27.198]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id OAA66440 ; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 14:26:41 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 14:27:35 -0800 To: "Tom Neff" , From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: FOLLOWUPS on Escribe, "trying for years" and hoax letters Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 6:05 AM -0500 2/15/2000, Tom Neff wrote: > * A day after I asked about Escribe.com taking visitors to the Naughton >Family Picnic, it was back to normal. Someone write me that Escribe had an >outage. How that takes you to the family picnic I don't know - could there >still be a rogue nameserver out there? The site is probably vhosted on a server, and when the server went spla, the vhosting got confused, and you were seeing someone else's site on the server for a while. > * I, too, get occasional messages (sent to the list address, natch) of the >form "HELP! I have been trying for MONTHS to leave this list" and I have >zero sympathy for them. How do you spend MONTHS trying to leave a list, >exactly. I get them, too. I generally try to cut people some slack for hyperbole, because at the time they write, they're usually irritated and/or frustrated. On the other hand, I have been known to ask for copies of their attempts, since obviously something is wrong and I need to debug the problem -- but even then, you can ask them to back up their claim without being overtly confrontative. Either they get contrite or they get really nasty, and either way, you know how to deal with them... > Send the same wrong-address unsub command every day, blink dumbly >at the "Not a member" response, No, but give them a break. it's not unusual for them to try it a few times over a period of time -- not blindly, not every day, but 2-3 times "when they think of it", and then when they talk to you, they were probably thinking of unsubscribing before they actually tried, and that tends to get into the mix. Also don't forget that many of these users are really unclear about when they're to the list server and when they're talking to a person. And exactly what a list server is -- when I've backtracked, I've seen people tryig to have long, enthusiastic conversations with majordomo, and by the time they get to the postmaster address, are completely flustered, and don't KNOW that I haven't been watching all their email all along. Even with all the signposts I try to put up along the way. If they're jerks, they still get treated like jerks, but mostly, I find they're people having a problem, who are frustrated because something isn't working, have been trying to convince a machine to give them a lucid answer, and are rattling a cage to try to get a response other than "command not understood". So I try to be sympathetic. > * On the "modem tax" and other hoax/legend/virus letters thing, will all >list managers reading this PLEASE bookmark the Internet Hoax resources: > > http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html > http://kumite.com/myths/myths/ > http://www.ih2000.net/ira/hoaxes.htm heck, they're published in the FAQs for my lists. Does it do any good? I dunno. it's not 100% working, but who knows how many would ahve been sent that weren't? I do find the occasional public execution of a perp does wonders, however, to remind others not to pull the stunt later.... -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Wed Feb 16 15:10:09 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA02210; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 14:58:59 -0800 (PST) Received: from devo.impressive.net (r95aag008980.sbo-smr.ma.cable.rcn.com [209.6.183.153]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA02203 for ; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 14:58:43 -0800 (PST) Received: (from gerald@localhost) by devo.impressive.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id SAA10429; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 18:15:16 -0500 Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 18:15:16 -0500 From: Gerald Oskoboiny To: Steven Clift Cc: list-moderators@list-moderators.com, List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Filtering Advice for Subscribers Message-ID: <20000216181516.E8700@impressive.net> References: <200002111618.KAA22094@mail.visi.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0pre3us In-Reply-To: <200002111618.KAA22094@mail.visi.com> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Fri, Feb 11, 2000 at 10:15:04AM -0500, Steven Clift wrote: > I became aware of the following site: > > http://www.positivespace.com/new/business/filter.htm : > Does anyone know of a generic similar resource or advice in text > on how to filter in these and other programs (like Pegasus mail, > Lotus Notes, ccMail, PINE)? A similar resource is: HWG Filtering FAQ Mail Filtering Frequently Asked Questions http://www.hwg.org/resources/faqs/filterFAQ.html It's tailored to the HWG's lists, but most of the advice is generally applicable to other lists as well. -- Gerald Oskoboiny http://impressive.net/people/gerald/ From list-managers-owner Wed Feb 16 15:39:38 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA02493; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 15:16:45 -0800 (PST) Received: from devo.impressive.net (r95aag008980.sbo-smr.ma.cable.rcn.com [209.6.183.153]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA02486 for ; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 15:16:33 -0800 (PST) Received: (from gerald@localhost) by devo.impressive.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id SAA10463; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 18:33:17 -0500 Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 18:33:17 -0500 From: Gerald Oskoboiny To: Michelle Dick Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: subscription confirmations (was Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM) Message-ID: <20000216183317.F8700@impressive.net> References: <50700.950306850@monkeys.com> <20000212003426.0F3C699E2D@waltz.rahul.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0pre3us In-Reply-To: <20000212003426.0F3C699E2D@waltz.rahul.net> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Fri, Feb 11, 2000 at 04:34:25PM -0800, Michelle Dick wrote: > Ronald wrote: > > Any six-year old kid of average intelligence can figure out (or be taught) > > how to relay to an e-mail message. > > Whether or not it is "easy" enough to reply by email to a confirmation > request is now a moot question. > > This is because the same folks who have trouble composing and sending > a proper email confirmation reply generally now have html-enabled > mail readers. All that need to be done to request a confirm is to include > something like: > > Click here to activiate subscription > > in the list's email response to the subscription request. The confirm > cgi url should contain all the info needed to process the confirmation > (cookies, etc) so the prospective list member need make one click to > confirm, no filling out forms, no nothing other than one click. Yup, definitely a good idea. If you do this, please make sure the final step is done with an HTTP POST, not a GET as I've seen various sites do lately. GETting a URL shouldn't have side effects, so if you implement it as described above, the page returned by the first URL should display a form with a button that can be POSTed to perform the actual act of joining or leaving the list. An alternative is to include a small form in the email message so the user can POST it directly with a single click. For more info on this distinction between GET vs POST, see: Forms: GET and POST http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/Input or the even geekier Axioms of Web architecture: Identity, State and GET http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Axioms#state -- Gerald Oskoboiny http://impressive.net/people/gerald/ From list-managers-owner Wed Feb 16 15:54:43 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA02650; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 15:27:03 -0800 (PST) Received: from domains.invweb.net (domains.invweb.net [198.182.196.32]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA02643 for ; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 15:26:39 -0800 (PST) Received: from whgiii.geiger.local (root@openpgp.net [199.184.252.29]) by domains.invweb.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id SAA09486; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 18:42:46 -0500 Message-Id: <200002162342.SAA09486@domains.invweb.net> From: "William H. Geiger III" Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 17:40:21 -0600 To: "Andrew Tasi" In-Reply-To: Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, brian@gweep.bc.ca Subject: Re: Banning in majordomo X-Mailer: MR/2 Internet Cruiser Edition for OS/2 v2.06 c06 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In , on 02/16/00 at 02:35 PM, "Andrew Tasi" said: >Hello mail list gurus, >I run a large majordomo discussion list, and there is a particular user >that has been a problem in the past. Sometime last year, I started >bouncing all messages from his addresses with taboo_header. It took him >a while to catch on. >I let him continue reading the list (even though he was not able to post) >and that was fine for a while. But now he has taken to misinforming >people and trying to pick fights in private. So now I'd like to ban him >from both reading and writing. Is there a really easy/simple way to do >this if my preference is to keep the current subscriber policy of >open+confirm? I realize he could always subscribe from a new address, >but he hasn't tried that (yet?). Remove him from your subscriber file and create a procmail recipe that sends all mail from him to /dev/null (this prevents him from re-subscribing). -- --------------------------------------------------------------- William H. Geiger III http://www.openpgp.net Geiger Consulting Data Security & Cryptology Consulting Programming, Networking, Analysis PGP for OS/2: http://www.openpgp.net/pgp.html --------------------------------------------------------------- Fight Censorship! Stop the MPAA! http://www.openpgp.net/censorship.html -----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE, PART 23/36----- MxfOoAsioXQDyzSZpWQBUZLCjCnFxQyIoBjnwvyRyYKBPg1RmixAzZk+3v/a/3Uy egCa8jVrYqTlulUuwnhFGVxJRXnSnH8shKJQqNiGIqAs4oLRehCMlkzc+P0g8Nwq 7M5vpNFsOVhcOhJzsfq+d8DEWiFFhdkRyXCfpSmWVRkyRrVwrRp4EqpYVhAjKI+K ojGp2SwLRw5hdLhVq0GzOJUWZWubsOK6aBV8Zqrrf6rrZUQ992/XwQoCslJzYx7h Hdd1CG+qzZLBtSYJBo+BfzvsB3iuY/ZiSWTUJDNOEdEuxWRkQ66DZtSNznpEG4an +zi9a8AvhHseYF7H3F1Ur1hJEBEeM/qnqHjI6KRMrVJh2N+QLcfWZBelMrzzkCiD bkC9mN6DP6BSgUuoiESB5nJzrouO+7Y1YTzfSOSI952QKl2FCijm1Tsx2bBUl9Sw S4nr3zUnbS4zhqJV/nTy2JsG47sn/77XHSDJX3OsCuqW5yojsfUXKEw4EKsF8pg1 nkTEzx5Obrt5FrSSeldtD3GabWtRL1nFFHT1KSMU8kKzUmrWM/PHGF102ljtbAvd F/hsfl+aIkOca0sLFznIMjzX6MsuS+6cyZZD4SZJXuErhnkiLgFyXe+l/IbwYG3h =j7Ef -----END PGP MESSAGE, PART 23/36-----  From list-managers-owner Wed Feb 16 16:10:35 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA02617; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 15:24:12 -0800 (PST) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA02610 for ; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 15:24:06 -0800 (PST) Received: from [17.216.27.198] (A17-216-27-198.apple.com [17.216.27.198]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id PAA24224 ; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 15:39:16 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 15:40:12 -0800 To: "Tom Neff" , From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: RE: FOLLOWUPS on Escribe, "trying for years" and hoax letters Cc: "Chuq Von Rospach" Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 5:47 PM -0500 2/16/2000, Tom Neff wrote: >I know this intellectually, but somehow it still bugs me that whether >they're sweethearts or A-holes, when you track down the truth about those >complaints, It bugs me, also -- so generally, I don't track it down or give myself reasons to get upset. separating the job function and the emotions is easier said than done, but it tends to reduce conflict a lot. I used to see part of my job as educating users, the old "so that you don't hose over the next mailing list" schtick. These days, I'm just not convinced it's worth the time or hassle, and I"m not sure what good it does -- and you're arguing with someone who's generally not all that receptive to the feedback in the first place. Why get ulcers over it? So I generally keep my mouth shut, sit on my hands or whatever. As bill cosby once said, parents don't want justice, they want quiet. I've gone from justice and the american way to quiet. And I've found most users don't want excuses or reasons. They simply want results. I can't say I blame them. So I try to comply. Maybe I'm getting old or something, but things I used to take really seriously just aren't worth fighting over any more. Or perhaps I'm finally getting a sense of perspective, I dunno. I used to think it was important to try to work out usage issues with users -- now, I tend to be a lot more likely to just blow a user off the system and argue about it later. I've had too many trolls play games looking for just where they can draw lines in the sand. An occasional person who just doesn't get it quickyl sometimes gets burned, but mostly, I just don't waste time with trolls any more, and I don't spend a lot of time explaining to users like the "I've been trying for months..." -- because neither side really cares about anything but resolution. So I resolve. >Just to make myself clear: I am under no illusions that these resources, >even if prominently mentioned in the welcomes and FAQs for lists, will make >a significant dent in USER ignorance. I think it does, actually. But it's the old problem of how to judge how well education works on usenet: you only see the failures. >It is the specter of a MANAGER coming here and >posting "I heard something about a modem tax..." that makes me want to >re-cite those resources weekly. um, where I work, it happens. And usually, the poor, well-meaning person is well educated, quite quickly. And you smell the smoke coming out of what used to be their cube.... -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Wed Feb 16 21:09:37 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA05941; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 21:01:22 -0800 (PST) Received: from scifi.squawk.com (glock.squawk.com [208.176.124.157]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA05934 for ; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 21:01:16 -0800 (PST) Received: from tpad.squawk.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by scifi.squawk.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 34F4E350BE for ; Thu, 17 Feb 2000 00:18:12 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.20000217001247.036e77d0@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: njs@127.0.0.1 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 00:12:47 -0500 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Nick Simicich Subject: Re: subscription confirmations (was Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM) In-Reply-To: <20000216183317.F8700@impressive.net> References: <20000212003426.0F3C699E2D@waltz.rahul.net> <50700.950306850@monkeys.com> <20000212003426.0F3C699E2D@waltz.rahul.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 06:33 PM 2/16/00 -0500, Gerald Oskoboiny wrote: >If you do this, please make sure the final step is done with an >HTTP POST, not a GET as I've seen various sites do lately. > >GETting a URL shouldn't have side effects, so if you implement it >as described above, the page returned by the first URL should >display a form with a button that can be POSTed to perform the >actual act of joining or leaving the list. > >An alternative is to include a small form in the email message so >the user can POST it directly with a single click. I can't possibly disagree with you more. A URL with some operands should be expected to do something. If you mark it, "click here to confirm", then they click here to confirm. Why make a user who can barely do one thing do two things? re we totally addiced to "Are you Sure?" boxes for everything? We are not writing mail for a browser here. I send my confirm URL's, tokens and all, as regular URLs, which default to get whe clicked on. If you click on a URL with a bunch of operands, why would you expect it not to do something? -- "If Wild Bill Hickock were born in the Internet Age, he'd probably flame people real bad on-line." --- TLC hyping an episode of "Gunfighters of the West" Nick Simicich - njs@scifi.squawk.com From list-managers-owner Wed Feb 16 23:54:48 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA07164; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 23:40:41 -0800 (PST) Received: from listes.cru.fr (listes.cru.fr [195.220.94.165]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id XAA07151 for ; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 23:40:29 -0800 (PST) Received: from home.cru.fr (home.cru.fr [195.220.94.79]) by listes.cru.fr (8.9.2/jtpda-5.3.2) with ESMTP id IAA16148 ; Thu, 17 Feb 2000 08:57:27 +0100 (MET) Received: from home.cru.fr (IDENT:aumont@localhost.cru.fr [127.0.0.1]) by home.cru.fr (8.9.3/jtpda-5.3.1) with ESMTP id IAA16837 ; Thu, 17 Feb 2000 08:57:22 +0100 Message-Id: <200002170757.IAA16837@home.cru.fr> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0.3 To: nolan@tssi.com Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM (List Managers) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Subject: Re: combination web/email lists In-reply-to: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 21:36:10 -0600. <200002150336.VAA00099@celery.tssi.com> Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 08:57:22 +0100 From: Aumont - Comite Reseaux des Universites Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >Do any of the list management packages support web-based readers via cookies? >(I'd prefer not to roll my own again.) Sympa (http://listes.cru.fr/sympa/) include a web interface called WWSympa This interface include web based archives. Archive access can be restricted to a category of users, list subscribers or intranet users for example. The authentication is based on a user password and checked with a cookie. Serge Aumont Sympa 2.5 including WWsympa 0.6b as been released yesterday. It's include various new features such as a Chiness and a Italien version. You can have a look of WWSympa with (http://listes.cru.fr/wws main page and http://listes.cru.fr/info/sympa-users sympa-users mailling list page. From list-managers-owner Thu Feb 17 05:56:38 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id FAA13627; Thu, 17 Feb 2000 05:42:54 -0800 (PST) Received: from chmls05.mediaone.net (ne.mediaone.net [24.128.1.70]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id FAA13596 for ; Thu, 17 Feb 2000 05:42:38 -0800 (PST) Received: from temples.com (h00105aabc172.ne.mediaone.net [24.128.60.177]) by chmls05.mediaone.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id IAA17707 for ; Thu, 17 Feb 2000 08:59:36 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <38ABFFB3.A43991DD@temples.com> Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 09:03:31 -0500 From: Phil Temples X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en]C-MOEATL (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: List-Managers-Digest V9 #30 References: <200002170900.BAA08003@honor.greatcircle.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Andrew Tasi wrote in List-Managers-Digest V9 #30: > Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 14:35:32 -0600 > From: "Andrew Tasi" > Subject: Banning in majordomo > > Hello mail list gurus, > > I run a large majordomo discussion list, and there is a particular > user that has been a problem in the past. Sometime last year, I > started bouncing all messages from his addresses with taboo_header. > It took him a while to catch on. > > I let him continue reading the list (even though he was not able to > post) and that was fine for a while. But now he has taken to > misinforming people and trying to pick fights in private. So now I'd > like to ban him from both reading and writing. Is there a really > easy/simple way to do this if my preference is to keep the current > subscriber policy of open+confirm? I realize he could always > subscribe from a new address, but he hasn't tried that (yet?). Andrew, If you are using a modern Sendmail on your server like 8.9+, it's fairly easy to set up an access database that will reject or silently drop any incoming mail from a specific user and/or domain. Mine looks like this: [/etc/mail/access] ## After making changes to this file, run: # # makemap dbm /etc/mail/access < /etc/mail/access # # ## Sample entry with custom 550 message # #john.smith@mlhu.on.ca 550 Won't accept mail until looping problem with user 'john.smith@mlhu.on.ca' is resolved WONDERADMN@cdc.gov DISCARD #Postmaster@mlhu.on.ca DISCARD postmaster@surgery.ucsf.edu DISCARD # -- For more information, see: http://www.sendmail.org/tips/relaying.html As you can see, it's possible to include custom error messages, or just "silently" drop the mail with the remote server unaware. I use this feature frequently when a remote site/user starts looping with Majordomo. Incidently, I run a 20,000+ mailing list on emerging diseases on a server at Harvard University. Cheers, Phil Temples postmaster@promedmail.org -- Phil Temples From list-managers-owner Thu Feb 17 15:57:24 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA20436; Thu, 17 Feb 2000 15:39:29 -0800 (PST) Received: from ma-1.rootsweb.com (ma-1.rootsweb.com [209.192.148.153]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA20429 for ; Thu, 17 Feb 2000 15:39:23 -0800 (PST) Received: (from twp@localhost) by ma-1.rootsweb.com (8.10.0.Beta10/8.10.0.Beta10) id e1HNtnL83748; Thu, 17 Feb 2000 18:55:49 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 18:55:49 -0500 From: Tim Pierce To: Gerald Oskoboiny Cc: Michelle Dick , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: subscription confirmations (was Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM) Message-ID: <20000217185549.C53979@ma-1.rootsweb.com> References: <50700.950306850@monkeys.com> <20000212003426.0F3C699E2D@waltz.rahul.net> <20000216183317.F8700@impressive.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.7us In-Reply-To: <20000216183317.F8700@impressive.net> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Wed, Feb 16, 2000 at 06:33:17PM -0500, Gerald Oskoboiny wrote: > On Fri, Feb 11, 2000 at 04:34:25PM -0800, Michelle Dick wrote: > > Click here to activiate subscription > > If you do this, please make sure the final step is done with an > HTTP POST, not a GET as I've seen various sites do lately. > > GETting a URL shouldn't have side effects, so if you implement it > as described above, the page returned by the first URL should > display a form with a button that can be POSTed to perform the > actual act of joining or leaving the list. > > An alternative is to include a small form in the email message so > the user can POST it directly with a single click. > > For more info on this distinction between GET vs POST, see: > > Forms: GET and POST > http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/Input I see their point but I think that it's overstated. As long as submitting additional GETs doesn't disturb the state of your application, I don't believe there's much harm in using GET requests this way. Including a small form in the mail itself is a good idea as long as all the clicky clicky clients can handle it. I suspect a lot of them are only prepared to deal with A HREF. -- Regards, Tim Pierce RootsWeb.com lead system admonsterator and Chief Hacking Officer From list-managers-owner Fri Feb 18 10:42:03 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA04084; Fri, 18 Feb 2000 10:26:06 -0800 (PST) Received: from Kitten.mcs.net (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA04077 for ; Fri, 18 Feb 2000 10:26:01 -0800 (PST) Received: from Venus.mcs.net (root@Venus.mcs.net [192.160.127.92]) by Kitten.mcs.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id MAA23869 for ; Fri, 18 Feb 2000 12:43:16 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from dattier@mcs.net) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Venus.mcs.net (8.9.3/8.8.2) id MAA79021 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Fri, 18 Feb 2000 12:43:16 -0600 (CST) Message-Id: <200002181843.MAA79021@Venus.mcs.net> Subject: reaching ORBS or MAPS (was blacklisted: Topica) Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 12:43:16 -0600 (CST) From: "David W. Tamkin" To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <2536.950601223@monkeys.com> from "Ronald F. Guilmette" at Feb 14, 2000 11:53:43 PM X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL3] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Authentication-Warning: The true sender is dattier@Venus.mcs.net. Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Dave Rand had written, R> Oh, and after you've been blackholed by {ORBS}, don't bother sending them R> mail. They use their own list to blackhole and expect you to get a Hotmail R> account in order to talk to them. Great planning, that... Ron Guilmette responded, G> MAPS had the exact same problem some time back... If they backlisted you, G> you couldn't even send them mail to tell them that you thought they had G> made a mistake. G> I called Paul Vixie on that. I don't actually know if he ever fixed it G> or not. Not likely. I wrote to Chip Rosenthal about it as well; Vixie intercepted the message (it was not to Chip's personal address but to an admin address at MAPS in reply to a message Chip had sent me), and Vixie said that if any addresses there accepted email from the whole world, "those addresses would just get spammed." My cogitative reaction was well, good, then the MAPS project could see who was continuing to send or relay spam after having sworn that they'd stopped, but the rest of Vixie's message was ... well, let's just say that it made it clear that trying to present a point to him would be a waste of time. From list-managers-owner Sat Feb 19 11:04:54 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA19820; Sat, 19 Feb 2000 10:40:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from claude.akamai.com (walrus.ne.mediaone.net [24.147.22.188]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA19808 for ; Sat, 19 Feb 2000 10:39:58 -0800 (PST) Received: (from dshaw@localhost) by claude.akamai.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) id NAA03060 for List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM; Sat, 19 Feb 2000 13:57:26 -0500 Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2000 13:57:26 -0500 From: David Shaw To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Remarq Message-ID: <20000219135725.A2682@akamai.com> Mail-Followup-To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM References: <200002010900.BAA05122@honor.greatcircle.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii User-Agent: Mutt/1.1.2i In-Reply-To: ; from tneff@bigfoot.com on Tue, Feb 01, 2000 at 06:52:31PM -0500 X-PGP-Fingerprint: 3CB3B415/2048/4D 96 83 18 2B AF BE 45 D0 07 C4 07 51 37 B3 18 X-URL: http://www.jabberwocky.com/ X-Phase-Of-Moon: The Moon is Full X-Pointless-Random-Number: 64 X-Silly-Header: It sure is. Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Tue, Feb 01, 2000 at 06:52:31PM -0500, Tom Neff wrote: > David Shaw asked: > > Can anyone out there tell me anything about Remarq.com? > > > > They seem to be doing odd things with subscribing pseudo-users.. > > > > I just got a subscription for a "Q_1003036_m1key@lists.remarq.com". > > These are not pseudo-users (in the sense of artificial addresses used for > archiving, spam extraction, etc); they are Remarq users who have signed up > for your list using Remarq's web interface and are reading it through same. > > One of your lists is known to Remarq: > > http://www.remarq.com/search?q=sex%2Dwizards&si=board&so=board&nav=FIRST > > but they require that you be personally subscribed (in Remarq userid form) > to the actual list, in order to read and post via their website: > > http://www.remarq.com/subscribe.q?g=1003036&ss=1&v=doconfirm > > If I did this, and my Remarq userid was Kumquat, then you would get a > subscription for Q_1004827_Kumquat@lists.remarq.com . Well I keep getting more and more subscriptions like that, and without exception they *all* bounce immediately. I don't know what is wrong with those people, but it has been weeks now. They keep subscribing, and even the "welcome to the list" message bounces. Mail to Remarq gets soundly ignored, so I'm thinking of just blocking the whole site and being done with it. David -- David Shaw | dshaw@jabberwocky.com | WWW http://www.jabberwocky.com/ +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence." - Jeremy S. Anderson From list-managers-owner Sat Feb 19 12:26:39 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA20587; Sat, 19 Feb 2000 12:11:56 -0800 (PST) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA20578 for ; Sat, 19 Feb 2000 12:11:50 -0800 (PST) Received: from [209.239.169.197] ([17.254.136.0]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id MAA45090 ; Sat, 19 Feb 2000 12:27:47 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <20000219135725.A2682@akamai.com> References: <200002010900.BAA05122@honor.greatcircle.com> <20000219135725.A2682@akamai.com> Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2000 12:21:17 -0800 To: David Shaw , List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Remarq Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 1:57 PM -0500 2/19/2000, David Shaw wrote: >Mail to Remarq gets soundly ignored, so I'm thinking of just blocking >the whole site and being done with it. As far as I can tell, their system is fairly new -- and pretty unreliable. I'm seeing lots of random bounces that indicate system problems off their sites. I'm ignoring it all for now, on the assumption they are locked in the basement trying to fix it. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Sat Feb 19 23:54:20 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA25919; Sat, 19 Feb 2000 23:38:28 -0800 (PST) Received: from devo.impressive.net (r95aag008980.sbo-smr.ma.cable.rcn.com [209.6.183.153]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id XAA25911 for ; Sat, 19 Feb 2000 23:38:22 -0800 (PST) Received: (from gerald@localhost) by devo.impressive.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id CAA05429; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 02:55:49 -0500 Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 02:55:49 -0500 From: Gerald Oskoboiny To: Nick Simicich Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: subscription confirmations (was Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM) Message-ID: <20000220025549.A4044@impressive.net> References: <20000212003426.0F3C699E2D@waltz.rahul.net> <50700.950306850@monkeys.com> <20000212003426.0F3C699E2D@waltz.rahul.net> <20000216183317.F8700@impressive.net> <3.0.5.32.20000217001247.036e77d0@127.0.0.1> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0pre3us In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.20000217001247.036e77d0@127.0.0.1> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, Feb 17, 2000 at 12:12:47AM -0500, Nick Simicich wrote: > At 06:33 PM 2/16/00 -0500, Gerald Oskoboiny wrote: > >If you do this, please make sure the final step is done with an > >HTTP POST, not a GET as I've seen various sites do lately. > > > >GETting a URL shouldn't have side effects, so if you implement it > >as described above, the page returned by the first URL should > >display a form with a button that can be POSTed to perform the > >actual act of joining or leaving the list. > > > >An alternative is to include a small form in the email message so > >the user can POST it directly with a single click. > > I can't possibly disagree with you more. A URL with some > operands should be expected to do something. If you mark it, > "click here to confirm", then they click here to confirm. Why > make a user who can barely do one thing do two things? re we > totally addiced to "Are you Sure?" boxes for everything? You just need to make a form submit button say "Click here to confirm" instead of a link, that's all. > We are not writing mail for a browser here. I send my confirm > URL's, tokens and all, as regular URLs, which default to get > whe clicked on. If you click on a URL with a bunch of > operands, why would you expect it not to do something? Users shouldn't be expected to inspect the contents of URLs to try to figure out what will happen before they click on them. That's (one of) the reasons for the distinction between GET and POST: the user interface is different, so users can get used to the fact that POSTing something has side effects (like removing them from a list), while simply following a hypertext link doesn't. -- Gerald Oskoboiny http://impressive.net/people/gerald/ From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 20 00:09:24 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id AAA26177; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 00:03:59 -0800 (PST) Received: from devo.impressive.net (r95aag008980.sbo-smr.ma.cable.rcn.com [209.6.183.153]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id AAA26170 for ; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 00:03:53 -0800 (PST) Received: (from gerald@localhost) by devo.impressive.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id DAA05505; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 03:21:19 -0500 Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 03:21:19 -0500 From: Gerald Oskoboiny To: Tim Pierce Cc: Michelle Dick , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: subscription confirmations (was Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM) Message-ID: <20000220032119.B4044@impressive.net> References: <50700.950306850@monkeys.com> <20000212003426.0F3C699E2D@waltz.rahul.net> <20000216183317.F8700@impressive.net> <20000217185549.C53979@ma-1.rootsweb.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0pre3us In-Reply-To: <20000217185549.C53979@ma-1.rootsweb.com> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, Feb 17, 2000 at 06:55:49PM -0500, Tim Pierce wrote: > On Wed, Feb 16, 2000 at 06:33:17PM -0500, Gerald Oskoboiny wrote: > > On Fri, Feb 11, 2000 at 04:34:25PM -0800, Michelle Dick wrote: > > > Click here to activiate subscription > > > > If you do this, please make sure the final step is done with an > > HTTP POST, not a GET as I've seen various sites do lately. > > > > GETting a URL shouldn't have side effects, so if you implement it > > as described above, the page returned by the first URL should > > display a form with a button that can be POSTed to perform the > > actual act of joining or leaving the list. > > > > An alternative is to include a small form in the email message so > > the user can POST it directly with a single click. > > > > For more info on this distinction between GET vs POST, see: > > > > Forms: GET and POST > > http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/Input > > I see their point but I think that it's overstated. As long as > submitting additional GETs doesn't disturb the state of your > application, I don't believe there's much harm in using GET > requests this way. One possible scenario in which harm can result from misusing GETs is: suppose I have my client/OS configured to prefetch any URLs it sees so I can read my mail and follow links into my local cache while taking a train to work. If one of the messages in my inbox says "click here to unsubscribe" and it's done with a regular hypertext link (a GET), my prefetching client will get cause me to be unsubscribed from the list, not at all what was intended. > Including a small form in the mail itself is a good idea as long > as all the clicky clicky clients can handle it. I suspect a lot > of them are only prepared to deal with A HREF. I don't think there can be many existing clients in this situation. I remember there were still a few browsers in use in 1994 that didn't understand forms, but that's 6 years ago, forever in web years. -- Gerald Oskoboiny http://impressive.net/people/gerald/ From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 20 02:09:37 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id AAA26473; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 00:59:22 -0800 (PST) Received: from ma-1.rootsweb.com (ma-1.rootsweb.com [209.192.148.153]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id AAA26466 for ; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 00:59:14 -0800 (PST) Received: (from twp@localhost) by ma-1.rootsweb.com (8.10.0.Beta10/8.10.0.Beta10) id e1K9GIG17897; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 04:16:18 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 04:16:18 -0500 From: Tim Pierce To: Gerald Oskoboiny Cc: Michelle Dick , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: subscription confirmations (was Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM) Message-ID: <20000220041618.E7913@ma-1.rootsweb.com> References: <50700.950306850@monkeys.com> <20000212003426.0F3C699E2D@waltz.rahul.net> <20000216183317.F8700@impressive.net> <20000217185549.C53979@ma-1.rootsweb.com> <20000220032119.B4044@impressive.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.7us In-Reply-To: <20000220032119.B4044@impressive.net> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Sun, Feb 20, 2000 at 03:21:19AM -0500, Gerald Oskoboiny wrote: > On Thu, Feb 17, 2000 at 06:55:49PM -0500, Tim Pierce wrote: > > > Including a small form in the mail itself is a good idea as long > > as all the clicky clicky clients can handle it. I suspect a lot > > of them are only prepared to deal with A HREF. > > I don't think there can be many existing clients in this situation. > I remember there were still a few browsers in use in 1994 that didn't > understand forms, but that's 6 years ago, forever in web years. Yes, but we're talking about mail readers, not web browsers. It's entirely plausible that the authors of GUI mail readers would add the ability to follow a hyperlink from a mail message, but not support the full HTML/HTTP suite with cookies. -- Regards, Tim Pierce RootsWeb.com lead system admonsterator and Chief Hacking Officer From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 20 07:00:19 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA02314; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 06:51:18 -0800 (PST) Received: from ivan.iecc.com (ivan.iecc.com [208.31.42.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id GAA02307 for ; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 06:51:11 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 2334 invoked by uid 100); 20 Feb 2000 10:08:46 -0500 Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 10:08:44 -0500 (EST) From: John R Levine To: Gerald Oskoboiny cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: GET vs. POST subscription confirmations In-Reply-To: <20000220025549.A4044@impressive.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > You just need to make a form submit button say "Click here to confirm" > instead of a link, that's all. Interesting theory. What about the many millions of users who don't use or want HTML mail readers? It's easy enough to pick a URL out of a text message and click on it, but you can't do that if it's an entire form. But really, this argument is silly. Real web browsers and servers treat GETs with arguments the same as POSTs. Whatever theoretical difference may have once existed between them stopped mattering about the time that browsers stopped implementing PUT. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 20 12:45:21 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA05092; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 12:25:30 -0800 (PST) Received: from tor-srs1.netcom.ca (tor-srs1.netcom.ca [207.93.1.148]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA05082 for ; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 12:25:20 -0800 (PST) Received: from sharon-p133 (ott-on3-65.netcom.ca [216.123.118.65]) by tor-srs1.netcom.ca (8.8.7-s-4/8.8.7) with SMTP id PAA21683; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 15:42:18 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <200002202042.PAA21683@tor-srs1.netcom.ca> X-Sender: sharon@listhost.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0.1 Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 15:37:55 -0500 To: "becky vacara" , From: Sharon Tucci Subject: Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM In-Reply-To: <03d901bf74e9$a5d70f40$ceedb094@becky> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 11:42 PM 2/11/2000 +0000, becky vacara wrote: >Granted that everyone who works for Topica is not the head of the company, >nor do they have any say in decisions. However those that do certainly have >shown that there way of doing business is to step on the little people. How >many list has Topica bought? There policy when buying out these companies >is that the server they are buying from must not give notice to it's >list-owners until the last minute. Thousands of list-owners had their list >taken hostage by Topica and their lives turned upside-down. How is this >good business? Do you realise that there are many people who have wanted to >sue Topica in the last couple months? Woah... Becky, I can understand your being upset about your list being moved, but don't be so quick to jump on Topica as being the bully here. In business, companies and divisions are bought and sold on a routine basis. Rarely are clients of companies given advance notice before these events transpire. Usually in buy-out arrangements, it is in the SELLERS best interest not to divulge the deal in advance. I suspect that was the case here. All you need to do is consider - who benefited the most from list owners not given prior notice. Think about this for a minute. --------------------------------------------------------- Sharon Tucci sharon@slingshotmedia.com http://www.ListHost.net Sling Shot Media, LLC 1-613-933-5133 E-Mail List Hosting and Marketing SpeciaLists From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 20 13:00:14 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA05091; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 12:25:27 -0800 (PST) Received: from tor-srs1.netcom.ca (tor-srs1.netcom.ca [207.93.1.148]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA05074 for ; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 12:25:18 -0800 (PST) Received: from sharon-p133 (ott-on3-65.netcom.ca [216.123.118.65]) by tor-srs1.netcom.ca (8.8.7-s-4/8.8.7) with SMTP id PAA21677; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 15:42:11 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <4.0.1.20000220151255.00ecc4d0@pop.listhost.net> X-Sender: sharon@listhost.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0.1 Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 15:23:25 -0500 To: "Ronald F. Guilmette" , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Sharon Tucci Subject: Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM In-Reply-To: <48125.950254293@monkeys.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I'm a little late jumping on board here. At 11:31 PM 2/10/2000 -0800, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: >>** Sometime around 16:00 -0800 02/08/2000, Ronald F. Guilmette sent us: >>This is endemic of mailing lists and list owners, Ron, and has >>nothing to do with Topica, per se. > >That's bull. No, it's not. Our co. hosts/manages well over 1,000 lists for clients now. We tried for a short-time to require all new lists with us to reconfirm subscriptions. What happened was two things - first, list owners became very irritated - a small fraction of subscribers would confirm. A lot of them don't understand the process. Second, our sign-up rate for new customers dropped. So we went back to what we did previously - require a new list owner to send a message out after the list was transferring giving the equivalent of "we've moved" message. We've received less than 1 complaint for every 100,000 subscribers transferred to us. >OK smart ass. Simple question: If the spammer COULD HAVE just used his >own majordomo, then why didn't he? Why did he go to all of the trouble >to have Topica do his spamming for him? > >Maybe when you manage to puzzle that out, you will figure out why I have >blacklisted Topica locally. You may as well blacklist our servers and those of 99.9% of other list hosting services as well because it's likely we've all had one or more problem cases slip through the cracks. Unless you're dealing on a very small scale, it's impossible to have structure in place to avoid problems 100%. It may not even be the list hosting service itself, but the one the list owner was using previously. Case in point - we've had a number of lists transferred over to us from other services where the owner or employee at the other service gave the list owner an old version of their list (i.e.with people not removed who should have been and vice versa). End result? Spam complaints. Who is it at fault here? Doing things like looking at a list owner's web site to make sure they have a legitimate business isn't always a sign. Our biggest problems with "educating" list owners about what is spam and what is not spam come from larger companies rather than smaller ones. --------------------------------------------------------- Sharon Tucci sharon@slingshotmedia.com http://www.ListHost.net Sling Shot Media, LLC 1-613-933-5133 E-Mail List Hosting and Marketing SpeciaLists From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 20 13:30:15 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA05530; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 13:08:51 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA05523 for ; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 13:08:43 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id NAA07997; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 13:25:36 -0800 (PST) To: Sharon Tucci cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM In-reply-to: Your message of Sun, 20 Feb 2000 15:23:25 -0500. <4.0.1.20000220151255.00ecc4d0@pop.listhost.net> Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 13:25:36 -0800 Message-ID: <7995.951081936@monkeys.com> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message <4.0.1.20000220151255.00ecc4d0@pop.listhost.net>, Sharon Tucci wrote: >I'm a little late jumping on board here. > >At 11:31 PM 2/10/2000 -0800, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: > >>>** Sometime around 16:00 -0800 02/08/2000, Ronald F. Guilmette sent us: >>>This is endemic of mailing lists and list owners, Ron, and has >>>nothing to do with Topica, per se. >> >>That's bull. > >No, it's not. Our co. hosts/manages well over 1,000 lists for >clients now. We tried for a short-time to require all new lists >with us to reconfirm subscriptions. What happened was two things - >first, list owners became very irritated - a small fraction of >subscribers would confirm. A lot of them don't understand >the process. Gimme a break. As has already been pointed out, the process of reconfirming can be made even more trivially simple that just replying to a mail message... you could include a URL in the reconfirm request that you send out, and people could just click on (or visit) that URL to reconfirm. (Ideally, users should be allowed to confirm _either_ by visiting the URL _or_ via an e-mail reply, at their option.) Anyone who cannot manage to _either_ visit a given URL _or_ send an e-mail reply is not merely a moron, he is sub-human. In any case, and regardless of the stupidity of YOUR user base, I don't believe that you or your company are, or should be, exempt from reasonable rules of net-conduct. Nor do I believe that you have a right to help spammers to spam me just because doing so makes it slightly easier for you and your company to accomodate those individuals among your user base who happen to fall below Forrest Gump on the intelligence bell curve. >Second, our sign-up rate for new customers dropped. So what? What you seem to be saying is that the normal and ordinary rules of politeness and reasonableness that other people have been obeying for years on the net don't apply to you, just because following the rules of polite society might potentially cost you some money. I cannot imagine a more self-serving argument. >So we went back to what we did previously - require a new list >owner to send a message out after the list was transferring giving >the equivalent of "we've moved" message. You _could_ just do what both John Levine and I suggested, i.e. spot check all new lists that are transferred to your servers by sending out a simple query to, say, 1% of all the addresses on the list. The query would just ask people if they had signed up for the list or not. Oh! But that would require your company to do some actual work, so I guess that's out of the question, right? >We've received less than >1 complaint for every 100,000 subscribers transferred to us. That's one too many. Besides, it is well known now that only about 1 out of every 1000 or so spams actually generates a complaint... because people are so fed up with complaining to companies (such as your's) that won't actually DO anything about the problem... so your ``only one complaint'' claim doesn't really impress me. How many people have been spammed by you and yet did not complain about it? >>OK smart ass. Simple question: If the spammer COULD HAVE just used his >>own majordomo, then why didn't he? Why did he go to all of the trouble >>to have Topica do his spamming for him? >> >>Maybe when you manage to puzzle that out, you will figure out why I have >>blacklisted Topica locally. > >You may as well blacklist our servers and those of 99.9% of other >list hosting services as well because it's likely we've all had one >or more problem cases slip through the cracks. Fine. I have no problem with doing that. There really are only two kinds of people/companies on the net, i.e. those that take a serious interest in behaving responsibly, and those whose only goal is to maximize short term profits, even if they do so at the expense of damaging the medium itself. Spammers, Real Networks, your company, and many others seem to fall into the latter category. I have no problems with blacklisting any domain that puts its own short term profit motive above either my privacy or my bandwidth. >Unless you're dealing on a very small scale, it's impossible to >have structure in place to avoid problems 100%. See above. This is a hollow argument as long as your company isn't even trying to do _anything_ meaningful (e.g. spot checking, as described above) in order to avoid problems. I don't expect _any_ quality assurance process to be perfect. But I _do_ expect responsible companies to _have_ a quality assurance process. How would you feel if (for example) Boeing said ``Well, a certain number of wings on our aircraft are going to shear off no matter what we do, so we've decided that it is really a pointless and unnecessary hassle for us to perform any quality assurance testing on our aricraft wings anymore. We have only had three crashes with fatalities in the last five years, so its really no big deal.'' Responsible companies DO spend money on quality assurance. Which part of this do you not understand? >It may not even >be the list hosting service itself, but the one the list owner >was using previously. Case in point - we've had a number of >lists transferred over to us from other services where the owner >or employee at the other service gave the list owner an old >version of their list (i.e.with people not removed who should >have been and vice versa). End result? Spam complaints. Who is >it at fault here? You are, if you haven't bothered to fulfill YOUR responsibility to do `due diligence' and if you haven't (at least) spot checked the list before you spam it. Maybe you need to have your legal department actually READ the text of the recent California, Virginia, and Washington anti-spam laws. As far as I know, these laws DO NOT make any exceptions for companies, such as your's, that want to try to weasle out of their responsibility for initiating e-mail messages. IF YOU send it, from YOUR SERVERS, that makes it YOUR SPAM. >Doing things like looking at a list owner's web site to make >sure they have a legitimate business isn't always a sign. Your right. It isn't. Spot checking some small subset of the addresses on a newly imported list is the ONLY sure fire way to figure our which list owners are trying to dupe you into doing their spamming for them. From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 20 14:45:03 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA06148; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 14:32:39 -0800 (PST) Received: from hen.scotland.net (phys-hen2.scotland.net [194.247.65.128]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA06141 for ; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 14:32:33 -0800 (PST) Received: from [148.176.233.93] (helo=becky) by hen.scotland.net with smtp (Exim 2.12 #2) id 12Mf8s-0007Sb-00; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 22:47:55 +0000 Message-ID: <20dd01bf7bf4$960af380$3de9b094@becky> From: "Becky" To: , "Sharon Tucci" References: <200002202042.PAA21683@tor-srs1.netcom.ca> Subject: Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 22:47:58 -0000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2615.200 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > In business, companies and divisions are bought and sold on a routine > basis. Rarely are clients of companies given advance notice before > these events transpire. And this I think is wrong, but that's a whole other issue. > Usually in buy-out arrangements, it is in the SELLERS best interest > not to divulge the deal in advance. I suspect that was the case here. > All you need to do is consider - who benefited the most from list > owners not given prior notice. Think about this for a minute. I don't get your logic. Esosoft's name is mud with list-owners so they didn't benefit. Topica forced a quick move so that the likelihood of list-owners moving somewhere else would be minimal. It's not easy to move a list especially one where you had total control as Esosoft gave us. Just to find a server you want takes time. To spring this on people less then a week before Christmas while Esosoft new for months. In less then 12 hours I lost control of my list, how can that be justified? Becky From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 20 14:59:59 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA06108; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 14:27:57 -0800 (PST) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA06101 for ; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 14:27:53 -0800 (PST) Received: from [209.239.169.197] ([17.254.144.30]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id OAA22850 ; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 14:43:00 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <7995.951081936@monkeys.com> References: <7995.951081936@monkeys.com> Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 14:43:38 -0800 To: "Ronald F. Guilmette" , Sharon Tucci From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 1:25 PM -0800 2/20/2000, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: >Gimme a break. Why shoudl you be given anything you refuse to consider giving anyone else? > >>We've received less than >>1 complaint for every 100,000 subscribers transferred to us. > >That's one too many. Okay, Ronald -- you're perfect? Until you are, statements like this simply show how unreasonable your position is. When you achieve perfection, then you can start demanding it of the rest of us. Until then, we're all doing the best we can -- and in e-mail, the only thing that's a given is that no matter WHAT you do, it's going ot piss off one or another group of people, and screw some people over. There are no perfect, 100% solutions. Except unplugging and turning on the TV. Now, will you get off your high horse and start trying to suggest realistic, real-world solutions? Oh, you can't. you don't run these things. You just tell us how to. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 20 15:30:41 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA06587; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 15:18:36 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA06580 for ; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 15:18:29 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id PAA08298; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 15:35:23 -0800 (PST) To: Chuq Von Rospach cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM In-reply-to: Your message of Sun, 20 Feb 2000 14:43:38 -0800. Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 15:35:23 -0800 Message-ID: <8296.951089723@monkeys.com> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message , you wrote: >>>We've received less than >>>1 complaint for every 100,000 subscribers transferred to us. >> >>That's one too many. > >Okay, Ronald -- you're perfect? > >Until you are, statements like this simply show how unreasonable your >position is. Chuq, since you have such a problem with reading comprehension, allow me to suggest that you have someone else read my last message to you... in particular the part where I say that I don't expect anything to be perfect, but I _do_ expect companies to perform reasonable quality assurance steps. If you need some explanation of the term ``quality assurance'', let me know and I will send you some URLs. You can then have your reading assistant read the material on those pages to you. (Many of them _will_ have multi-syllable words on them, so you might have a bit of trouble with them.) >When you achieve perfection, then you can start demanding it of the >rest of us. Until then, we're all doing the best we can... No actually, you're not. You are not confirming subscriptions, as you KNOW you should be, and you are putting MY mailbox at risk because you and YOUR user base are either too fricking lazy or too fricking stupid to be able to reply to a simple confirmation request. (I guess this is what happens when one uses Macs for too long: Brain Rot.) And Sharon and her company are not ``doing the best they can'' either... not as long as they are doing *zero* QA on imported lists. It doesn't really take that much time, effort, or money to be a responsible mailing list administrator. But it is clear that there are _are_ quite a lot of weasle companies (whose ONLY motive is their own convenience and profit) that would like the world to believe otherwise. But regardless, it is still fairly easy to be a socially responsible mailing list admin... if one wants to do that. > -- and in >e-mail, the only thing that's a given is that no matter WHAT you do, >it's going ot piss off one or another group of people, and screw some >people over. Fine. Agreed. Now, you have a choice... either piss off a tiny percentage of the people who have voluntarily elected to interact with you and your lists, or else piss off *me*, a totally innocent bystander, who never asked for ANY garbage from your lists, or from Sharon's lists, or from egroups, or from onelist, or from topica, ... Look, this is a very simple moral dilemma... You can dump your toxic waste into a nearby river... the common drinking water supply for the entire local community... thereby pissing off quite a lot of innocent bystanders... or you can refrain from dumping your toxic waste in a place that is most convenient for YOU, thereby pissing off your shareholders. What's it gonna be? >There are no perfect, 100% solutions. Except unplugging >and turning on the TV. Funny you should mention that. This is exactly the long term effect that is being produced by the ongoing thoughtless pollution of the e-mail space... more and more people are saying to themselves ``Gee, if I wanted to just have advertisments blasted at me, I could have just sat in front of the TV set, and paid less for the privledge.'' You folks who are so cavilier about your careless pollution are killing your own golden goose. (Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got till it's gone? Take paradise, put up a parking lot.) >Now, will you get off your high horse and start trying to suggest >realistic, real-world solutions? I did. So did John Levine. Please _do_ get your daddy or your reading coach to read you some of the messages that have been posted here. When you do that, you will learn that: 1) It has been suggested that people/companies who ``import'' lists from other sources routinely can and should spot check those lists to make sure they aren't just spammer culled address lists. 2) EVERYONE who runs a mailing list should CONFIRM all alleged new subscriptions. Some people, at least, have been doing these things for a long time now. *Whining* that these things are too difficult to do in practice doesn't make it so. From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 20 16:00:11 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA06846; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 15:50:44 -0800 (PST) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA06836 for ; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 15:50:38 -0800 (PST) Received: from [209.239.169.197] ([17.254.144.30]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id QAA56894 ; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 16:06:30 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: <7995.951081936@monkeys.com> Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 16:07:32 -0800 To: Chuq Von Rospach , "Ronald F. Guilmette" , Sharon Tucci From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 2:43 PM -0800 2/20/2000, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: >Okay, Ronald -- you're perfect? oops. My mistake. I let Ronald's latest make me forget my resolve to quit wasting time on the list-manager's resident troll. His response simply reminds me how futile it is to argue with him, so I've set my system up to make sure I'm not tempted again in the future. Sorry for wasting everyone's electrons by encouraging him. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 20 16:29:59 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA07117; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 16:13:37 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id QAA07110 for ; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 16:13:32 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id QAA08869 for ; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 16:31:10 -0800 (PST) To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM In-reply-to: Your message of Sun, 20 Feb 2000 16:07:32 -0800. Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 16:31:10 -0800 Message-ID: <8867.951093070@monkeys.com> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message , Chuq Von Rospach wrote: >At 2:43 PM -0800 2/20/2000, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > >>Okay, Ronald -- you're perfect? > > >oops. My mistake. I let Ronald's latest make me forget my resolve to >quit wasting time on the list-manager's resident troll. His response >simply reminds me how futile it is to argue with him, so I've set my >system up to make sure I'm not tempted again in the future. Sorry for >wasting everyone's electrons by encouraging him. It's OK Chuq. Don't worry about your pointless blathering. I'm sure that by now, most people on the list have come to expect it from you, and probably most have already killfiled you anyway, so no big deal. From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 20 18:20:26 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA08906; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 18:00:40 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id SAA08896 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 18:00:38 -0800 (PST) Received: from kachina.jetcafe.org (kachina.jetcafe.org [205.147.43.2]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA01503 for ; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 13:55:22 -0800 (PST) Received: from ee-nt (eckert@netcom10.netcom.com [199.183.9.110]) by kachina.jetcafe.org (8.9.1/8.9.1) with SMTP id OAA02208 for ; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 14:12:07 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.20000216141549.009d7cf0@pop.climber.org> X-Sender: eckert@pop.climber.org X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 14:15:49 -0800 To: From: SRE Subject: Re: FOLLOWUPS on Escribe, "trying for years" and hoax letters In-Reply-To: References: <200002150900.BAA03069@honor.greatcircle.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 06:05 AM 2/15/00 -0500, Tom Neff wrote: > * I, too, get occasional messages (sent to the list address, natch) of the >form "HELP! I have been trying for MONTHS to leave this list" and I have >zero sympathy for them. If you have message footers that show the server address, I agree. If there is no reminder WHERE to send the unsub command, I don't. Remember that different software requires different command syntax and different command addressing. From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 20 18:30:00 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA08992; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 18:02:29 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id SAA08982 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 18:02:27 -0800 (PST) Received: from boofura.swcp.com (boofura.swcp.com [198.59.115.28]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id UAA05677 for ; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 20:39:04 -0800 (PST) Received: (from lazlo@localhost) by boofura.swcp.com (8.8.5/8.8.0) id VAA17828 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 21:55:57 -0700 (MST) Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 21:55:56 -0700 From: Lazlo Nibble To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM Message-ID: <20000216215556.A17818@swcp.com> Mail-Followup-To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0.1i In-Reply-To: ; from loki@maison-otaku.net on Wed, Feb 16, 2000 at 01:12:08PM -0800 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Wed, Feb 16, 2000 at 01:12:08PM -0800, Jeremy Blackman wrote: > A Listserv list I help run has recently had problems where it > seems to simply selectively ignore unsubscribe commands, unless issued by > a listowner. Simply telling users 'unsubscribe yourself' when it doesn't > seem to work is not a good solution. :/ I tell them "Hmm, I don't know for sure what might be happening. How about you try again but cc: me on the message you send to majordomo, and if you get something back, send me a copy of that too." At least three-quarters of the folks I ask to do this manage to remove themselves with no problems within 24 hours -- maybe the prospect of a human seeing what they're trying inspires them to actually read the documentation at that point. (Every post to every one of my lists includes a pointer to detailed list use instructions, including a "What To Do When The List Commands Don't Seem To Work" section.) -- Lazlo Nibble - lazlo@studio-nibble.com - http://www.studio-nibble.com - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Everybody's doing weblogs and I conform! http://www.studio-nibble.com/weblog -- From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 20 18:46:05 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA08951; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 18:01:07 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id SAA08943 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 18:01:03 -0800 (PST) Received: from tymix.Tymnet.COM (tymix.tymnet.com [131.146.2.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id PAA02503 for ; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 15:19:24 -0800 (PST) Received: by tymix.Tymnet.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA25010; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 15:36:18 PST Received: from tardis by Tymnet.COM (in.smtpd); 16 Feb 100 15:36:17 PST Received: (from jms@localhost) by tardis.tymnet.com (8.8.8+Sun/8.8.8) id PAA12439 for List-Managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 15:36:17 -0800 (PST) Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 15:36:16 -0800 From: Joe Smith To: List-Managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: FOLLOWUPS on Escribe, "trying for years" Message-Id: <20000216153616.G18702@tardis.Tymnet.COM> References: <200002150900.BAA03069@honor.greatcircle.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0i In-Reply-To: ; from tneff@bigfoot.com on Tue, Feb 15, 2000 at 06:05:45AM -0500 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Tue, Feb 15, 2000 at 06:05:45AM -0500, Tom Neff wrote: > * I, too, get occasional messages (sent to the list address, natch) of the > form "HELP! I have been trying for MONTHS to leave this list" and I have > zero sympathy for them. How do you spend MONTHS trying to leave a list, > exactly. Send the same wrong-address unsub command every day, blink dumbly > at the "Not a member" response ... What really burns me up is mailing list software that refuses to recognize unsub requests for forwarded mail. Too many MLM packages do not honor requests when the From: address does not exactly match the mailing list entry. It's not unusual to have ten different e-mail addresses all forwarding into a single inbox. Unless you remember exactly which address was used in the original sub, you can't unsub. Worse yet is the case where an employee leaves and the mailing list software does not process the "no such user" bounce message. [Computer Literacy (fatbrain.com) is an example.] In this case, the postmaster or sysadmin would not know the original address for sending in an unsub request. When I've had to clean up this sort of mess, I usually try sending several flavors of unsub messages to listname-request and owner-listname. When that fails to elicit any sort of useful response, I've had to resort to posting to the list to get the list owner's attention. -Joe From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 20 19:00:06 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA09065; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 18:05:16 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id SAA09055 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 18:05:13 -0800 (PST) Received: from shell7.ba.best.com (shell7.ba.best.com [206.184.139.138]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id JAA15965 for ; Thu, 17 Feb 2000 09:39:34 -0800 (PST) Received: (from cnorman@localhost) by shell7.ba.best.com (8.9.3/8.9.2/best.sh) id JAA18225; Thu, 17 Feb 2000 09:56:39 -0800 (PST) Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 09:56:39 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <200002171756.JAA18225@shell7.ba.best.com> From: Cyndi Norman To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM CC: cnorman@best.com Subject: subscribers who can't manage to get off a list Reply-to: cnorman@best.com Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I used to be the type who would give endless directions but not do the unsubscription for someone in an effort to help the next listowner down the line. With the growth of the internet that's no longer an important issue. So now I do it to help ME down the line. I must have about half a dozen on and off subscribers who follow the same pattern. They subscribe without any help from me whatsoever. A few weeks, months, or a year later, when they want a break, they can't remember how to unsubscribe. Note: directions are at the bottom of every post. Along with the website url (with directions written up differently in case some people can read that better) and my personal address where people can ask me for help. Do they use these tools? No! These subscribers respond to random posts and say "take me off this list" while quoting the entire message they used for their reply. Some of them do this over and over and attempt to post to the list with it (one of the reasons I've kept my list moderated). And other subscribers will just write me and say "I can't figure it out, please help me!" Which would be fine if they didn't do this month after month. And most don't ask, they just say "remove me" then "remove me, second request." And so on. Mind you, when they want to return to the list they just do it themselves. And that's harder than leaving! Although you write to the same address, you have to use a strange word (subsingle) if you don't want the digest (I didn't write the server code!), and you have to respond to an authentication message. I try to cut people some slack since it's a list for people with disabilities that include brain fog and wanting to unsubscribe is often the result of being overwhelmed and too sick to keep up with the posts. But I can't be people's personal assistants either. I know from experience that if I do that same person will come back later expecting the same treatment (for subscribes too). If I teach them once then they will often do it themselves the subsequent times, or at least know how to ask for the directions. (If someone says, please do it for me cause I'm very sick right now, then I will.) One of the best things I ever did was to move to a system where the default is requiring an authentication message for subscriptions. Now I almost never get "how did I get on this list, I never asked for this mail!" (note the almost) Cyndi -- _______________________________________________________________________________ "There's nothing wrong with me. Maybe there's Cyndi Norman something wrong with the universe." (ST:TNG) cyndi@consultclarity.com http://www.tikvah.com/ _________________ Owner of the Immune Website & Lists http://www.immuneweb.org/ From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 20 19:16:05 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA09786; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 18:59:00 -0800 (PST) Received: from devo.impressive.net (r95aag008980.sbo-smr.ma.cable.rcn.com [209.6.183.153]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id SAA09757 for ; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 18:58:51 -0800 (PST) Received: (from gerald@localhost) by devo.impressive.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id WAA10586; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 22:16:20 -0500 Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 22:16:19 -0500 From: Gerald Oskoboiny To: Tim Pierce Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: subscription confirmations (was Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM) Message-ID: <20000220221619.A7575@impressive.net> References: <50700.950306850@monkeys.com> <20000212003426.0F3C699E2D@waltz.rahul.net> <20000216183317.F8700@impressive.net> <20000217185549.C53979@ma-1.rootsweb.com> <20000220032119.B4044@impressive.net> <20000220041618.E7913@ma-1.rootsweb.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0pre3us In-Reply-To: <20000220041618.E7913@ma-1.rootsweb.com> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Sun, Feb 20, 2000 at 04:16:18AM -0500, Tim Pierce wrote: > On Sun, Feb 20, 2000 at 03:21:19AM -0500, Gerald Oskoboiny wrote: > > On Thu, Feb 17, 2000 at 06:55:49PM -0500, Tim Pierce wrote: > > > > > Including a small form in the mail itself is a good idea as long > > > as all the clicky clicky clients can handle it. I suspect a lot > > > of them are only prepared to deal with A HREF. > > > > I don't think there can be many existing clients in this situation. > > I remember there were still a few browsers in use in 1994 that didn't > > understand forms, but that's 6 years ago, forever in web years. > > Yes, but we're talking about mail readers, not web browsers. It's > entirely plausible that the authors of GUI mail readers would add > the ability to follow a hyperlink from a mail message, but not > support the full HTML/HTTP suite with cookies. Forms are basic HTML 2.0, but that's a good point anyway. :) In that case, I suggest sending a multipart/alternative message with two parts: - a text/plain part that has a link to a page where there's a simple form that can be posted to remove the user from the list - a text/html part that has the form inline (or maybe just the same link to an external page, depending which you like better) Hmm, I wonder how popular webmail services like hotmail handle multipart/alternative messages. -- Gerald Oskoboiny http://impressive.net/people/gerald/ From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 20 19:30:01 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA10019; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 19:17:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from devo.impressive.net (r95aag008980.sbo-smr.ma.cable.rcn.com [209.6.183.153]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA10012 for ; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 19:17:20 -0800 (PST) Received: (from gerald@localhost) by devo.impressive.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id WAA10707; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 22:34:58 -0500 Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 22:34:58 -0500 From: Gerald Oskoboiny To: John R Levine Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: GET vs. POST subscription confirmations Message-ID: <20000220223458.B7575@impressive.net> References: <20000220025549.A4044@impressive.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0pre3us In-Reply-To: Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Sun, Feb 20, 2000 at 10:08:44AM -0500, John R Levine wrote: > > You just need to make a form submit button say "Click here to confirm" > > instead of a link, that's all. > > Interesting theory. What about the many millions of users who > don't use or want HTML mail readers? It's easy enough to pick > a URL out of a text message and click on it, but you can't do > that if it's an entire form. Right... see my response to Tim Pierce (re multipart/alternative) > But really, this argument is silly. Real web browsers and > servers treat GETs with arguments the same as POSTs. No, they treat them quite differently, as they should. If you try to reload a page that was the result of a POST, the browser will display a popup saying "Repost form data?" or somesuch. (At least, all the browsers I've used recently do, as they're required per the specs.) And caches treat get and post differently, too. The relevent specs are (for those interested): HTTP 1.1 section 9.1: Safe and Idempotent Methods http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec9.html#sec9.1 HTML 4.01 section 17.13: Form submission http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/interact/forms.html#h-17.13 If you know of any browsers that get this wrong, please let me know. (off the list is fine) > Whatever theoretical difference may have once existed between > them stopped mattering about the time that browsers stopped > implementing PUT. This is off-topic and not directly relevent, but: which browsers have stopped implementing PUT? As far as I know it has yet to be implemented in most browsers; I don't know of any that supported it in the past and don't today. (Most publishing at the place I work is done via HTTP PUT, but they're kind of exceptional.) -- Gerald Oskoboiny http://impressive.net/people/gerald/ From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 20 19:45:04 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA08940; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 18:01:01 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id SAA08930 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 18:00:58 -0800 (PST) Received: from smtp-out1.bellatlantic.net (smtp-out1.bellatlantic.net [199.45.39.156]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA01913 for ; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 14:30:53 -0800 (PST) Received: from SOUTINE2K (adsl-151-202-20-126.bellatlantic.net [151.202.20.126]) by smtp-out1.bellatlantic.net (8.9.1/8.9.1) with SMTP id RAA23009; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 17:47:21 -0500 (EST) From: "Tom Neff" To: Cc: "Chuq Von Rospach" Subject: RE: FOLLOWUPS on Escribe, "trying for years" and hoax letters Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 17:47:31 -0500 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) Importance: Normal In-Reply-To: X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2919.6700 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Chuq Von Rospach [mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com] wrote: > [Escribe] is probably vhosted on a server, and when the server went > spla, the vhosting got confused, and you were seeing someone else's > site on the server for a while. Ach, smart Chuq, extra protein cooky for him. I bet that's it. > > * I, too, get occasional messages (sent to the list address, > > natch) of the form "HELP! I have been trying for MONTHS to > > leave this list"... > > I get them, too. I generally try to cut people some slack for > hyperbole, because at the time they write, they're usually irritated > and/or frustrated. On the other hand, I have been known to ask for > copies of their attempts, since obviously something is wrong and I > need to debug the problem -- but even then, you can ask them to back > up their claim without being overtly confrontative. Either they get > contrite or they get really nasty, and either way, you know how to > deal with them... I know this intellectually, but somehow it still bugs me that whether they're sweethearts or A-holes, when you track down the truth about those complaints, it turns out they tried once or twice and couldn't resist exaggerating. I wouldn't even mind a CREATIVE exaggeration ("I tried to leave and it sent me a picture of Shania Twain") but why would people embellish the truth _in a way that makes them look like dorks_. End of rant, no point really. > > * On the "modem tax" and other hoax/legend/virus letters > > thing, will all list managers reading this PLEASE bookmark > > the Internet Hoax resources: > > > > http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html > > http://kumite.com/myths/myths/ > > http://www.ih2000.net/ira/hoaxes.htm > > heck, they're published in the FAQs for my lists. Does it do any > good? I dunno. it's not 100% working, but who knows how many would > ahve been sent that weren't? ... Just to make myself clear: I am under no illusions that these resources, even if prominently mentioned in the welcomes and FAQs for lists, will make a significant dent in USER ignorance. However, LISTOWNER ignorance is another matter: within our much smaller community we ought to be able to spread the word that hoaxes exist, are checkable, and have an effect on the larger Internet world. It is the specter of a MANAGER coming here and posting "I heard something about a modem tax..." that makes me want to re-cite those resources weekly. From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 20 20:00:04 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA09636; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 18:49:46 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id SAA09626 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 18:49:44 -0800 (PST) Received: from tymix.Tymnet.COM (tymix.tymnet.com [131.146.2.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id RAA07898 for ; Fri, 18 Feb 2000 17:37:02 -0800 (PST) Received: by tymix.Tymnet.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA09479; Fri, 18 Feb 2000 17:54:20 PST Received: from tardis by Tymnet.COM (in.smtpd); 18 Feb 100 17:54:20 PST Received: (from jms@localhost) by tardis.tymnet.com (8.8.8+Sun/8.8.8) id RAA17091 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Fri, 18 Feb 2000 17:54:18 -0800 (PST) Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 17:54:18 -0800 From: Joe Smith To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Mailing list abuse discussed on comp.risks Message-Id: <20000218175418.P18702@tardis.Tymnet.COM> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0i Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk This item in comp.risks is of interest to list-managers. | Newsgroups: comp.risks | Subject: Risks Digest 20.79 | Date: 15 Feb 2000 21:54:25 -0800 | Message-ID: | | This issue is archived at | | Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 12:27:57 -0500 | From: Mich Kabay | Subject: Risks of bouncing messages from closed e-mail lists | | I have noticed that a junk e-mailer has taken to using a closed mailing-list | server as a relay for his unauthorized messages. | | The scam works like this: | | 1) Criminal locates a closed mailing list that responds to unauthorized | postings by sending back an automated rejection notice that includes the | original message. | | 2) Criminal sends junk e-mail to the closed list using the desired | _target's_ e-mail addresses in forged header. | | 3) Closed list obligingly bounces the original message back to the target's | address. | | Authorized users of the closed list do not need to receive a message | informing them that their messages have not been accepted (presumably due to | some oversight or glitch) because they will likely note the absence of their | message on the list anyway. | | Unauthorized users of the list do not need to see the text of their message | at all in their electronic rejection note -- a stock reply explaining how to | gain admission to the list is more relevant. | | Therefore I recommend that at the very least, administrators for closed | e-mail lists prevent their listserv from sending the _complete text_ of a | bounced message back to the supposed originator. | | However, there is a more serious vulnerability here: infinite loops between | two or more closed lists. | | If an attacker forges the originating address of a closed list that sends | back automated rejection notes to another closed list that sends back | automated rejection notes, then each forged message will generate a | mailstorm as a function of the speed of the servers in sending bounce | messages to each other. The chain can be extended to multiple closed-list | servers, causing even more useless traffic and potentially contributing to | denial of service for the legitimate users of the closed lists. | | RECOMMENDATIONS: | | A) Turn off automated notification of rejection altogether on all closed | lists; or if you feel that the notification messages are important, then | | B) Configure the listserv to send back only the title of a rejected message, | not the complete text; or if you feel like addressing the potential | vulnerability head-on, | | C) Design a check of a log file so that the listserv for a closed list can | quickly identify a mailstorm and stop it by turning off automated | notification of rejection when it is being abused. | | M. E. Kabay, PhD, CISSP, Security Leader, Information Security Group | Adario, Inc., 255 Flood Road, Barre, VT 05641-4060 +1.802.479.7937 | | [NOTE the push-pull duality between a mailstorm and a maelstrom. | A mailstorm pushes things in, whereas a maelstrom pulls them in. PGN] -- Joe Smith MCI WorldCom, On-Net Design/Impl, Product Technical Support UNIX and Tech Sup: TYMNET Network, Xstream Packet Services (Public X.25) 2560 N 1st St, MS-5046/746, San Jose, CA 95131 Voice: 408-533-6220 = vnet 854-6220 Fax: 408-533-6702 = vnet 854-6702 From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 20 20:30:08 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA10654; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 20:15:46 -0800 (PST) Received: from scifi.squawk.com (glock.squawk.com [208.176.124.157]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id UAA10647 for ; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 20:15:39 -0800 (PST) Received: from tpad.squawk.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by scifi.squawk.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 3673E350BA; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 23:33:16 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.20000220223823.04e5a210@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: njs@127.0.0.1 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 22:38:23 -0500 To: Gerald Oskoboiny From: Nick Simicich Subject: Re: subscription confirmations (was Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM) Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <20000220025549.A4044@impressive.net> References: <3.0.5.32.20000217001247.036e77d0@127.0.0.1> <20000212003426.0F3C699E2D@waltz.rahul.net> <50700.950306850@monkeys.com> <20000212003426.0F3C699E2D@waltz.rahul.net> <20000216183317.F8700@impressive.net> <3.0.5.32.20000217001247.036e77d0@127.0.0.1> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 02:55 AM 2/20/00 -0500, Gerald Oskoboiny wrote: >> If you mark it, >> "click here to confirm", then they click here to confirm. Why >> make a user who can barely do one thing do two things? re we >> totally addiced to "Are you Sure?" boxes for everything? > >You just need to make a form submit button say "Click here to confirm" >instead of a link, that's all. All I need to do is to mark it "Click here to confirm" for them to know that this will do something. Why should a user care whether it is a get or a put mode URL? Again, I think it is a silly addiction to "are you sure" popups that cause people to want to put up these pushbuttons. This just contributes to making computers harder to use. I can't send them a pushbutton in e-mail and still make it widely compatible. I want this to work for people whose MUAs can do nothing but simply call a browser with a get mode URL. I want this to work for someone who has to start the browser and cut/paste it in. >> We are not writing mail for a browser here. I send my confirm >> URL's, tokens and all, as regular URLs, which default to get >> whe clicked on. If you click on a URL with a bunch of >> operands, why would you expect it not to do something? > >Users shouldn't be expected to inspect the contents of URLs to >try to figure out what will happen before they click on them. > >That's (one of) the reasons for the distinction between GET and >POST: the user interface is different, so users can get used to >the fact that POSTing something has side effects (like removing >them from a list), while simply following a hypertext link >doesn't. It is a silly distinction, sorry. If you label something, users should be expected to read. "Are you sure" popups should be saved for important events, and not used for easily reversible, non-destructive events. We have a large number of people who are conditioned to click "yes" on every one of these without reading them because they are so overused. -- That which does not kill us, makes us stronger. That which does kill us makes us smell stronger, after a few days, anyway. Nick Simicich mailto:njs@scifi.squawk.com http://scifi.squawk.com/njs.html -- Stop by and Light Up The World! From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 20 21:40:13 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA11413; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 21:29:52 -0800 (PST) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA11406 for ; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 21:29:45 -0800 (PST) Received: from [209.239.169.197] ([17.254.144.30]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id VAA84110 ; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 21:46:12 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <20000218175418.P18702@tardis.Tymnet.COM> References: <20000218175418.P18702@tardis.Tymnet.COM> Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 21:46:06 -0800 To: Joe Smith , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Mailing list abuse discussed on comp.risks Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Thanks. Interesting. At 5:54 PM -0800 2/18/2000, Joe Smith wrote: >| Authorized users of the closed list do not need to receive a message >| informing them that their messages have not been accepted (presumably due to >| some oversight or glitch) because they will likely note the absence of their >| message on the list anyway. Not a safe assumption. >| Unauthorized users of the list do not need to see the text of their message >| at all in their electronic rejection note -- a stock reply explaining how to >| gain admission to the list is more relevant. One very good reason TO return the messsage. Way too many people send a message to the list and don't keep a copy. If you reject it for some reason without sending it back, they're honked off, because you dind't post it and they don't have it to send a second time. Sending it back with instructions on how to make it postable is a must. But -- this closed-list hack is something that needs to be addressed, also. how to trade off those two problems is going to be interesting, but not returning the message isn't IMHO the right answer. it's a meataxe answer, but something a little more sophisticated ought to be findable. >| However, there is a more serious vulnerability here: infinite loops between >| two or more closed lists. It's a big issue for anything that auto-responds, not just lists. Any mailbot has to try to figure this out, and many of them do a terrible job of it, including some of mine. I've closed some holes, but not all of them, and it's a continuing issue. IMHO, while it's not my preferred way of doing it, I'm redoing my mailbots so that the From and reply-to addresses point to an alias to nobody, and people are told that can't just hit "reply", but I've more or less decided that this is a lesser of two evils issue, and limiting loops is more important than trivial replies, and since I have zero control over how the mailbot on the OTHER side works, I have to be hyper-paranoid not to create possible loops. The worst loop I ever ran into, and I literally found it by accident, was one that, as far as I could tell, had been going on for a couple of months. yes, months. both sides kept slowly adding text to it, so that by the time I ran into it, the return message was 90 megabytes long, and because of that, the time for it to make a round trip was on the order of 2-3 days. My system throws out mail over 100 megs, so sooner or later it would have hit that limit and died, but -- thinking of all that bandwidth... I have an automated report that mails me about possible loops every morning, so I can catch and break them if I need to. At some point, I hope to fully automate it, but I don't trust it yet. >| A) Turn off automated notification of rejection altogether on all closed >| lists; or if you feel that the notification messages are important, then >| >| B) Configure the listserv to send back only the title of a rejected message, >| not the complete text; or if you feel like addressing the potential >| vulnerability head-on, I disagree, personally. Teh disadvantage to users who lose their message befcause it's not posted OR returned outweighs the abuse possibility, at least until the abuse happens. >| C) Design a check of a log file so that the listserv for a closed list can >| quickly identify a mailstorm and stop it by turning off automated >| notification of rejection when it is being abused. So this is what I'd suggest. If nothing else, track the number of rejected messages and if it spikes or goes over some chosen value, then Do Something. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 20 22:11:20 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA11587; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 21:45:42 -0800 (PST) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA11578 for ; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 21:45:29 -0800 (PST) Received: from [209.239.169.197] ([17.254.144.30]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id WAA67998 ; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 22:01:26 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <200002171756.JAA18225@shell7.ba.best.com> References: <200002171756.JAA18225@shell7.ba.best.com> Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 21:53:35 -0800 To: cnorman@best.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: subscribers who can't manage to get off a list Cc: cnorman@best.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 9:56 AM -0800 2/17/2000, Cyndi Norman wrote: >Note: directions are at the bottom of every post. Along with the website >url (with directions written up differently in case some people can read >that better) and my personal address where people can ask me for help. Do >they use these tools? No! I've found that doing this on my lists has taken the problem down to almost zero. Not 100% zero, but it's very, very rare. I also have some filters that reject obvious administrivia, and nudge them in the right direction. The number of people who will work to find a way around the filters to get in a "get me off the list" message ANYWAY is basically zero. One quick question here -- are the users trying to get off digest users? And are your unsubscribe instructions in the header or footer of the digest? I put my unsub info in the footer on individual messages, but moved them to the header of digests, because users tended to not scroll to the end of digests, so they never saw them. >These subscribers respond to random posts and say "take me off this list" >while quoting the entire message they used for their reply. And my system traps them unposted and sends them a nice note on how to do it correctly. They have to find a way to say "get me off the list" that won't be trapped by the filter. Usually, they'll take the hint and either do it themselves, or write the list mom rather than keep rtrying to rewrite their message to get around the filter. VERY occasionally someone will do that, but the users then go in and, um, self-police the guy... -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 20 22:25:56 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA11635; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 21:48:50 -0800 (PST) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA11627 for ; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 21:48:43 -0800 (PST) Received: from [209.239.169.197] ([17.254.144.30]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id WAA62628 ; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 22:01:28 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <20000220221619.A7575@impressive.net> References: <50700.950306850@monkeys.com> <20000212003426.0F3C699E2D@waltz.rahul.net> <20000216183317.F8700@impressive.net> <20000217185549.C53979@ma-1.rootsweb.com> <20000220032119.B4044@impressive.net> <20000220041618.E7913@ma-1.rootsweb.com> <20000220221619.A7575@impressive.net> Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 22:02:28 -0800 To: Gerald Oskoboiny , Tim Pierce From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: subscription confirmations (was Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM) Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 10:16 PM -0500 2/20/2000, Gerald Oskoboiny wrote: >Hmm, I wonder how popular webmail services like hotmail handle >multipart/alternative messages. This stuff's all still kinda iffy. I wouldn't implement a general m/a e-mail system unless I knew the audience very well and could guarantee their clients -- in fact, we're putting together exactly that for one specific internal application now, but won't consider it for anything with a public audience. Ask me again in a year; this technology isn't settled out yet. Giving them a URL to click is about as far as I think you want to go right now, because with a URL, they can still copy and paste it into a browser (or, god forbid, just type it in again. And don't minimize the number of people at that level....) -- and even if you want to do something fancier, you still need to build in an alternative for the less technologically sophisticated (or enabled). And when you run into the need for multiple versions of something, I start asking "why bother? Do a single version and spend time making it even better...." It comes down to the same kind of argumnet about frames early on, when you still needed a second, parallel non-frame version of a web site. or now, with DHTML and style sheets in HTML today. Nice toys, but if you have to build a second version to cover people who can't use that stuff, isn't it better to find a design that allows you to handle everyone and take the time-saving of not duplicating effort into building that one thing better? -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 21 00:14:32 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA12893; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 23:59:40 -0800 (PST) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id XAA12885 for ; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 23:59:25 -0800 (PST) Received: from [209.239.169.197] ([17.254.144.30]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id AAA88494 ; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 00:15:59 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <200002210752.XAA03615@shell7.ba.best.com> References: <200002210752.XAA03615@shell7.ba.best.com> Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 00:16:59 -0800 To: cnorman@best.com, chuqui@plaidworks.com From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: subscribers who can't manage to get off a list Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, cnorman@best.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 11:52 PM -0800 2/20/2000, Cyndi Norman wrote: > And my system traps them unposted and sends them a nice note on how > to do it correctly. > >I'd love something like that. I'm currently doing it with procmail. Nice, but -- adds a lot of complexity, more stuff to maintain, more scripts to worry about, etc. I'm going to (I'm pretty sure) moving to Sympa soon, and I think that I'm going to do it differently there, by setting up a couple of scripts, one global, one per-list, that are executed on each message, and which return a "okay to post/not okay" return flag to the MLM. I'd then have the ability to write a perl script or whatever to oversee things, and do whatever I feel necessary with a lot less hassle than procmail, and integrated within the MLM for the most part. >Either way the posts don't go to the list but I have to respond to the >person by hand if they are to get any reply. Ack. majordomo 1.53.3 did that -- I hacked a few back-end filters that caught those and sent a message back FOR me, but that was ugly. is ugly. Whatever. I think 1.53.4 has more flexibility here, but offhand, I can't remember for sure. It's been a bit since I hacked on them. Another thing I was thinking about, and I'll throw this out just to see what people think... I was thinking today of the hassle of building/maintaining/updating the aliases for lists, especially when you get lots of them on a server. And so I've been thinking of using a virtual host which sends ALL mail to that subdomain to a program, which figures out what to do with them by finding out what lists exist and forwarding things to the "right place" through either a set of rules, lookups in a database, or most likely a combination of both... Might be a way to automate one more aspect of creating and maintaining lists. thoughts? -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 21 07:27:24 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA19808; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 07:11:21 -0800 (PST) Received: from norfolk-county.com (master.ncounty.net [208.239.169.20]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id HAA19801 for ; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 07:11:15 -0800 (PST) Received: from doctor [208.244.111.110] by norfolk-county.com (SMTPD32-4.06) id ABAC324F00F4; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 14:29:00 +03d00 From: "Andrea Ridley" To: Subject: A beginner seeks advice Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 10:33:09 -0500 Message-ID: <00d701bf7c81$6aa6b980$786ff4d0@doctor.norfolk-county.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 8.5, Build 4.71.2173.0 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3110.3 In-reply-to: <200002202042.PAA21683@tor-srs1.netcom.ca> Importance: Normal Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk hi I have been publishing an educational website newsletter and was thinking of making it a "list" so that I could share the info with others. I'm not sure where to begin. I know that there are different lists out there that I could publish this information on and get people to join. How do I make the decision about which one to join? What is your personal preference and why? I understand if you don't want to give me your preferences publicly so feel free to email me privately. I have been reading some of the messages in the past (about Topica, etc) but I am not sure I understand all of the implications. TIA for your help. this is all very overwhelming for a newbie! andi From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 21 08:42:22 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA20942; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 08:35:53 -0800 (PST) Received: from physio1.utmem.edu (physio1.utmem.edu [132.192.44.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA20934 for ; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 08:35:45 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (ltague@localhost) by physio1.utmem.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id KAA08712 for ; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 10:53:31 -0600 (CST) Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 10:53:30 -0600 (CST) From: Larry Tague To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Well I am stumped! Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I have installed the new 1.95.5 Majordomo. I thought that I did a clean install, but something is not set right somewhere?? Here is the low-down.. I created a user names majordom with a home directory in /usr/local/majordom. I unpacked the Majordomo distribution in /usr/local/majordomo-1.94.5. I edited the Makefile and set the "run" directory for majordomo to be /usr/local/majordom. I ran make on wrapper (it worked OK), and then I ran make install (OK it did it). Next I ran make install-wrapper (OK it worked), and then I cd /usr/local/majordom and ran the test-config routine, and everything checked good. The majordomo.cf file is set as follows for the goody directory # $homedir -- Where can I find my extra .pl files, like majordomo.pl? # the environment variable HOME is set by the wrapper # if ( defined $ENV{"HOME"}) { $homedir = $ENV{"HOME"}; } else { $homedir = "/usr/local/majordom"; } # $listdir -- Where are the mailing lists? # $listdir = "$homedir/lists"; I created a list named blah. Put two email addresses in the list. Next I created the entry in the aliases file (majordomo.aliases), and made sure that sendmail.cf was set to read this file (sendmail 8.9.3). I then ran sendmail -bi (newaliases)... it worked OK, and then started to test blah. Here is where it all falls apart.. 1) There are continued sendmail processes started on this mailer until the system finally comes to its knees. You keep seeing additional files added to the mqueue. If you check majordomo Log file this is what you see.. Feb 19 22:47:50 physio1.utmem.edu resend[21497] {blah} WARNING Can't read /usr/local/majordomo-1.94.5/lists/blah: No such file or directory There are many.. many of these attempts to read from the directory where I unpacked the tar-ball. Of course it is not there. When I have told it in the Makefile that everything is in majordom, why does it keep looking in the wrong directory?? I have erased the whole thing twice now and rebuilt it... still no luck. Any suggestions would be most appreciated. Thanks. Larry Larry Tague Co-Director of MECCA* Research Associate Dept. of Physiology & Biophysics Phone Bus.: 901-448-7152 U.T. Memphis Phone FAX: 901-448-7126 894 Union Ave. e-mail:ltague@physio1.utmem.edu or Memphis, TN 38163 ltague@mecca.mecca.org *MECCA (Memphis Educational Computer Connectivity Alliance) URL: http://www.mecca.org/ From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 21 10:41:14 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA22324; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 10:24:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from ivan.iecc.com (ivan.iecc.com [208.31.42.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id KAA22317 for ; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 10:24:01 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 28223 invoked by uid 100); 21 Feb 2000 13:41:43 -0500 Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 13:41:43 -0500 (EST) From: John R Levine To: Chuq Von Rospach cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Mailing list abuse discussed on comp.risks In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > >| However, there is a more serious vulnerability here: infinite loops between > >| two or more closed lists. > > It's a big issue for anything that auto-responds, not just lists. Any > mailbot has to try to figure this out, and many of them do a terrible > job of it, including some of mine. I've closed some holes, but not > all of them, and it's a continuing issue. I have a bunch of autoresponders, and the only effective thing I've found is rate limiting. My autoresponders remember all the addresses they've written to, and will not send more than five responses per hour to any single address, dropping responses over that limit. I suppose it might lose a tiny amount of real mail, but it does break mail loops quite well. There's nothing you can put in an outgoing message that will reliably let you detect an autoresponse, too many autoresponses completely discard the message they're responding to so there's no body nor any copy of the subject line. You should of course do "good housekeeping" things like "Precedence: bulk" to give well behaved software the hint that it's talking to another computer, but of course the well behaved software isn't the problem. > The worst loop I ever ran into, and I literally found it by accident, > was one that, as far as I could tell, had been going on for a couple > of months. yes, months. both sides kept slowly adding text to it, so > that by the time I ran into it, the return message was 90 megabytes > long, and because of that, the time for it to make a round trip was > on the order of 2-3 days. Wow. I'm amazed that you found two mail systems robust enough to handle 90MB messages, but broken enough to get into a loop like that. > So this is what I'd suggest. If nothing else, track the number of > rejected messages and if it spikes or goes over some chosen value, > then Do Something. You got it. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 21 10:56:38 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA22430; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 10:39:39 -0800 (PST) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA22423 for ; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 10:39:34 -0800 (PST) Received: from [17.216.27.198] (A17-216-27-198.apple.com [17.216.27.198]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id KAA85840 ; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 10:55:23 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 10:56:13 -0800 To: John R Levine , Chuq Von Rospach From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Mailing list abuse discussed on comp.risks Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 1:41 PM -0500 2/21/2000, John R Levine wrote: >My autoresponders remember all the addresses they've written >to, and will not send more than five responses per hour to any single >address, dropping responses over that limit. What do you use to implement mailbots? Perl? procmail? >There's nothing you can put in an outgoing >message that will reliably let you detect an autoresponse, too many >autoresponses completely discard the message they're responding to so >there's no body nor any copy of the subject line. Yeah. My favorite recent braindamage was a site that sent back errors by simply reflecting the message back to the "to" address. the only headers changed were the addition of Received lines and a new Message-ID -- so I couldn't even trap the loop based on duplicate sendings. This started a really gnarly mail loop on a list before I tracked it down, and I'm still unsure how to protect my system from it other than banning those domains (FWIW, it's an aged version of a microsoft mail gateway...). >Wow. I'm amazed that you found two mail systems robust enough to handle 90MB >messages, but broken enough to get into a loop like that. The mail systems weren't broken. On the far side, it was a guy with your typical "last minute untested" broken vacation message, and on my side, it was majordomo, which doesn't rate limit or any other limit on return messages. > > So this is what I'd suggest. If nothing else, track the number of >> rejected messages and if it spikes or goes over some chosen value, >> then Do Something. > >You got it. Yeah. In procmail, the 'easy' way is to use the formail address cache mechanism iwth a rather small cache size, so that people flush out of it fairly quickly. That way, if someone starts ringing your site off the hook, you can break the loop, but you don't lock them out of the system for long if they ARE trying to get through. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 21 11:11:05 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA22699; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 10:59:36 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.vjs.org (cc50165-b.hwrd1.md.home.com [24.9.159.241]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA22692 for ; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 10:59:25 -0800 (PST) Received: from [192.168.1.5] (192.168.1.5) by mail.vjs.org with ESMTP (Eudora Internet Mail Server 2.2); Mon, 21 Feb 2000 14:17:13 -0500 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <8867.951093070@monkeys.com> References: <8867.951093070@monkeys.com> X-Organization: Little to None X-Mailer: Eudora 5.0 for Cray T3E-1200 Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 14:17:00 -0500 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Vince Sabio Subject: Re: Blacklisted: RONALD F. GUILMETTE Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk ** Sometime around 16:31 -0800 02/20/2000, Ronald F. Guilmette sent us: >In message , >Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > > >At 2:43 PM -0800 2/20/2000, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > > > >oops. My mistake. I let Ronald's latest make me forget my resolve to > >quit wasting time on the list-manager's resident troll. His response > >simply reminds me how futile it is to argue with him, so I've set my > >system up to make sure I'm not tempted again in the future. Sorry for > >wasting everyone's electrons by encouraging him. > >It's OK Chuq. Don't worry about your pointless blathering. I'm sure >that by now, most people on the list have come to expect it from you, >and probably most have already killfiled you anyway, so no big deal. Ron, you continue to be an embarrassment to yourself and this list. I should have killfiled you a long time ago, but the means by which you demonstrate your comprehensive failure to understand the issues that -actual- list managers deal with on a day-to-day basis occasionally has its humourous moments. But please do not mistake anyone's lack of response to your posts as acquiescing to your lunatic-fringe spew; more likely, it is a sign that you are progressively populating the killfiles of this list. I've little doubt that I'll eventually killfile you, as well; I just seem to have a higher tolerance than most for our resident global-village idiot. __________________________________________________________________________ Vince Sabio Got Bounces? vince-lists@vjs.org Got Jokes? Got Spam? From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 21 12:11:05 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA23451; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 12:08:24 -0800 (PST) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA23444 for ; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 12:08:19 -0800 (PST) Received: from [17.216.27.198] (A17-216-27-198.apple.com [17.216.27.198]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id MAA30100 ; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 12:24:16 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: <8867.951093070@monkeys.com> Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 12:25:16 -0800 To: Vince Sabio , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Blacklisted: RONALD F. GUILMETTE Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 2:17 PM -0500 2/21/2000, Vince Sabio wrote: >> >>It's OK Chuq. Don't worry about your pointless blathering. I'm sure >>that by now, most people on the list have come to expect it from you, >>and probably most have already killfiled you anyway, so no big deal. > >Ron, you continue to be an embarrassment to yourself and this list. I'll simply say that if people choose to listen to Ronald instead of me, that's their choice. More power to them. On the other hand, I'll put my background, track record and reputation up against Ronald's anyway, and IMHO, if they choose to listen to Ronald, they get what they deserve. But I'll leave the list before I demand Ronald's removal, but I hope that by killfilling him, I can use this list to its' best advantage and contribute to it without also creating the inevitable problems that have been happening between myself and my dear friend. I fully intend to be part of the solution. Or I'll take my toys and go home before becoming the problem. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 21 12:57:16 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA23879; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 12:39:33 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA23871 for ; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 12:39:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id MAA12000 for ; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 12:57:13 -0800 (PST) To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Blacklisted: RONALD F. GUILMETTE In-reply-to: Your message of Mon, 21 Feb 2000 14:17:00 -0500. Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 12:57:13 -0800 Message-ID: <11998.951166633@monkeys.com> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message , Vince Sabio wrote: >** Sometime around 16:31 -0800 02/20/2000, Ronald F. Guilmette sent us: >>In message , >>Chuq Von Rospach wrote: >> >> >At 2:43 PM -0800 2/20/2000, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: >> > >> >oops. My mistake. I let Ronald's latest make me forget my resolve to >> >quit wasting time on the list-manager's resident troll. His response >> >simply reminds me how futile it is to argue with him, so I've set my >> >system up to make sure I'm not tempted again in the future. Sorry for >> >wasting everyone's electrons by encouraging him. >> >>It's OK Chuq. Don't worry about your pointless blathering. I'm sure >>that by now, most people on the list have come to expect it from you, >>and probably most have already killfiled you anyway, so no big deal. > >Ron, you continue to be an embarrassment to yourself and this list. I >should have killfiled you a long time ago, but the means by which you >demonstrate your comprehensive failure to understand the issues that >-actual- list managers deal with on a day-to-day basis occasionally has >its humourous moments. > >But please do not mistake anyone's lack of response to your posts as >acquiescing to your lunatic-fringe spew; more likely, it is a sign >that you are progressively populating the killfiles of this list. I've >little doubt that I'll eventually killfile you, as well; I just seem to >have a higher tolerance than most for our resident global-village idiot. I love you too Vince. And by the way, if it is a ``lunatic fringe'' concept for mailing list administrators to actually take some responsibility for what they do (which is exactly what I have consistantly advocated) then fine. In that case I'm proud to be a member of the lunatic fringe. But I think that real problem here is that I've suggested that mailing list admins should in fact be held accountable for their actions, or lack thereof. If that doesn't go over well among all readers of this list, then that fact neither surprises me nor discourages me. Some people, at least, are getting the message. You and Chuq can continue to whine about how its just too hard on your little noggins to try to run mailing lists with prudent security precautions. Meanwhile, other people who are less inclined towards whining and more inclined towards actually working for a living are actually doing it. According to the most recent edition of Business Week magazine, this may soon cease to be optional: ``We are right now on the cusp of seeing the standards for what is negligent emerge,'' explains James X. Dempsy, senior council at the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington. He suggests that before long, people who let their system be com- mandeered may be held liable for not taking appropriate security measures. This is not far fetched, experts say. If you slip on snow outside a neighbor's home, you can sue him for failing to shovel. The threat of lawsuits and other potential hits to the bottom line may persuade boards of directors and insurers to step up calls for increased se- curity at e-commerce firms. From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 21 13:26:08 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA24412; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 13:14:59 -0800 (PST) Received: from myrealbox.com ([192.108.102.201]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA24404 for ; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 13:14:53 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <200002212114.NAA24404@honor.greatcircle.com> Received: from 0d8xk [206.66.213.62] by myrealbox.com with Novonyx SMTP Server $Revision: 2.25 $; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 14:32:26 -0700 (MDT) From: "Alan S. Harrell" To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 15:32:22 -0600 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Blacklisted: TOPICA.COM In-reply-to: <20dd01bf7bf4$960af380$3de9b094@becky> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12b) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 20 Feb 00, at 22:47, Becky wrote: [...] > I don't get your logic. Esosoft's name is mud with list-owners so they > didn't benefit. Topica forced a quick move so that the likelihood of > list-owners moving somewhere else would be minimal. It's not easy to move a > list especially one where you had total control as Esosoft gave us. Just to > find a server you want takes time. To spring this on people less then a > week before Christmas while Esosoft new for months. In less then 12 hours I > lost control of my list, how can that be justified? Speaking of Esosoft, and as one of the refugees from the attempted hijacking of my list by Topica, I was fortunate to be able to move my list to another Majordomo service pretty quick. I had discovered the attempted hijacking even before Topica's official announcement and I actually had my list deleted off of Topica in that first day of the Esosoft Holocaust, before my list subscribers were transferred to Topica servers. To Esosoft's limited credit, they did come through with a refund for the balance due. However, to this day, I find it very strange that they have yet to delete my list off of their servers despite the threats from Topica that the lists on the Esosoft server would be deleted. In fact, I think Topica announced the lists would be deleted from the Esosoft servers in early January. In order to protect my subscribers from Topica's clutches, I hurriedly removed all subscribers from the Esosoft rolls, except for my own e-mail address. I "closed" the list to new subscribers and "closed" all access to intro and info files. Yet, I still got subscription requests. And when my subscribers forgot the new address and posted to the old Esosoft address, I would get non-member bounces. Therefore in my mind, the list was still running on Esosoft servers. I've taken advantage of this. There are web sites out there that still list my list with the old Esosoft address and I still get subscription requests to that address. Naturally, when they come in for approval, I sub them to my new location. No one has complained. I keep wondering what would have happened had I just stood my ground? Would Esosoft have allowed the list to go on as before? I can say some things would have been crippled. You cannot get a "lists" command through, any longer. But it would seem I could still post to my Esosoft list. To take advantage of this free publicity, I went back in and opened my info file in my configuration and re-did my info in case anyone requesting an info will get the straight skinny. Although my despising of Topica has grown to new heights, having actually learned to hate them before all this trouble occurred, I have benefited in some ways. I moved from a $5/month Majordomo service to a free Majordomo service for which I believe is take-over proof. The new Majordomo service is standard v.1.94.5 and does not have all the customization that Esosoft had, but I believe an experienced list owner does not need all those extras. So no regrets, other than a little bitterness. Alan poptexas@operamail.com http://www.ashlists.org/ From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 21 13:41:15 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA24458; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 13:15:22 -0800 (PST) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA24451 for ; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 13:15:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from [17.216.27.198] (A17-216-27-198.apple.com [17.216.27.198]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id NAA32988 ; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 13:31:29 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 13:32:32 -0800 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: case sensitivity? Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Gotta quick philosophical question here, attached to practical reality. The email RFC makes it clear that the username should be considered case sensitive, while the domain part is case insensitive (in other words, FredGuy@aol.com and FredGuy@AOL.COM are equivalent, but technically speaking, FredGuy@aol.com and fredguy@aol.com are not) -- but it doesn't require it to be case sensitive. In practical terms, all variations of fredguy@aol.com are equivalent. But this leads to a bit of a conundrum for me. To simplify reality, I coerce all email addresses to lower case -- this is especially useful for aol.com, where many users wouldn't be consistent on capitalization if their life depended on it. But technically speaking, that makes me non-compliant to the RFC, if I were to ever run into a mail system that IS case sensitive on the user name. Does anyone know of any systems that actually enforce case sensitivity on a user name? I don't know of any, and I can't think of a time when I've run into one in modern times, but before I commit the heinous sin of deciding that the RFC is out of step with reality, I thought I'd bring the issue up. Are there any reasons NOT to consider the entire email address as case insensitive? The advantages are great, especially in helping users find themselves in the listing. I really don't want to get into the issue of trying to decide if I should subscribe FredGuy@aol.com if Fredguy@aol.com is already subscribed. is there any reason NOT to ignore the RFCs here and go case insensitive? -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 21 13:57:55 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA24934; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 13:49:23 -0800 (PST) Received: from benge.graphics.cornell.edu (benge.graphics.cornell.edu [128.84.247.43]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA24927 for ; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 13:49:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from benge.graphics.cornell.edu (mkc@localhost) by benge.graphics.cornell.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA97855; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 17:07:02 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from mkc@benge.graphics.cornell.edu) Message-Id: <200002212207.RAA97855@benge.graphics.cornell.edu> To: Chuq Von Rospach cc: John R Levine , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Mailing list abuse discussed on comp.risks In-Reply-To: Message from Chuq Von Rospach of "Mon, 21 Feb 2000 10:56:13 PST." Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 17:07:02 -0500 From: Mitch Collinsworth Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >Yeah. My favorite recent braindamage was a site that sent back errors >by simply reflecting the message back to the "to" address. the only >headers changed were the addition of Received lines and a new >Message-ID -- so I couldn't even trap the loop based on duplicate >sendings. This started a really gnarly mail loop on a list before I >tracked it down, and I'm still unsure how to protect my system from >it other than banning those domains (FWIW, it's an aged version of a >microsoft mail gateway...). Hmm. If it didn't change any existing headers except Message-ID: then you can detect it from any headers written by your list software, such as for example Sender:. -Mitch From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 21 14:11:06 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA25230; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 14:05:36 -0800 (PST) Received: from benge.graphics.cornell.edu (benge.graphics.cornell.edu [128.84.247.43]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA25213 for ; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 14:05:25 -0800 (PST) Received: from benge.graphics.cornell.edu (mkc@localhost) by benge.graphics.cornell.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA97980; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 17:23:13 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from mkc@benge.graphics.cornell.edu) Message-Id: <200002212223.RAA97980@benge.graphics.cornell.edu> To: Vince Sabio cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Blacklisted: RONALD F. GUILMETTE In-Reply-To: Message from Vince Sabio of "Mon, 21 Feb 2000 14:17:00 EST." Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 17:23:13 -0500 From: Mitch Collinsworth Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >Ron, you continue to be an embarrassment to yourself and this list. I >should have killfiled you a long time ago, but the means by which you >demonstrate your comprehensive failure to understand the issues that >-actual- list managers deal with on a day-to-day basis occasionally has >its humourous moments. Precisely why I always enjoy reading our dear friend's messages, even when I'm in a hurry and skipping over lots of others. What worries me more than his rantings here are the questions he occasionally poses on the FreeBSD list that demonstrate he does actually have a modicum of technical know-how... -Mitch From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 21 14:26:05 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA25281; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 14:06:28 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id OAA25273 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 14:06:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from shell7.ba.best.com (shell7.ba.best.com [206.184.139.138]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id XAA12654 for ; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 23:35:05 -0800 (PST) Received: (from cnorman@localhost) by shell7.ba.best.com (8.9.3/8.9.2/best.sh) id XAA03615; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 23:52:45 -0800 (PST) Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 23:52:45 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <200002210752.XAA03615@shell7.ba.best.com> From: Cyndi Norman To: chuqui@plaidworks.com CC: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, cnorman@best.com In-reply-to: (message from Chuq Von Rospach on Sun, 20 Feb 2000 21:53:35 -0800) Subject: Re: subscribers who can't manage to get off a list Reply-to: cnorman@best.com Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 21:53:35 -0800 From: Chuq Von Rospach One quick question here -- are the users trying to get off digest users? And are your unsubscribe instructions in the header or footer of the digest? I put my unsub info in the footer on individual messages, but moved them to the header of digests, because users tended to not scroll to the end of digests, so they never saw them. That's a good point. They are in the footer of each. I have slightly different directions for the two...the digest one says also how to switch to regular. I'll add a line to the header and see if that helps. But the people lately who have been trying to post to the list to get removed are getting the regular list not digest (you can tell since they quote). And my system traps them unposted and sends them a nice note on how to do it correctly. I'd love something like that. I'm required to use "bestserv" and nothing else if I want to use my ISP"s server. There is a decent adminsitrivia filter but for some reason it gets turned off when the list is moderated. Either way the posts don't go to the list but I have to respond to the person by hand if they are to get any reply. Cyndi -- _______________________________________________________________________________ "There's nothing wrong with me. Maybe there's Cyndi Norman something wrong with the universe." (ST:TNG) cyndi@consultclarity.com http://www.tikvah.com/ _________________ Owner of the Immune Website & Lists http://www.immuneweb.org/ From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 21 14:41:05 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA25268; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 14:06:20 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id OAA25258 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 14:06:16 -0800 (PST) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA11386 for ; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 21:28:30 -0800 (PST) Received: from [209.239.169.197] ([17.254.144.30]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id VAA36600 ; Sun, 20 Feb 2000 21:45:02 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <20000216153616.G18702@tardis.Tymnet.COM> References: <200002150900.BAA03069@honor.greatcircle.com> <20000216153616.G18702@tardis.Tymnet.COM> Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 21:27:29 -0800 To: Joe Smith , List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: FOLLOWUPS on Escribe, "trying for years" Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 3:36 PM -0800 2/16/2000, Joe Smith wrote: >What really burns me up is mailing list software that refuses to >recognize unsub requests for forwarded mail. Too many MLM packages >do not honor requests when the From: address does not exactly match >the mailing list entry. It's a big problem, something I've been working over recently myself. My plan is for my -unsubscribe script to look at the From, the reply-to, and the X-Sender headers, and then allow the user to add "Remove: address" lines to the body. That will take care of all of the cases where a user knows his address, and many cases where they don't -- it's really rather amazing the number of times I get postmaster mail to have some address unsubscribed, when it's the wrong one, and the correct address is in the X-sender address instead. The piece I've been working on this weekend is the unsubscribe logic for the new web site. Since my new server is fully SQL based, I've got lots of flexibility to do whatever it takes to make it work right -- if I can only figure out what "right" is. The unsubscribe CGI does lots of stuff behind the curtains to try to figure out what the subscribed address is from what it's given, without ever disclosing subscription addresses unless it's convinced there's a match. >It's not unusual to have ten different e-mail >addresses all forwarding into a single inbox. Define unusual. I'd say it is -- but two or three is pretty common. This, by the way, is a great reason to go to a fully VERPed MLM that puts the subscribed address in the To: field where it belongs. Which 'll be doing (I hope) in late march or early april. >Worse yet is the case where an employee leaves and the mailing list software >does not process the "no such user" bounce message. (cringe) -- yup. That's an issue. And a growing one, given the growing use of virtual domains where the entire domain is forwarded to someone's account (such as, for instance, LordHighMaster@chuqui.com). Trying to help the administrator get their domain off has been something I've been working into my cgi. My final lookup is on the domainname itself, with no user piece, and if it matches a single subscribed address, I assume that this is what they're looking for. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 21 14:56:09 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA25600; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 14:47:55 -0800 (PST) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA25593 for ; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 14:47:45 -0800 (PST) Received: from [17.216.27.198] (A17-216-27-198.apple.com [17.216.27.198]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id PAA32072 ; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 15:04:08 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <200002212207.RAA97855@benge.graphics.cornell.edu> References: <200002212207.RAA97855@benge.graphics.cornell.edu> Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 15:04:07 -0800 To: Mitch Collinsworth , Chuq Von Rospach From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Mailing list abuse discussed on comp.risks Cc: John R Levine , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 5:07 PM -0500 2/21/2000, Mitch Collinsworth wrote: > >Hmm. If it didn't change any existing headers except Message-ID: then >you can detect it from any headers written by your list software, such >as for example Sender:. I do check that, and for some reason that didn't work. But I don't remember why -- most likely, it actually did strip some headers, but at this point, I couldn't say for sure. It's in my files somewhere, though. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 21 16:41:10 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA26775; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 16:36:33 -0800 (PST) Received: from scifi.squawk.com (glock.squawk.com [208.176.124.157]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id QAA26768 for ; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 16:36:27 -0800 (PST) Received: from tpad.squawk.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by scifi.squawk.com (Postfix) with SMTP id EAFA335099; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 19:54:14 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.20000221194131.03931880@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: njs@127.0.0.1 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 19:41:31 -0500 To: Chuq Von Rospach From: Nick Simicich Subject: Re: case sensitivity? Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 01:32 PM 2/21/00 -0800, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > >Does anyone know of any systems that actually enforce case >sensitivity on a user name? I don't know of any, and I can't think of >a time when I've run into one in modern times, but before I commit >the heinous sin of deciding that the RFC is out of step with reality, >I thought I'd bring the issue up. Chuq, the last time I ran into a case sensitive local part was when AT&T was running their internal mail system on UUCP and gatewaying in and out to smtp. Whoops, you asked for one in modern times. Have not run into one since. -- That which does not kill us, makes us stronger. That which does kill us makes us smell stronger, after a few days, anyway. Nick Simicich mailto:njs@scifi.squawk.com http://scifi.squawk.com/njs.html -- Stop by and Light Up The World! From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 21 17:26:09 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA27175; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 17:12:55 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id RAA27168 for ; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 17:12:45 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA12563 for ; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 17:30:35 -0800 (PST) To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Blacklisted: RONALD F. GUILMETTE In-reply-to: Your message of Mon, 21 Feb 2000 12:25:16 -0800. Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 17:30:35 -0800 Message-ID: <12561.951183035@monkeys.com> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message , Chuq Von Rospach wrote: >At 2:17 PM -0500 2/21/2000, Vince Sabio wrote: > >>> >>>It's OK Chuq. Don't worry about your pointless blathering. I'm sure >>>that by now, most people on the list have come to expect it from you, >>>and probably most have already killfiled you anyway, so no big deal. >> >>Ron, you continue to be an embarrassment to yourself and this list. > > >I'll simply say that if people choose to listen to Ronald instead of >me, that's their choice. More power to them. The workings of the faschist mindset never cease to amaze me. Hint: It isn't strictly an either/or choice Chuq. And only someone with a pathological need to have people blindly listen ONLY to THIER opinions would even view it as such. >But I'll leave the list before I demand Ronald's removal... Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. >... but I hope >that by killfilling him, I can use this list to its' best advantage >and contribute to it without also creating the inevitable problems >that have been happening between myself and my dear friend. The only ``inevitable problem'' is your apparent infantile need to follow me around and to ALWAYS follow up with some snide comment regardless of what I say. I'm quite sure that I could assert that motherhood and apple pie are good, and that you would STILL come up with SOME snide retort. >I fully >intend to be part of the solution. Or I'll take my toys and go home >before becoming the problem. Oh it's a little late for that Chuq. You are and have been the problem for some time, with your petty and pointlessly argumentative retorts. All things considered, taking your toys and going home would be maximally consistant with your established style and apparent maturity. From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 21 18:40:14 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA27752; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 18:24:39 -0800 (PST) Received: from gw.tssi.com (gw.tssi.com [198.147.197.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id SAA27745 for ; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 18:24:33 -0800 (PST) Received: from celery.tssi.com (nolan@celery.tssi.com [198.147.197.6]) by gw.tssi.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id UAA26231 for ; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 20:42:23 -0600 Received: (from celery.tssi.com) by celery.tssi.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id UAA16205 for list-managers@GreatCircle.com; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 20:42:20 -0600 From: Mike Nolan Message-Id: <200002220242.UAA16205@celery.tssi.com> Subject: Re: Blacklisted: RONALD F. GUILMETTE To: list-managers@GreatCircle.com (List Managers) Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 20:42:20 -0600 (CST) Reply-To: nolan@tssi.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL2] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I don't know which is more fun, watching my two cats wrestle with each other over a catnip mouse or watching Ron and Chuq duke it out here. And both activities seem to have the same degree of predictability and non-resolution. I'm not ready to put either of them on a kill list yet, though I think I will put the cats out for the evening. -- Mike Nolan From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 21 19:54:50 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA28495; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 19:44:48 -0800 (PST) Received: from ligarius-fe0.ultra.net (ligarius-fe0.ultra.net [146.115.8.189]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA28487 for ; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 19:44:42 -0800 (PST) Received: from voyager (d206.dial-2.cmb.ma.ultra.net [209.6.65.206]) by ligarius-fe0.ultra.net (8.8.8/ult/n26500/mtc.v2) with SMTP id XAA22258 for ; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 23:02:29 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <2.2.32.20000222040251.00939000@pop.ma.ultranet.com> X-Sender: stanr@pop.ma.ultranet.com X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (32) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 23:02:51 -0500 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Stan Ryckman Subject: Re: case sensitivity? Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 01:32 PM 2/21/00 -0800, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: [snip] >Does anyone know of any systems that actually enforce case >sensitivity on a user name? I don't know of any, and I can't think of >a time when I've run into one in modern times, but before I commit >the heinous sin of deciding that the RFC is out of step with reality, >I thought I'd bring the issue up. I know that I was able to use the difference on a LISTSERV list to get both a regular and digest sent to the same address, by pretending they were different. :-) I also have used this feature on outgoing mail, expecting it to be honored so I can process replies to it with a case-sensitive procmail recipe (even though they're all "me" as far as the ISP is concerned). I have a feeling there are some far corners of the world that we don't hear much from, that are still running really old stuff, that this might affect as well. >Are there any reasons NOT to consider the entire email address as >case insensitive? The advantages are great, especially in helping >users find themselves in the listing. I really don't want to get into >the issue of trying to decide if I should subscribe FredGuy@aol.com >if Fredguy@aol.com is already subscribed. Isn't it really the same problem as user@domain.com, user@x.domain.com, and user@y.domain.com? Sometimes they're the same; other times they might be different (or different mailboxes, like shell vs. ppp). >is there any reason NOT to ignore the RFCs here and go case insensitive? How about that to do so makes it difficult to credibly criticize others who violate other (probably more important) RFCs? If there really aren't any anymore, it ought to be pretty trivial to change the RFC, right? Go for it. :-) Cheers, Stan From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 21 20:53:29 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA29146; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 20:51:31 -0800 (PST) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id UAA29139 for ; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 20:51:24 -0800 (PST) Received: from [209.239.169.197] ([17.254.144.62]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id VAA58018 ; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 21:08:00 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 21:08:16 -0800 To: John R Levine , Chuq Von Rospach From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: FOLLOWUPS on Escribe, "trying for years" Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 7:51 PM -0500 2/21/2000, John R Levine wrote: >I don't want to rekindle the single vs. multiple delivery war (also known as >the qmail vs. sendmail war) again, but if you can avoid a preconception that >single deliveries are bad, they have enormous advantages for list management. Definitely. And the system I'm working on will allow for full mail-merge capability, not just VERPing. So I can load a list of addresses into it, or a full tab-delimited dataset. At some point, I guess it stops being a mail list, or supercedes it or something. >VERP, per-receipient envelope addresses, makes it possible to automate nearly >all bounce management, and putting the recipient address in the body of the >message makes it possible to handle most of the others, even from MTAs that >smash the headers and envelope beyond recognition. Yeah. Disk and CPU is basically dirt cheap now, and the advantages to going to a fully-individualized system is amazing. I wouldn't do it the way Lyris did -- if you can do that, why not simply put in a URL with the unsubscribe info already encoded. I already do that in my Welcome messages, and it's been quite useful and popular, and cuts a lot of struggling. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 21 21:38:33 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA29513; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 21:24:41 -0800 (PST) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA29489 for ; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 21:24:30 -0800 (PST) Received: from [209.239.169.197] ([17.254.144.62]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id VAA30044 ; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 21:41:11 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.20000222040251.00939000@pop.ma.ultranet.com> References: <2.2.32.20000222040251.00939000@pop.ma.ultranet.com> Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 21:42:04 -0800 To: Stan Ryckman , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: case sensitivity? Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 11:02 PM -0500 2/21/2000, Stan Ryckman wrote: > >I have a feeling there are some far corners of the world that we >don't hear much from, that are still running really old stuff, that >this might affect as well. Yeah. But from the responses I've gotten on the list, nobody cna think of one recently. And my lists DO reach into those weird areas, and I can't think of a case, either. So I'm not going to worry about it -- the advantages to being case insensitive are legion, and the problem is that it's not strictly RFC conformant, but is conformant with how pretty much everyone else acts, so I'm not worried. Safe to say there's a defacto standard here, and at some point, the RFC probably needs to be updated... >Isn't it really the same problem as user@domain.com, user@x.domain.com, >and user@y.domain.com? Sometimes they're the same; other times >they might be different (or different mailboxes, like shell vs. ppp). Actually, they're different, because there are some well-accepted (if not formally defined) ways to deal with subdomaining. Doing the same for the account part is a lot less rigorous, because every IS department sets its standards differently, and then changes them every two years ("when I signed up, I was fred_frog@boeing.com. Now I'm frederick.frog@boeing.com"...) I finished the routines that define my lookup process about 2AM this morning, so I know have a system that actually seems to work pretty well. Here's a quick overview for the curious. I store in the SQL database the following info: the email address, the account part, the top 2 parts of the domain, the 3ld and the 4ld, if they're defined. If not, those parts are blank (not NULL). My basic assumptions are: 1) if they can get close, help them get the rest of the way. 2) don't disclose addresses unless you're damn sure it's them. No "close, choose which one you are" stuff. 3) I'm not overly worried about unsubscribe slams. First, they're almost unheard of. Second, just about every MLM in the universe will allow for a "unsubscribe foolist someoneihate@aol.com". 4) The realities of the SQL database need to be kept in mind: I need to narrow searches through indexing, because grepping five million lines simply doesn't cut it. So an address like "chuq@foo.fred.bar.plaidworks.com" would end up stored as: chuq, fred, bar, plaidworks.com plus the full address. the full address is UNIQUE, so I can guarantee no duplicates. So when a user comes to find themselves, so to speak, I do the following: 1) try the easy one first -- look up the exact email. I'm going to be interested how my stats come out as to how often this hits..... 2) Now we split up the address being searched into its component pieces. And I then look up as an exact match on the acct, first trying the 4ld+3ld+2ld, then 3ld+2ld, then 2ld, so we go least general to most general. 3) Now we retry the searches, but meta-card the username (search on "%chuq%" instead of "chuq"). 4) Finally, I simply look up the domain name with NO account at all, same 4d/3d/2d as before. In all cases, I return a match ONLY if I match exactly one address. If I get zero or more than one, it's a failure. I stop on the first successful match -- and since I'm getting more and more general in my searches, I'm slowly widening the search until I run out of searches. Pretty much everything is indexed, and by using a LIMIT to the query, I can even cut things like "a@aol.com" short and keep ti fast. The 2nd set of searches takes care of the "fred@y.foo.com" vs "fred@x.foo.com" issue, as long as both aren't subscribed. If they are, "fred@foo.com" won't match, and they'd have to add the 3d to it to find one, then they can deal with the other. But for someone who's not sure WHICH domain they were using, so "fred@foo.com" will find all those nasty subdomains... the 3rd set works to deal with the issues of those changing IS naming standards, and, in fact, allows a user to try to look for their name through a series of guesses if they want. How far it'll be documented is still TBD, but it'll be there (and the admins will use it!). The fourth one may not be intuitively obvious -- but there's a growing number of domains where ALL mail is forwarded to a single person. And for non-VERPed mail, it's pretty literally impossible to find the address, unless someone's stuffed something in a Received line along the way. I have that setup on chuqui.com, for instance, so if you send email to LordHighMaster@chuqui.com, I'll get it. If it's Bcced, it'll be difficult for me to find out what address it came from. But on my system, I could type in chuq@chuqui.com, and if there's only ONE address subscribed, I'll count it a match and return it. This solves the problem for all of those one-owner domains, and for places like "foo.demon.co.uk" subdomains (and that's why I store both the 3ld and 4ld -- because overseas, there are a huge, and growing, number of domains that aren't unique until that fourth part -- 1ld is the country code, 2ld is their ".com", 3ld is the ISP, and 4LD is the actual domain. And if you build a large set of addresses and don't search off that fourth part, it gets really nasty really fast -- and slow. An early version of this actually reversed the domain name and stored it that way, and indexed the reversed domain, but if you think about it, that's not very efficient, since half your database will live off of the "moc." part of the index. Better to leave them rightside up and randomize the start of the indexes more, but i that case, it then makes sense to only index the 2ld, and then it makes sense to keep the 3ld and 4ld as separately selectable fields, if only so you can get them out of the way when you don't want them.... So far, the early tests have been quite encouraging. We'll see how it works once real users get their hands on it. >How about that to do so makes it difficult to credibly criticize others >who violate other (probably more important) RFCs? Nah -- anyone how has a solid rationale to avoid an aspect of an RFC, and the research to back up that it doesn't cause any significant harm is welcome to ignore it. But if they do it just because they feel like it, that's another matter. After all, slavish following of standards leads to stagnation. Slavish disregard of them leads to chaos. It's that spot in the middle that leads to both useful systems AND innovation..... >If there really aren't any anymore, it ought to be pretty trivial to >change the RFC, right? Go for it. :-) Yeah. as soon as I have some spare time. Although, since sendmail has been doing this for year and effectively we're all following their lead, why not call Eric and have him champion it? I'm not innovating here -- I'm simply validating that a variation between real-world and standard fallws to the side of the real-world. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Tue Feb 22 17:56:10 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA15036; Tue, 22 Feb 2000 17:28:05 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id RAA15024 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Tue, 22 Feb 2000 17:28:03 -0800 (PST) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA26252 for ; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 15:42:58 -0800 (PST) Received: from [209.239.169.197] (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id QAA12870 ; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 16:03:23 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.20000221153103.00a24d10@pop.climber.org> References: <3.0.5.32.20000221153103.00a24d10@pop.climber.org> Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 15:53:23 -0800 To: SRE , Chuq Von Rospach From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: case sensitivity? Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 3:31 PM -0800 2/21/2000, SRE wrote: >Beware the corruption which can occur when case sensitive >names are on your list and THEN you start forcing them to >lower case. That's the main problem I had - the only fix >was to remove them, apply case corrections, and add them again. > >(And, no, I've never seen a domain that respects username case.) If nobody does it, I don't think I need to worry about not doing it either. The only place I can find where it's potentially a problem is X.400, and even that's not necessarily a problem. I agree it'd be nice to, say, default to case insensitivity and turn that on on a by-domain basis if I run into problems, but until I actually run into problems, I wonder why I'd spend the time coding that in.... -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Tue Feb 22 18:12:34 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA15021; Tue, 22 Feb 2000 17:27:57 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id RAA15009 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Tue, 22 Feb 2000 17:27:53 -0800 (PST) Received: from kachina.jetcafe.org (kachina.jetcafe.org [205.147.43.2]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA25923 for ; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 15:10:58 -0800 (PST) Received: from ee-nt (eckert@netcom11.netcom.com [199.183.9.111]) by kachina.jetcafe.org (8.9.1/8.9.1) with SMTP id PAA10249; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 15:28:32 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.20000221153103.00a24d10@pop.climber.org> X-Sender: eckert@pop.climber.org X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 15:31:03 -0800 To: Chuq Von Rospach From: SRE Subject: Re: case sensitivity? Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 01:32 PM 2/21/00 -0800, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: >is there any reason NOT to ignore the RFCs here and go case insensitive? This came up with the author of Majordomo2 - I've got a couple dozen lists in use, and had to customize the username munging to get early versions of Mj2 to let people post. Now there is an option to ignore case. It probably SHOULD be ignored on a per-domain basis, but I'm munging the domains to remove things like "@mail.xxx.com" (which should be "@xxx.com"). Beware the corruption which can occur when case sensitive names are on your list and THEN you start forcing them to lower case. That's the main problem I had - the only fix was to remove them, apply case corrections, and add them again. (And, no, I've never seen a domain that respects username case.) SRE mailto:eckert@climber.org | http://www.climber.org/eckert/ Info on peak climbing email lists mailto:info@climber.org "I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter." -- Blaise Pascal From list-managers-owner Tue Feb 22 18:26:54 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA15051; Tue, 22 Feb 2000 17:28:12 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id RAA15041 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Tue, 22 Feb 2000 17:28:10 -0800 (PST) Received: from ivan.iecc.com (ivan.iecc.com [208.31.42.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id QAA26744 for ; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 16:33:47 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 12938 invoked by uid 100); 21 Feb 2000 19:51:37 -0500 Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 19:51:36 -0500 (EST) From: John R Levine To: Chuq Von Rospach cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: FOLLOWUPS on Escribe, "trying for years" In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > Define unusual. I'd say it is -- but two or three is pretty common. > This, by the way, is a great reason to go to a fully VERPed MLM that > puts the subscribed address in the To: field where it belongs. Which > I'll be doing (I hope) in late march or early april. A Lyris list I subscribe to puts this tag at the bottom of each message: --- You are currently subscribed to cbp as: [johnl-studiob@iecc.com] To unsubscribe, forward this message to leave-cbp@ls.studiob.com I don't want to rekindle the single vs. multiple delivery war (also known as the qmail vs. sendmail war) again, but if you can avoid a preconception that single deliveries are bad, they have enormous advantages for list management. VERP, per-receipient envelope addresses, makes it possible to automate nearly all bounce management, and putting the recipient address in the body of the message makes it possible to handle most of the others, even from MTAs that smash the headers and envelope beyond recognition. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 From list-managers-owner Tue Feb 22 18:40:40 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA15062; Tue, 22 Feb 2000 17:28:20 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id RAA15054 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Tue, 22 Feb 2000 17:28:18 -0800 (PST) Received: from liv-26.outlawnet.com (as2-175.dial-IP.EmpireNet.net [208.44.71.175]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id QAA26735 for ; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 16:32:58 -0800 (PST) Received: from sunny by liv-26.outlawnet.com (NX5.67f2/NX3.0M) id AA17344; Mon, 21 Feb 2000 16:48:44 -0800 Message-Id: <38B1DDAD.9F7BD502@fxt.com> Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 16:51:57 -0800 From: Gary B Organization: FXT Corporation X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (X11; I; SunOS 5.7 sun4m) X-Accept-Language: en Mime-Version: 1.0 To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Topica References: <200002210430.UAA10817@honor.greatcircle.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk This kind of problem could be dealt with very simply if laws could solve anything - require all bulk emailers to tell the user where they got their name from. Even better, require notification by any listholder who passes my email address to someone else, including the source address to be used by the new bulk emailer. Thus, we would immediately know who disseminated our addresses, and have an opportunity to block, correct, complain about, or even keep, new bulk email. I suppose such a law would actually work with bulk snailmailers and phonespammers, as both are already subject to federal regulation. I like it. Gary B Unless you're dealing on a very small scale, it's impossible to have structure in place to avoid problems 100%. It may not even be the list hosting service itself, but the one the list owner was using previously. Case in point - we've had a number of lists transferred over to us from other services where the owner or employee at the other service gave the list owner an old version of their list (i.e.with people not removed who should have been and vice versa). End result? Spam complaints. Who is it at fault here? From list-managers-owner Tue Feb 22 22:24:58 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id WAA17832; Tue, 22 Feb 2000 22:10:30 -0800 (PST) Received: from Kitten.mcs.net (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id WAA17822 for ; Tue, 22 Feb 2000 22:10:20 -0800 (PST) Received: from Jupiter.Mcs.Net (dattier@Jupiter.mcs.net [192.160.127.88]) by Kitten.mcs.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id AAA75853 for ; Wed, 23 Feb 2000 00:28:22 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from dattier@mcs.net) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Jupiter.Mcs.Net (8.9.3/8.8.2) id AAA69085 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Wed, 23 Feb 2000 00:28:22 -0600 (CST) Message-Id: <200002230628.AAA69085@Jupiter.Mcs.Net> Subject: Re: case sensitivity? Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 00:28:22 -0600 (CST) From: "David W. Tamkin" To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: from "Chuq Von Rospach" at Feb 21, 2000 01:32:32 PM X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL3] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Authentication-Warning: The true sender is dattier@Jupiter.mcs.net. Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Chuq asked, | Does anyone know of any systems that actually enforce case | sensitivity on a user name? Sorry, with no email administration experience (just list administration experience) I can't say for my life what the system was, but I do remember using one where, if the local part was a real logname, it was case-insensi- tive, but if it was an alias, it was case-sensitive. Thus, mail for logNAme@site would be delivered wherever ~logname/.forward said, or to /var/mail/logname by default; but if "alIas" was defined and "aLiaS" was not, mail to alIas@site would be delivered per its expansion in the aliases list while mail to aLiaS@site would bounce on grounds of unknown user. From list-managers-owner Wed Feb 23 14:57:37 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA01356; Wed, 23 Feb 2000 14:33:20 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id OAA01346 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 23 Feb 2000 14:33:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from [192.107.175.229] (dns-west.osti.gov [192.107.175.229]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id HAA07997 for ; Tue, 22 Feb 2000 07:56:38 -0800 (PST) Received: from ostiexims.osti.gov by [192.107.175.229] via smtpd (for honor.greatcircle.com [198.102.244.44]) with SMTP; 22 Feb 2000 16:14:35 UT Received: by ostiexims.osti.gov with Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) id ; Tue, 22 Feb 2000 11:14:47 -0500 Message-ID: <959DBBD59572D311A754006097095F13328846@ras1.osti.gov> From: "LaVerne, Doug" To: "'Andrea Ridley'" , List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: RE: A beginner seeks advice Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 11:14:20 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Considerations of joining lists can involve not just subject matter but practicalities of the underlying package; e.g., Listproc, Listserv(r), etc. At least consider the book _Managing Mailing Lists_, by Alan Schwartz, Sebastopol, CA, O'Reilly and Associates, 1998; ISBN 1-56592-259-X; also http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/mailing/desc.html. The more general chapters, those not specific to a given package such as Listproc, Listserv(r) etc., give basic considerations and checklists one needs for any list or package. The above is the only book I have found so far on mailing lists. There will of course be numerous FAQs, personal recommendations, etc. from list members. I am replying on-list as the above can be useful to less experienced members and lurkers. Doug L. USDOE/OSTI -----Original Message----- From: Andrea Ridley [mailto:aridley@ncounty.net] Sent: Monday, February 21, 2000 10:33 AM To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: A beginner seeks advice <...snip...> making it a "list" so that I could share the info with others. I'm not sure where to begin. I know that there are different lists out there that I could publish this information on and get people to join. How do I make the decision about which one to join? What is your personal preference and why? <...snip...> From list-managers-owner Thu Feb 24 04:44:10 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id EAA15561; Thu, 24 Feb 2000 04:34:58 -0800 (PST) Received: from mtiwmhc04.worldnet.att.net (mtiwmhc04.worldnet.att.net [204.127.131.39]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id EAA15554 for ; Thu, 24 Feb 2000 04:34:52 -0800 (PST) Received: from preferreduser ([32.100.41.106]) by mtiwmhc04.worldnet.att.net (InterMail v03.02.07.07 118-134) with SMTP id <20000224125306.OJIP28762@preferreduser> for ; Thu, 24 Feb 2000 12:53:06 +0000 Message-ID: <003901bf7ebd$9862e540$6a296420@preferreduser> From: "Paul Kaytes" To: Subject: List managers book Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 06:47:38 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2314.1300 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 11:14:20 -0500 > From: "LaVerne, Doug" > Subject: RE: A beginner seeks advice > > Considerations of joining lists can involve not just subject matter but > practicalities of the underlying package; e.g., Listproc, Listserv(r), etc. > At least consider the book _Managing Mailing Lists_, by Alan Schwartz, > Sebastopol, CA, O'Reilly and Associates, 1998; ISBN 1-56592-259-X; also > http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/mailing/desc.html. The more general chapters, > those not specific to a given package such as Listproc, Listserv(r) etc., > give basic considerations and checklists one needs for any list or package. > > The above is the only book I have found so far on mailing lists. There will > of course be numerous FAQs, personal recommendations, etc. from list > members. I am replying on-list as the above can be useful to less > experienced members and lurkers. amazon.com has this in stock Take care, Paul From list-managers-owner Thu Feb 24 12:41:20 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA20773; Thu, 24 Feb 2000 12:36:23 -0800 (PST) Received: from finch-post-10.mail.demon.net (finch-post-10.mail.demon.net [194.217.242.38]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA20763 for ; Thu, 24 Feb 2000 12:36:16 -0800 (PST) Received: from drink.demon.co.uk ([158.152.21.25]) by finch-post-10.mail.demon.net with smtp (Exim 2.12 #1) id 12O5HO-000IMb-0A for List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM; Thu, 24 Feb 2000 20:54:35 +0000 Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 20:51:18 GMT From: johndunedin@drink.demon.co.uk (John Hein) Reply-To: johndunedin@drink.demon.co.uk Message-Id: <55824@drink.demon.co.uk> To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Brazil Nut X-Mailer: PCElm 1.11 Lines: 15 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I've been having problems (as have a number of other gay list and web site operators here in Scotland) with an Helena Simoes (hgs@tsp.co.br). She operates a number of accounts under various different names. I just wonder if anybody on here has encountered her? -- [ John Hein GM1YME | Phaggots do it on the phone! ] [ johndunedin@drink.demon.co.uk | Sine Pretio Loquimini Omnibus ] [ johndunedin@cix.compulink.co.uk| ] [ Telephone: +44 131 558 1279 |http://www.scotsgay.co.uk/people/john.html] [ TeleFax: +44 131 539 2999 | 42 B5/6 f+ t- w+ d g++ k- s++! r-- p ] [ Lambda BBS: +44 131 556 6316 | S8/9 b g- l y- z/ n o++ x-- a+ u- v- j++ ] From list-managers-owner Tue Feb 29 08:23:49 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA06776; Tue, 29 Feb 2000 08:18:13 -0800 (PST) Received: from tor-srs1.netcom.ca (tor-srs1.netcom.ca [207.93.1.148]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA06769 for ; Tue, 29 Feb 2000 08:18:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from sharon-p133 (ott-on7-88.netcom.ca [216.123.34.216]) by tor-srs1.netcom.ca (8.8.7-s-4/8.8.7) with SMTP id LAA23582; Tue, 29 Feb 2000 11:36:30 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <200002291636.LAA23582@tor-srs1.netcom.ca> X-Sender: sharon@listhost.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0.1 Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 11:37:37 -0500 To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Sharon Tucci Subject: A lesson about verifying transferred lists Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I want to share a personal situation we've just dealt with -- call it a lesson learned about the need to have an appropriate verification system in place for existing lists coming to our list hosting service. History: Client publishes a monthly financial newsletter that was started a a few years ago with over 200,000 "subscribers." They used a competitor's service last year. Bounces were supposed to be removed and when the list was set-up there (it had been emailed inhouse before that) and required all subscribers to re-opt-in at the time of transfer and all new subscribers to confirm their subscription. I was actually sent a copy of the messages that were sent. The publisher had doubts that all of the subscribers were actually getting their emails, so they decided to look for a new service. The former list hosting provider gave them their subscriber list in December (when the last issue was mailed). Supposedly clean and opt-in. Client signed on all responsibility for the email addresses and that these were opt-in to the best of their knowledge. In the interim time between when we started to talk to this new client and when we starterd the test outlined below, their former hosting company's web site disappeared. Doing a whois showed they had their own name server. I've tried calling the number listed, but it's continually busy. We did a test "welcome" message to approx 4,000 subscribers. We wanted to check this out for two reasons: 1. To see the number of bounces on the list and 2. to verify that the list was in fact opt-in. The number of bounces was what we expected - about 8-9%. We received one complaint direct to us from someone who, when we questioned it, said they didn't recognize the list address. (Given that the list was moved to our service, the list address would have obviously changed.) The welcome message provided removal information and about 2% unsubscribed. Because of the high unsubscribe rate and the complaint, we went back to the client and said the only way we could handle their list was if everyone was required to opt-in once again. Client agreed - saying that they want to make sure that the list is clean and 100% opt-in. We did the two step with 20000 additional subscribers. Each person received one email telling them that the list was being moved to our service and that we required people to confirm their subscription... so in order to receive future messages, they would need to hit reply to the verification message. Here's where the fun starts. Of the 20,000, again, the number of bounces was normal - what we had expected. However, we've received three spam complaints in less than 24 hours. So, in total, we've received more spam complaints from about 24,000 recipients than we normally do in 6 months across hundreds of new lists. The problem is what do we do about this? Obviously, we don't want to be involved in spamming. (Put it this way - if you had spent a good deal of time and money building a large subscriber base.) If the list were smaller, I'd recommend that they entirely ditch it and write it off as a loss. If the situation weren't so severe, I'd tell them to handle the re-opt-in process themselves. But my gut won't let me advise this because I really do think that the list has been seeded with email addresses who haven't opted in. I am going to advise the client we cannot complete the opt-in process based on what has happened. But I know that I am going to be asked what they should do. This is where I am stuck. FWIW, we had two other situations where lists provided by other list hosting services had addresses on the list that shouldn't have been there. With both situations, it was a single email address that should have been removed that wasn't. Anyhow, to get to the REAL point of this post... recently, there was talk on this list about verification of subscriber lists. Now I'm starting to change my thinking. Based on this experience, I know that in the future, we'll be taking the following measure: Randomly selecting email addresses from the list to be transferred and confirming individually that they were in fact subscribers to the list in question and that they did opt-in. I really don't see any other option. Having a new client sign an agreement doesn't do a whole lot of good when they didn't personally manage the list themselves. --------------------------------------------------------- Sharon Tucci sharon@slingshotmedia.com http://www.ListHost.net Sling Shot Media, LLC 1-613-933-5133 E-Mail List Hosting and Marketing SpeciaLists From list-managers-owner Tue Feb 29 10:38:41 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA08281; Tue, 29 Feb 2000 10:37:30 -0800 (PST) Received: from sws5.ctd.ornl.gov (sws5.ctd.ornl.gov [128.219.128.125]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id KAA08274 for ; Tue, 29 Feb 2000 10:37:25 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 1845843 invoked by uid 3995); 29 Feb 2000 18:56:35 -0000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <14524.5731.60187.81877@sws5.ctd.ornl.gov> Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 13:56:34 -0500 (EST) From: Dave Sill To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: A lesson about verifying transferred lists In-Reply-To: <200002291636.LAA23582@tor-srs1.netcom.ca> References: <200002291636.LAA23582@tor-srs1.netcom.ca> X-Mailer: VM 6.75 under 21.1 "20 Minutes to Nikko" XEmacs Lucid (patch 2) Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab, Oak Ridge, Tenn., USA X-Face: "p~Q]mg{;e*}YR|)&Q/&Q\*~5UWfZX34;5M wrote: >We did a test "welcome" message to approx 4,000 subscribers. We >wanted to check this out for two reasons: 1. To see the number of >bounces on the list and 2. to verify that the list was in fact >opt-in. > >The number of bounces was what we expected - about 8-9%. We >received one complaint direct to us from someone who, when we >questioned it, said they didn't recognize the list address. >(Given that the list was moved to our service, the list address >would have obviously changed.) > >The welcome message provided removal information and about 2% >unsubscribed. > >Because of the high unsubscribe rate and the complaint, I don't think 2% droppout since December is high. >Here's where the fun starts. Of the 20,000, again, the >number of bounces was normal - what we had expected. However, >we've received three spam complaints in less than 24 hours. Three complaints out of 20,000? That's totally insignificant. >So, in total, we've received more spam complaints from about >24,000 recipients than we normally do in 6 months across >hundreds of new lists. Well, gosh, you have to expect some reaction when you move 24,000 subscribers. >The problem is what do we do about this? Obviously, we don't >want to be involved in spamming. How could sending a subscription confirmation for a list move be considered "spamming", unless the "confirmation" is more than that? >... But my gut won't >let me advise this because I really do think that the list >has been seeded with email addresses who haven't opted in. That's the purpose of the confirmation, no? >Anyhow, to get to the REAL point of this post... recently, >there was talk on this list about verification of >subscriber lists. Now I'm starting to change my thinking. >Based on this experience, I know that in the future, we'll >be taking the following measure: > >Randomly selecting email addresses from the list to be >transferred and confirming individually that they were >in fact subscribers to the list in question and that they >did opt-in. What purpose will that serve that a mass re-confirmation won't? What level of "I didn't opt-in" responses causes you trash the whole list? You realize that some people will forget having opted in, that some accounts are shared by multiple people, and that some people will just plain lie about it? -Dave From list-managers-owner Tue Feb 29 10:53:45 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA08358; Tue, 29 Feb 2000 10:42:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA08351 for ; Tue, 29 Feb 2000 10:42:20 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id LAA73534 for ; Tue, 29 Feb 2000 11:00:49 -0800 (PST) To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: A lesson about verifying transferred lists In-reply-to: Your message of Tue, 29 Feb 2000 11:37:37 -0500. <200002291636.LAA23582@tor-srs1.netcom.ca> Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 11:00:49 -0800 Message-ID: <73532.951850849@monkeys.com> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message <200002291636.LAA23582@tor-srs1.netcom.ca>, Sharon Tucci wrote: >{... list transfer story snipped...} >The number of bounces was what we expected - about 8-9%... Actually, that sounds rather high to me. If the old list hosting company _was_ actually cleaning out bouncing addresses, why would you expect more than (say) 3-4%, tops? >Here's where the fun starts. Of the 20,000, again, the >number of bounces was normal - what we had expected. However, >we've received three spam complaints in less than 24 hours. >So, in total, we've received more spam complaints from about >24,000 recipients than we normally do in 6 months across >hundreds of new lists. Observation #1: Three is not a big number. Observation #2: Personally, I am not moved to yell ``spam'' *unless* I receive a an unsolicited message that contains one (or more) of the following: 1) An assertion that I am already ON the list in question, and that I am required/expected/asked to do something in order to get OFF the list. 2) Some blatant advertising. If the `reconfirm' messages that you sent out contained neither of these elements, then if I were you I would write off the three complaints you received as just being the e-mail equivalent of crank calls. Just don't do as I have seen many spammers do and send out messages that contain about three lines of text, asking the recipient to confirm his/her subscription, followed by 35 megabytes of HTML chock full of hyperlinks to all sorts of pages where you (or your customer or your affiliates) are hawking your products and/or services. (Many spammers are trying to fly under the radar this way nowadays. They say ``Hey! We are responsibly trying to do opt-in only!'', but in reality, they are just sending out a lot of advertising under the cover of an alleged confirmation request.) >I am going to advise the client we cannot complete the >opt-in process based on what has happened. But I know >that I am going to be asked what they should do. This is >where I am stuck. I don't see any reason why you shouldn't go head and complete the opt-in confirmations... as long as you avoid the problems mentioned above. DO NOT use your (re)confirmation request messages as an advertising medium. Doing so will just convince people that you are spamming.