From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Tue Aug 5 15:19:42 2003 Received: from goose.mail.pas.earthlink.net (pop02.sprintmail.com [207.217.120.172]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 66342197748 for ; Tue, 5 Aug 2003 15:19:39 -0700 (PDT) Received: from h-69-3-76-146.phndaz91.covad.net ([69.3.76.146] helo=Vaio.earthlink.net) by goose.mail.pas.earthlink.net with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1) id 19kA9Z-0001IL-00; Tue, 05 Aug 2003 15:19:37 -0700 Message-Id: <5.2.0.9.2.20030805151727.00bcdb78@pop.earthlink.net> X-Sender: bobbish@pop.earthlink.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.2.0.9 Date: Tue, 05 Aug 2003 15:19:40 -0700 To: "Brian Zaleski" , From: Bob Bish Subject: Re: AOL blocking In-Reply-To: References: <933972750.1058435362@[192.168.0.16]> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed X-Archive-Number: 200308/1 X-Sequence-Number: 1554 At 07:53 AM 7/17/2003, Brian Zaleski wrote: >A couple of months ago this happened to me. I wasn't on the open relay list, >but I just kept getting blocked. Finally I got in touch with one of their >postmasters (John 703.265.3543). Nice guy, very helpful. I have had absolutely no luck reaching this guy by telephone. He has not returned my calls after leaving my name, number and description of the problem on his voice mail. Any other suggestions? In the meantime, I found a piece of actual "spam" in my own mailbox this morning, advertising AOL for Small Business. How ironic! ...Bob From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Tue Aug 5 15:56:45 2003 Received: from b.smtp-out.sonic.net (b.smtp-out.sonic.net [208.201.224.39]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 1985319646B for ; Tue, 5 Aug 2003 15:56:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 10505 invoked from network); 5 Aug 2003 22:56:43 -0000 Received: from ultra.sonic.net (208.201.224.22) by b.smtp-out.sonic.net with SMTP; 5 Aug 2003 22:56:43 -0000 Received: from sonic.net (bolt.sonic.net [208.201.242.18]) by ultra.sonic.net (8.11.6p2/8.8.5) with ESMTP id h75MuJp10761 for ; Tue, 5 Aug 2003 15:56:19 -0700 X-envelope-info: Received: from satellite.vo.cnchost.com (IDENT:root@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by sonic.net (8.12.9/8.12.1) with ESMTP id h75Mugar016556 for ; Tue, 5 Aug 2003 15:56:42 -0700 Message-Id: <6.0.0.10.0.20030805154622.04d368c0@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: inet-list%vo.cnchost.com@127.0.0.1 (Unverified) X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 6.0.0.10 (Beta) Date: Tue, 05 Aug 2003 15:48:25 -0700 To: From: JC Dill Subject: Re: AOL blocking In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.2.20030805151727.00bcdb78@pop.earthlink.net> References: <933972750.1058435362@[192.168.0.16]> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed X-Archive-Number: 200308/2 X-Sequence-Number: 1555 At 03:19 PM 8/5/2003, Bob Bish wrote: >At 07:53 AM 7/17/2003, Brian Zaleski wrote: >>A couple of months ago this happened to me. I wasn't on the open relay list, >>but I just kept getting blocked. Finally I got in touch with one of their >>postmasters (John 703.265.3543). Nice guy, very helpful. > > I have had absolutely no luck reaching this guy by telephone. Have you tried the other resources mentioned earlier? One of them is checking the information at postmaster.info.aol.com On that site I found another phone number for the postmaster team: Postmaster Hotline at 703-265-4670 Perhaps John has taken a vacation or leave of absence, and contacting the team will be a better bet. jc From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Tue Aug 5 16:10:06 2003 Received: from mail-svr1.cs.utah.edu (brahma.cs.utah.edu [155.99.198.200]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5225D19782F for ; Tue, 5 Aug 2003 16:10:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from vitesse.cs.utah.edu (vitesse.cs.utah.edu [155.99.197.71]) by mail-svr1.cs.utah.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id B03B73476C for ; Tue, 5 Aug 2003 17:10:04 -0600 (MDT) Received: by vitesse.cs.utah.edu (Postfix, from userid 124) id 9764E118357; Tue, 5 Aug 2003 17:10:04 -0600 (MDT) From: "Mark J. Bradakis" To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: AOL blocking Message-Id: <20030805231004.9764E118357@vitesse.cs.utah.edu> Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2003 17:10:04 -0600 (MDT) X-Archive-Number: 200308/3 X-Sequence-Number: 1556 AOL Postmaster Hotline at 703-265-467 Last week I went through an hour or so of long distance calls with the single cell lifeforms who man this hotline. What fun. Never did actually hear why my server was getting blocked, though from what I can gather it was because when AOL did a reverse lookup on the IP for a message from virt.domain.one the DNS reply != virt.domain.one and when a message from virt.domain.two came in the reverse lookup didn't say virt.domain.two and when a message from virt.domain.three arrived, usw. But I guess all my long distance calls and a flurry of complaints from AOL customers did have some effect, as the messages are getting through to AOL customers now. mjb. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 6 15:58:00 2003 Received: from harrier.mail.pas.earthlink.net (harrier.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.12]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id B2FE31983FB for ; Wed, 6 Aug 2003 15:57:58 -0700 (PDT) Received: from h-69-3-76-146.phndaz91.covad.net ([69.3.76.146] helo=Vaio.earthlink.net) by harrier.mail.pas.earthlink.net with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1) id 19kXED-00034s-00 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 06 Aug 2003 15:57:58 -0700 Message-Id: <5.2.0.9.2.20030806155524.00bc4c58@pop.earthlink.net> X-Sender: bobbish@pop.earthlink.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.2.0.9 Date: Wed, 06 Aug 2003 15:57:59 -0700 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com From: Bob Bish Subject: Re: AOL blocking In-Reply-To: <6.0.0.10.0.20030805154622.04d368c0@127.0.0.1> References: <5.2.0.9.2.20030805151727.00bcdb78@pop.earthlink.net> <933972750.1058435362@[192.168.0.16]> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed X-Archive-Number: 200308/4 X-Sequence-Number: 1557 A few people from this list sent me another phone number to try. I intended to do so today right after I went through my daily ton of e-mail first thing this morning. Upon doing so, I discovered that AOL had un-blocked the lists. Perhaps John finally got to my voice-mail messages and solved the problem. Many thanks to all those who have helped with this. ...Bob From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Sun Aug 10 12:38:09 2003 Received: from smoe.org (jane.smoe.org [199.201.145.78]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4684A19B258; Sun, 10 Aug 2003 10:14:25 -0700 (PDT) Received: from smoe.org (ident-user@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by smoe.org (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id h7AHECVE014355; Sun, 10 Aug 2003 13:14:12 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from jeffw@localhost) by smoe.org (8.12.8/8.12.8/Submit) id h7AHEBIW014354; Sun, 10 Aug 2003 13:14:11 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2003 13:14:11 -0400 From: Jeff Wasilko To: undisclosed-recipients: ; Subject: heads up about recent spammer & demime bug Message-ID: <20030810171411.GA13768@jane.smoe.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.99i X-Habeas-SWE-1: winter into spring X-Habeas-SWE-2: brightly anticipated X-Habeas-SWE-3: like Habeas SWE (tm) X-Habeas-SWE-4: Copyright 2002 Habeas (tm) X-Habeas-SWE-5: Sender Warranted Email (SWE) (tm). The sender of this X-Habeas-SWE-6: email in exchange for a license for this Habeas X-Habeas-SWE-7: warrant mark warrants that this is a Habeas Compliant X-Habeas-SWE-8: Message (HCM) and not spam. Please report use of this X-Habeas-SWE-9: mark in spam to . X-Archive-Number: 200308/5 X-Sequence-Number: 1558 If you're using demime to front-end majordomo, you should patch it to deal with a problem that was recently discovered. A spammer is sending out spam that claims to be text/html with a base64 attachment. However, there is no attachment. This causes the base64 decoder in demime to go into a loop. In my case, the demime processes grew to multi-hundred-meg and up to a gigabyte, while sendmail filled /var/spool/mqueue with the error messages that demime was emitting. The patch involves changing the line: if(length($dstr) % 4) { to: if(length($dstr) % 4 or length($dstr) == 0) { Please check the demime list archive at scifi.squawk.com if you want to get the patch from the author.... Thanks go to Nick (the demime author) for getting a patch out right away! -j From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Sun Aug 10 19:56:17 2003 Received: from penguin.postmodern.com (server.postmodern.com [216.240.39.3]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7E2461972E3 for ; Sun, 10 Aug 2003 19:55:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: from postmodern.com (sfo.postmodern.com [216.240.39.8]) by penguin.postmodern.com (8.12.8/mcb-20021115-1) with ESMTP id h7B2t8Pw008260; Sun, 10 Aug 2003 19:55:08 -0700 Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2003 19:55:21 -0700 Subject: Re: heads up about recent spammer & demime bug Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v552) Cc: List Managers List To: Jeff Wasilko From: "Michael C. Berch" In-Reply-To: <20030810171411.GA13768@jane.smoe.org> Message-Id: <3F949778-CBA7-11D7-968B-003065F94B0A@postmodern.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.552) X-Archive-Number: 200308/6 X-Sequence-Number: 1559 On Sunday, August 10, 2003, at 10:14 AM, Jeff Wasilko wrote: > If you're using demime to front-end majordomo, you should patch > it to deal with a problem that was recently discovered. > > A spammer is sending out spam that claims to be text/html with a > base64 attachment. However, there is no attachment. This causes > the base64 decoder in demime to go into a loop. In my case, the > demime processes grew to multi-hundred-meg and up to a gigabyte, > while sendmail filled /var/spool/mqueue with the error messages > that demime was emitting. Thank you, thank you, thank you for posting that. I got up this morning and found my mail system moribund due to syslog filling up /var with error messages, and the load average pegged. I figured out that demime was choking, but could not find the bug, and was reduced to killing and dequeuing stuff and trying to figure out some way (maybe a milter) to exclude null encoded MIME bodies. -- Michael C. Berch mcb@postmodern.com / mcb@greatcircle.com From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Sun Aug 10 21:00:59 2003 Received: from kanga.nu (kanga.nu [157.22.12.214]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id EDFF4196C16 for ; Sun, 10 Aug 2003 20:49:19 -0700 (PDT) Delivery-date: Sun, 10 Aug 2003 20:49:19 -0700 Received: from pcp03381044pcs.groton01.ct.comcast.net ([68.54.123.49]:61936 helo=yabbie) by kanga.nu with asmtp (Exim 4.20 #1 (Debian)) id 19m3gN-00066b-Co; Sun, 10 Aug 2003 20:49:19 -0700 Received: from yabbie ([127.0.0.1] helo=kanga.nu) by yabbie with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 19m3gM-0002ae-00; Sun, 10 Aug 2003 23:49:18 -0400 To: "Michael C. Berch" Cc: Jeff Wasilko , List Managers List Subject: Re: heads up about recent spammer & demime bug In-Reply-To: Message from "Michael C. Berch" of "Sun, 10 Aug 2003 19:55:21 PDT." <3F949778-CBA7-11D7-968B-003065F94B0A@postmodern.com> References: <3F949778-CBA7-11D7-968B-003065F94B0A@postmodern.com> X-face: ?^_yw@fA`CEX&}--=*&XqXbF-oePvxaT4(kyt\nwM9]{]N!>b^K}-Mb9 YH%saz^>nq5usBlD"s{(.h'_w|U^3ldUq7wVZz$`u>MB(-4$f\a6Eu8.e=Pf\ X-image-url: http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/kanga.face.tiff X-url: http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2003 23:49:18 -0400 Message-ID: <9959.1060573758@kanga.nu> From: J C Lawrence X-Archive-Number: 200308/7 X-Sequence-Number: 1560 On Sunday, August 10, 2003, at 10:14 AM, Jeff Wasilko wrote: > If you're using demime to front-end majordomo, you should patch it to > deal with a problem that was recently discovered. This problem is not unique to majordomo hosted lists. -- J C Lawrence ---------(*) Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. claw@kanga.nu He lived as a devil, eh? http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Mon Aug 11 03:23:20 2003 Received: from sccrmhc11.comcast.net (sccrmhc11.comcast.net [204.127.202.55]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id E3931195A4B for ; Mon, 11 Aug 2003 03:23:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from wxsat.pinefields.com (pcp03067768pcs.frncna01.pa.comcast.net[68.81.198.80](untrusted sender)) by comcast.net (sccrmhc11) with ESMTP id <2003081110231601100c9r85e>; Mon, 11 Aug 2003 10:23:16 +0000 Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by wxsat.pinefields.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 32295273B8 for ; Mon, 11 Aug 2003 06:23:16 -0400 (EDT) Received: by wxsat.pinefields.com (Postfix, from userid 520) id 9DB1D25518; Mon, 11 Aug 2003 06:23:15 -0400 (EDT) Received: from n5470 (pavilion.pinefields.com [192.168.1.76]) by wxsat.pinefields.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7610524D92 for ; Mon, 11 Aug 2003 06:23:15 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <5.2.0.9.0.20030811061249.00b11ea8@wxsat> X-Sender: pavilion@wxsat X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.2.0.9 Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2003 06:23:13 -0400 To: List-Managers From: "Richard B. Emerson" Subject: Looking for majordomo-friendly ISP Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed X-Spam-Status: No, hits=0.0 required=5.0 tests=none version=2.55 X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.55 (1.174.2.19-2003-05-19-exp) X-Virus-Scanned: by AMaViS 0.3.12pre8 X-Archive-Number: 200308/8 X-Sequence-Number: 1561 Although I'm new to this list, I've been running small lists for almost 10 years. Recently I shifted to Comcast's broadband service from a local dialup provider and... surprise, surprise, Comcast is very unhappy about even 120+ mailings of 2K messages. I've added mail throttling and some other tweaks to make the traffic fit Comcast's restrictions but no joy. Traffic on the list in question (Baba-L, a sailboat-related list) varies from nothing for a few weeks to 5-6 messages a day and message size averages 2-3K. Currently the mail is sent via a perl script that I've developed over the years but I think it's time to move to majordomo. For a number of reasons, a web-based list is not an option so now I'm looking for an ISP who will support mail. The current contender is pair.com. Unfortunately, they don't support majordomo and, worse, their main mail tool is still in beta and being offered for free although it's clear the free ride will end at some point. When I ask for projected rates, I get "we don't know". So... I'm looking for a majordomo-friendly ISP that doesn't charge an arm and a leg to use it. Suggestions? Rick Emerson From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Mon Aug 11 06:04:35 2003 Received: from sccrmhc13.comcast.net (sccrmhc13.comcast.net [204.127.202.64]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3A88C195B2B for ; Mon, 11 Aug 2003 06:04:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: from wxsat.pinefields.com (pcp03067768pcs.frncna01.pa.comcast.net[68.81.198.80](untrusted sender)) by comcast.net (sccrmhc13) with ESMTP id <2003081113043301600gnmace>; Mon, 11 Aug 2003 13:04:33 +0000 Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by wxsat.pinefields.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id A1F6926EDB for ; Mon, 11 Aug 2003 09:04:32 -0400 (EDT) Received: by wxsat.pinefields.com (Postfix, from userid 520) id 1AAC526D59; Mon, 11 Aug 2003 09:04:32 -0400 (EDT) Received: from n5470 (pavilion.pinefields.com [192.168.1.76]) by wxsat.pinefields.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id E011E2688B for ; Mon, 11 Aug 2003 09:04:31 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <5.2.0.9.0.20030811090358.00b12008@wxsat> X-Sender: pavilion@wxsat X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.2.0.9 Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2003 09:04:29 -0400 To: List-Managers From: "Richard B. Emerson" Subject: Re: Looking for majordomo-friendly ISP Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed X-Spam-Status: No, hits=0.0 required=5.0 tests=none version=2.55 X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.55 (1.174.2.19-2003-05-19-exp) X-Virus-Scanned: by AMaViS 0.3.12pre8 X-Archive-Number: 200308/9 X-Sequence-Number: 1562 Thanks for the many useful leads! Rick Emerson From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Mon Aug 11 14:32:30 2003 Received: from parrot.squawk.com (parrot.squawk.com [64.244.111.110]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7A103195FD5 for ; Mon, 11 Aug 2003 14:32:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: from toshiba.scifi.squawk.com (toshiba.squawk.com [199.74.151.118]) by parrot.squawk.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id C1CC325AFA2 for ; Mon, 11 Aug 2003 17:32:14 -0400 (EDT) X-America-Has-Resolve: yes X-Message-Flag: Microsoft Outlook is insecure. Upgrade your Mail Program Now! Message-Id: <5.2.1.1.0.20030811163427.2640c378@199.74.151.1> X-Sender: njs@199.74.151.1 (Unverified) X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.2.1 Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2003 16:40:58 -0400 To: List Managers List From: Nick Simicich Subject: Re: heads up about recent spammer & demime bug In-Reply-To: <9959.1060573758@kanga.nu> References: <3F949778-CBA7-11D7-968B-003065F94B0A@postmodern.com> <3F949778-CBA7-11D7-968B-003065F94B0A@postmodern.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; x-avg-checked=avg-ok-7282D60; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Archive-Number: 200308/10 X-Sequence-Number: 1563 At 11:49 PM 2003-08-10 -0400, J C Lawrence wrote: >On Sunday, August 10, 2003, at 10:14 AM, Jeff Wasilko wrote: > > > If you're using demime to front-end majordomo, you should patch it to > > deal with a problem that was recently discovered. > >This problem is not unique to majordomo hosted lists. Yep. There is now a release of demime that incorporates the patch - the download site is here: http://majordomo.squawk.com/njs/demime/index.html If you are not running 1.1d, you are vulnerable to this. I found it the same way that I suspect everyone else did, and immediately realized, to my shame, that it was going to be a widespread problem, so I stayed up until I developed a patch and published it on the demime-l list. (I had to sync/reboot my system with sysrq - I could not get in with ctrl-alt-del - it announced that it would start shutting down things, and I waited, but a half hour later it had not yet killed any of the processes that were hanging things up, so I synched and remounted read only, then booted.) I realize that I should have published it here as well, the only reason I did not was because I was too tired to think by the time I finished figuring out the problem myself. If you are running an older version, or have a locally patched version you want to fix, the patch that was previously posted is good. -- He said: "There are people from Baath here reporting everything that goes on. There are cameras here recording our faces. If the Americans were to withdraw and everything were to return to the way it was before, we want to make sure that we survive the massacre that would follow as Baath go house to house killing anyone who voiced opposition to Saddam. In public, we always pledge our allegiance to Saddam, but in our hearts we feel something else." Nick Simicich - njs@scifi.squawk.com From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Tue Aug 12 09:15:52 2003 Received: from osgood.unet.maine.edu (osgood.unet.maine.edu [130.111.39.64]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 92EDD1963EA for ; Tue, 12 Aug 2003 09:15:48 -0700 (PDT) Received: from polaris.umpi.maine.edu (polaris.umpi.maine.edu [130.111.208.87]) by osgood.unet.maine.edu (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id h7CGFjv02347 for ; Tue, 12 Aug 2003 12:15:45 -0400 Received: from POLARIS/SpoolDir by polaris.umpi.maine.edu (Mercury 1.48); 12 Aug 03 12:12:01 -0500 Received: from SpoolDir by POLARIS (Mercury 1.48); 12 Aug 03 12:11:11 -0500 Received: from albert (130.111.208.178) by polaris.umpi.maine.edu (Mercury 1.48) with ESMTP; 12 Aug 03 12:11:05 -0500 From: "Anthony J. Albert" Organization: University of Maine at PI To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2003 12:11:04 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Web-based management & discussion Message-ID: <3F38D958.13504.E39FCE@localhost> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Windows (v4.12a) Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-description: Mail message body X-MailScanner-Information: Please contact the ISP for more information X-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-Archive-Number: 200308/11 X-Sequence-Number: 1564 Dear list managers, I have been using majordomo for a while now, and have been pleased with its reliability and flexibility. What I'd like to know now, is if there is a way to provide: A) Web-based management of the lists for users/list owners B) Web-based "message board" interface, so that those that wish can access and post to threaded discussions in a particular mailing list, and everyone else can receive the messages via email, as normal. Is there such a package/add-on to majordomo? Anthony Albert =========================================================== Anthony J. Albert albert@umpi.maine.edu Systems and Software Support Specialist Postmaster Computer Services - University of Maine, Presque Isle "This is only temporary, unless it works." --- Red Green From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 13 08:13:09 2003 Received: from a.smtp-out.sonic.net (a.smtp-out.sonic.net [208.201.224.38]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with SMTP id E0595196407 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 08:13:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 18436 invoked from network); 13 Aug 2003 15:13:06 -0000 Received: from tempest.sonic.net (208.201.224.25) by a.smtp-out.sonic.net with SMTP; 13 Aug 2003 15:13:06 -0000 Received: from sonic.net (bolt.sonic.net [208.201.242.18]) by tempest.sonic.net (8.11.6p2/8.8.5) with ESMTP id h7DFD6T26755 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 08:13:06 -0700 X-envelope-info: Received: from satellite.vo.cnchost.com (IDENT:root@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by sonic.net (8.12.9/8.12.1) with ESMTP id h7DFD1ar014535 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 08:13:01 -0700 Message-Id: <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: inet-list%vo.cnchost.com@127.0.0.1 (Unverified) X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 6.0.0.10 (Beta) Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 08:04:57 -0700 To: listmanagers From: JC Dill Subject: list policies about vacation programs Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed X-Archive-Number: 200308/12 X-Sequence-Number: 1565 I help manage a mailing list for ISPs, so it's a given that everyone who *belongs* on this list is highly technical, although it is becoming increasingly common that we get subscribers who are not highly technical (although they do work at ISPs). A few days ago a vacation program started replying to every message posted, sending the reply back *to the list* (not to the message author). I posted to the list that I had set the miscreant's subscription to nomail and would lart him when he returned from his vacation. Since then I've received 2 forwarded emails regarding another subscriber's vacation autoresponder that is responding *to the author* for each post to the list. Since these messages are not going *to the list*, should I, as list owner, take any action (set their subscription to nomail, or ?) against the subscriber? I see a couple of issues: 1) The messages are not going to the list, but rather to the author. In some situations, it IS appropriate to let a list poster know that you will not be reading and replying to their post in a timely manner. But this is a pretty large list (~1000 subscribers), so maybe I shouldn't give any allowances for this, maybe I should insist that vacation programs not reply to posts to this list. 2) I don't yet know if the vacation program is sending more than one such message to each poster, e.g. if someone posts several times a day, are they getting a response per post, or just a response for the first post. Should my action be different if the vacation program sends multiple responses to the same poster? Weighing these 2 issues, my present gut feeling is that I should not take any action if the vacation program is only sending *one* response to each poster, but that I should set the miscreant to nomail if the vacation program sends multiple responses when someone is posting multiple times. Are there other factors I'm overlooking? What I am seeking is not so much "the answer" as to make sure I've asked all the right questions to help me come up with the answer for my list. Thanks! jc From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 13 08:47:55 2003 Received: from mail.rev.net (server02.rev.net [206.67.68.98]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9407F1962CD for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 08:47:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: from admin3 (natpool2.rev.net [63.148.93.2] (may be forged)) by mail.rev.net (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id h7DFlEHh013036 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 11:47:14 -0400 From: "Bernie Cosell" Organization: Fantasy Farm Fibers To: listmanagers Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 11:47:14 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Reply-To: bernie@fantasyfarm.com Message-ID: <3F3A2542.30978.12019F1@localhost> In-reply-to: <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Windows (v4.02a) Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-description: Mail message body X-Archived: msg.1060789634.tOXBIs@server02.rev.net X-Archive-Number: 200308/13 X-Sequence-Number: 1566 On 13 Aug 2003 at 8:04, JC Dill wrote: > Since then I've received 2 forwarded emails regarding another subscriber's > vacation autoresponder that is responding *to the author* for each post to > the list.... > > I see a couple of issues: > > 1) The messages are not going to the list, but rather to the author. In > some situations, it IS appropriate to let a list poster know that you will > not be reading and replying to their post in a timely manner. I don't think this is correct -- as a poster to the list, I don't think that there should be any expectation that any particular list-member will read my message promptly [indeed, if at all], and so I *DONT* want to see vacation messages for list postings under any circumstances. If I care that a particular person should see a particular post, I'll address a personal copy to them [and in that case, of course, the 'vacation' is just right]. So IMO, 'vacation' should never send back a notice other than to an individual for a directly-addressed message. Consider: if you have a list that has 100,000 people on it, if, say, 1/100 of them are on vacation at any given time, do you really want 1000 'I'm out of the office' messages from folk most of whom you've never heard of and know nothing about?? /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 13 08:52:38 2003 Received: from a34-mta01.direcway.com (a34-mta01.direcpc.com [66.82.4.90]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 159A4196774 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 08:52:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from pc14678 (dpc6682114174.direcpc.com [66.82.114.174]) by a34-mta01.direcway.com (iPlanet Messaging Server 5.2 HotFix 1.12 (built Feb 13 2003)) with ESMTP id <0HJK00HORERB45@a34-mta01.direcway.com> for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 11:52:31 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 08:51:12 -0700 From: Jim Poston Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs In-reply-to: <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> To: listmanagers Cc: JC Dill Reply-To: poston@ml1.net Message-id: <3F39FC00.16795.231F4BA@localhost> Organization: The Information Dirt Road MIME-version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Pegasus Mail for Windows (v4.12a) Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-description: Mail message body X-Archive-Number: 200308/14 X-Sequence-Number: 1567 On 13 Aug 2003 at 8:04, JC Dill wrote: > Weighing these 2 issues, my present gut feeling is that I should not take > any action if the vacation program is only sending *one* response to each > poster, but that I should set the miscreant to nomail if the vacation > program sends multiple responses when someone is posting multiple times. I agree. One vacation message to the author is OK, but unnecessary. Presumably the author was addressing the entire list, not that particular vacationing member. The author doesn't need to know that one list member is on vacation. He might not even know him. I wouldn't sanction this. Any vacation message to the list is forbidden and should be sanctioned. -- Jim poston@ml1.net << . Every person you meet knows something you don't. Learn. .>> -- Jim poston@ml1.net << . Don't you hate when that happens?? . >> From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 13 09:23:15 2003 Received: from grassyhill.org (grassyhill.org [208.231.0.71]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 21762196741 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 09:23:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [192.168.0.22] (lyme_fw [204.60.148.242]) by grassyhill.org (8.11.0/8.11.0) with ESMTP id h7DGN9m79392 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 12:23:09 -0400 (EDT) X-Envelope-To: Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 12:23:08 -0400 From: Tom Neff To: listmanagers Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Message-ID: <44974734.1060777388@[192.168.0.22]> In-Reply-To: <3F39FC00.16795.231F4BA@localhost> References: <3F39FC00.16795.231F4BA@localhost> X-Mailer: Mulberry/3.1.0b4 (Win32) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline X-Archive-Number: 200308/15 X-Sequence-Number: 1568 This highlights the importance of posting to lists you manage, at least every so often. There are things that posting members see that the list admin doesn't necessarily see. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 13 09:28:32 2003 Received: from mail1.panix.com (mail1.panix.com [166.84.1.72]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 825E519683A for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 09:28:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mailspool2.panix.com (mailspool2.panix.com [166.84.1.79]) by mail1.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 473B648755; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 12:28:29 -0400 (EDT) Received: from panix.com (cpe-66-87-152-33.il.sprintbbd.net [66.87.152.33]) by mailspool2.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 01DEE36DE1; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 12:28:29 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <3F3A6723.2080600@panix.com> Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 11:28:19 -0500 From: "David W. Tamkin" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win 9x 4.90; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 Netscape/7.0 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: JC Dill Cc: listmanagers Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs References: <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archive-Number: 200308/16 X-Sequence-Number: 1569 JC Dill wrote: > Weighing these 2 issues, my present gut feeling is that I should not take > any action if the vacation program is only sending *one* response to each > poster ... I disagree. The subscriber is running software that harvests addresses of posters to the list and sends them unnecessary, unsolicited, impersonal, off-topic email. Once per poster is too often. You should shut the subscription off as soon as you find out it's happening. It's not totally irrelevent that the motivation was thickheadedness rather than malice: when you tell the dodo why its subscription was suspended, your phrasing should take that into account, and if it's a first offense you should give the goof a second chance [contingent on an oath to use properly behaving vacation software or none at all]. But I'd say no, do not let it continue for the rest of the vacation. Many of those programs will send one vacation notice per "sender" per day rather than per absence, so tomorrow they'll be sent not only to posters who were quiet today but also to those who posted today and already got the big news. If it recurs during a future absence, ban the jerk. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 13 09:30:03 2003 Received: from kanga.nu (kanga.nu [157.22.12.214]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 804EC1968C2 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 09:30:01 -0700 (PDT) Delivery-date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 09:30:01 -0700 Received: from pcp03381044pcs.groton01.ct.comcast.net ([68.54.123.49]:62254 helo=yabbie) by kanga.nu with asmtp (Exim 4.20 #1 (Debian)) id 19myVc-0003if-Pm; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 09:30:00 -0700 Received: from yabbie ([127.0.0.1] helo=kanga.nu) by yabbie with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 19myVb-0008JQ-00; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 12:29:59 -0400 To: JC Dill Cc: listmanagers Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs In-Reply-To: Message from JC Dill of "Wed, 13 Aug 2003 08:04:57 PDT." <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> References: <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> X-face: ?^_yw@fA`CEX&}--=*&XqXbF-oePvxaT4(kyt\nwM9]{]N!>b^K}-Mb9 YH%saz^>nq5usBlD"s{(.h'_w|U^3ldUq7wVZz$`u>MB(-4$f\a6Eu8.e=Pf\ X-image-url: http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/kanga.face.tiff X-url: http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 12:29:59 -0400 Message-ID: <31955.1060792199@kanga.nu> From: J C Lawrence X-Archive-Number: 200308/17 X-Sequence-Number: 1570 On Wed, 13 Aug 2003 08:04:57 -0700 JC Dill wrote: > Since these messages are not going *to the list*, should I, as list > owner, take any action (set their subscription to nomail, or ?) > against the subscriber? I follow a simple practice of walking the following scale based on repeat offenses: 1) Public warning. 2) Automatic public unsubscription, free to re-subscribe but not encouraged to. 3) Automtic publicly unsubscribe the domain (if a company), free to resubscribe but not encouraged to. If not a company domain, unsubscribe the poster and ban from resubscribing. 4) If a company automatic public unsubscription and banning of the entire domain from resubscribing . If offenses pile up over a short period of time, I'll climb the scale more rapidly (eg several people at different sites invoke rogue bots over a fortnight). > 1) The messages are not going to the list, but rather to the author. Frankly, I don't care. THey have shown themselves irresponsbile email system users and abusers of the email services and data I provide them as a list operator. > In some situations, it IS appropriate to let a list poster know that > you will not be reading and replying to their post in a timely manner. I have yet to find a case where this is actually true. Sure, it may be pleasant, but needed? No. > Should my action be different if the vacation program sends multiple > responses to the same poster? I just climb the above scale more rapidly, skipping levels, in those cases. > What I am seeking is not so much "the answer" as to make sure I've > asked all the right questions to help me come up with the answer for > my list. For me its a question of what expectations I have of my list posters, and what responsibilities they assume by being a list member. -- J C Lawrence ---------(*) Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. claw@kanga.nu He lived as a devil, eh? http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 13 09:50:29 2003 Received: from mv.mv.com (iridium.mv.net [199.125.85.17]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 6CCFF196660 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 09:50:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 16984 invoked by uid 101); 13 Aug 2003 12:50:26 -0400 From: "Mark E. Mallett" Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 12:50:26 -0400 To: "David W. Tamkin" Cc: JC Dill , listmanagers Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Message-ID: <20030813165026.GN15928@iridium.mv.net> References: <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> <3F3A6723.2080600@panix.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <3F3A6723.2080600@panix.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i X-Archive-Number: 200308/18 X-Sequence-Number: 1571 On Wed, Aug 13, 2003 at 11:28:19AM -0500, David W. Tamkin wrote: > JC Dill wrote: > > >Weighing these 2 issues, my present gut feeling is that I should not take > >any action if the vacation program is only sending *one* response to each > >poster ... > > I disagree. The subscriber is running software that harvests addresses > of posters to the list and sends them unnecessary, unsolicited, > impersonal, off-topic email. Once per poster is too often. You should > shut the subscription off as soon as you find out it's happening. I agree that somebody with an autoresponder that is misbehaving should be removed or denied posting. However I would stop short of calling them names. Many people are simply making use of a program that they suppose will do the right thing. And new autoresponder programs show up now and then, sometimes where it seems that the author doesn't take recognized proper behaviour into account. I've been wondering for a while: does there exist a test site for autoresponders (for the developers of autoresponders)? Something that would send a number of prototypical mail messages to a particular address and see if the agent at that address is doing anything wrong? (Obviously it would have to have some way of not being abused.) -mm- PS: a recent draft: http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-moore-auto-email-response-02.txt From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 13 10:20:50 2003 Received: from ntcorp.com (ntcorp.com [198.65.128.165]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2035E19676B for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 10:19:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (fidelman@localhost) by ntcorp.com (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id h7DHGF515721; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 13:16:16 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 13:16:15 -0400 (EDT) From: X-X-Sender: To: JC Dill Cc: listmanagers Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs In-Reply-To: <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Archive-Number: 200308/19 X-Sequence-Number: 1572 On Wed, 13 Aug 2003, JC Dill wrote: > (although they do work at ISPs). A few days ago a vacation program started > replying to every message posted, sending the reply back *to the list* (not > to the message author). I posted to the list that I had set the > miscreant's subscription to nomail and would lart him when he returned from > his vacation. don't you hate when that happens - sigh... > Since then I've received 2 forwarded emails regarding another subscriber's > vacation autoresponder that is responding *to the author* for each post to > the list. Since these messages are not going *to the list*, should I, as > list owner, take any action (set their subscription to nomail, or ?) > against the subscriber? personally, I don't do anything in these cases - this is not unreasonable behavior for a vacation autoresponder, and personally, there are times that I post something to a list and want to know that certain people haven't seen it -- the impact on the list and the subscribers is minimal (as compared to autoresponses that cause mail loops) Miles ************************************************************************** The Center for Civic Networking PO Box 600618 Miles R. Fidelman, President & Newtonville, MA 02460-0006 Director, Municipal Telecommunications Strategies Program 617-558-3698 fax: 617-630-8946 mfidelman@civicnet.org http://civic.net/ccn.html Information Infrastructure: Public Spaces for the 21st Century Let's Start With: Internet Wall-Plugs Everywhere Say It Often, Say It Loud: "I Want My Internet!" ************************************************************************** From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 13 10:31:30 2003 Received: from mail.rev.net (server02.rev.net [206.67.68.98]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 29B1F196660 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 10:31:29 -0700 (PDT) Received: from admin3 (natpool2.rev.net [63.148.93.2] (may be forged)) by mail.rev.net (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id h7DHVSjL005784 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 13:31:28 -0400 From: "Bernie Cosell" Organization: Fantasy Farm Fibers To: listmanagers Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 13:31:27 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Reply-To: bernie@fantasyfarm.com Message-ID: <3F3A3DAF.3149.17F8505@localhost> References: <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> In-reply-to: X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Windows (v4.02a) Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-description: Mail message body X-Archived: msg.1060795888.nzckOu@server02.rev.net X-Archive-Number: 200308/20 X-Sequence-Number: 1573 On 13 Aug 2003 at 13:16, mfidelman@ntcorp.com wrote: > personally, I don't do anything in these cases - this is not unreasonable > behavior for a vacation autoresponder, We disagree on this... > ..and personally, there are times > that I post something to a list and want to know that certain people > haven't seen it -- the impact on the list and the subscribers is minimal > (as compared to autoresponses that cause mail loops) That last is true, but if this became common do you really want hundreds, or thousands, of vacation messages in response to a post to a list, on the off chance that you'll be able to pick out 'certain people' from the mess that comes back? /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 13 10:34:04 2003 Received: from mail1.panix.com (mail1.panix.com [166.84.1.72]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 894311967E5 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 10:34:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mailspool2.panix.com (mailspool2.panix.com [166.84.1.79]) by mail1.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id A465E48738 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 13:34:02 -0400 (EDT) Received: from panix.com (cpe-66-87-152-33.il.sprintbbd.net [66.87.152.33]) by mailspool2.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9156F36DE1 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 13:34:02 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <3F3A7681.7010300@panix.com> Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 12:33:53 -0500 From: "David W. Tamkin" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win 9x 4.90; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 Netscape/7.0 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: listmanagers Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs References: <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> <3F3A6723.2080600@panix.com> <20030813165026.GN15928@iridium.mv.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archive-Number: 200308/21 X-Sequence-Number: 1574 Mark Mallett wrote, > However I would stop short of calling them names. My uses of "jerk" and "goof" -- and surely also JC's of "miscreant" and the implicit "luser" in "lart" -- were intended strictly within the context of list-managers. I'm surprised that you couldn't figure that out, Mark. > I've been wondering for a while: does there exist a test > site for autoresponders (for the developers of autoresponders)? > Something that would send a number of prototypical mail messages to a > particular address and see if the agent at that address is doing > anything wrong? (Obviously it would have to have some way of not > being abused.) That would be a nice thing if it exists. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 13 10:39:52 2003 Received: from pintail.mail.pas.earthlink.net (pintail.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.122]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 085311966BA for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 10:39:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: from 66-215-205-105.riv-eres.charterpipeline.net ([66.215.205.105] helo=lehel.goldmark.private) by pintail.mail.pas.earthlink.net with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1) id 19mzb6-00015R-00 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 10:39:44 -0700 Received: from betty.goldmark.private ([192.168.1.51]) by lehel.goldmark.private with esmtp (Exim 3.13 #1) id 19mzb6-0006cA-00 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 10:39:44 -0700 Received: from jeffrey (helo=localhost) by betty.goldmark.private with local-esmtp (Exim 4.10) id HJKJQ7-000859-00 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 10:39:43 -0700 Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 10:39:43 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeffrey Goldberg X-X-Sender: jeffrey@betty.goldmark.private Reply-To: Jeffrey Goldberg To: listmanagers Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs In-Reply-To: <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> Message-ID: References: <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Archive-Number: 200308/22 X-Sequence-Number: 1575 On Wed, 13 Aug 2003, JC Dill wrote: > Since then I've received 2 forwarded emails regarding another subscriber's > vacation autoresponder that is responding *to the author* for each post to > the list. Since these messages are not going *to the list*, should I, as > list owner, take any action (set their subscription to nomail, or ?) > against the subscriber? When I get an autoresponse to something I posted to a list, I refer both the person on vacation and their postmaster to: http://www.goldmark.private/netrants/auto-resp/ If it is a list that I run and is not low volume, I will them to "nomail". I also send a message to the postmaster that if I get this from a second user at their site, I may bar all subscriptions to those domains. I do this as im implied threat (which I've never carried out). > Weighing these 2 issues, my present gut feeling is that I should not take > any action if the vacation program is only sending *one* response to each > poster, > Are there other factors I'm overlooking? Consider how it scales. Assume that at any given time, maybe 5% of your list are "on vacation". If they all used broken autoresponders, then a single post to a list of 1000 would generate 50 autoresponses to the sender. Subsequent posts from the same user would generate fewer, but still your policy does not scale well unless only a small minority of users use broken autoresponders. > What I am seeking is not so much "the answer" as to make sure I've asked > all the right questions to help me come up with the answer for my list. Every list is different. I'm providing you with the reasons why I follow a stricter policy than you suggested. -j -- Jeffrey Goldberg http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/ Relativism is the triumph of authority over truth, convention over justice Hate spam? Boycott MCI! http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/anti-spam/mci/ From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 13 10:51:05 2003 Received: from grouse.mail.pas.earthlink.net (grouse.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.116]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 31C721965FC for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 10:51:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from 66-215-205-105.riv-eres.charterpipeline.net ([66.215.205.105] helo=lehel.goldmark.private) by grouse.mail.pas.earthlink.net with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1) id 19mzm1-0005ld-00 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 10:51:01 -0700 Received: from betty.goldmark.private ([192.168.1.51]) by lehel.goldmark.private with esmtp (Exim 3.13 #1) id 19mzm1-0006cK-00 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 10:51:01 -0700 Received: from jeffrey (helo=localhost) by betty.goldmark.private with local-esmtp (Exim 4.10) id HJKK91-00085D-00 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 10:51:01 -0700 Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 10:51:01 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeffrey Goldberg X-X-Sender: jeffrey@betty.goldmark.private Reply-To: Jeffrey Goldberg To: listmanagers Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Archive-Number: 200308/23 X-Sequence-Number: 1576 On Wed, 13 Aug 2003 mfidelman@ntcorp.com wrote: > personally, I don't do anything in these cases - this is not unreasonable > behavior for a vacation autoresponder, It is unreasonable. To use geek language: Consider how well it scales. To use environmentalist language: Consider how sustainable it is. To use economist langauge: Consider aggregate social welfare impact. To use philosophical language: Consider Kant's categorical imperative. All of that is saying that if everyone who is "out of the office" uses software that behaves in what you call "not unreasonable" then consider what happens with a list of 1000 where maybe 50 members are out-of-office. > and personally, there are times that I post something to a list and want > to know that certain people haven't seen it -- That may be the case for some small lists. On such lists you can ask people to configure their autoresponders to specifically respond (to individuals, once) to mail addressed to the list. But since that is not the general case with most lists, auto-responders should be configured properly. Again, I point people to my rant on this topic: http://www.goldmark.org/netrants/auto-resp/ > the impact on the list and the subscribers is minimal Not if everyone who was "out of office" did it. -j -- Jeffrey Goldberg http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/ Relativism is the triumph of authority over truth, convention over justice Hate spam? Boycott MCI! http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/anti-spam/mci/ From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 13 10:51:50 2003 Received: from b.smtp-out.sonic.net (b.smtp-out.sonic.net [208.201.224.39]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with SMTP id C2F57196836 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 10:51:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 5844 invoked from network); 13 Aug 2003 17:51:49 -0000 Received: from sub.sonic.net (208.201.224.8) by b.smtp-out.sonic.net with SMTP; 13 Aug 2003 17:51:49 -0000 Received: from sonic.net (bolt.sonic.net [208.201.242.18]) by sub.sonic.net (8.11.6p2/8.8.5) with ESMTP id h7DHpnB14701 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 10:51:49 -0700 X-envelope-info: Received: from satellite.vo.cnchost.com (IDENT:root@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by sonic.net (8.12.9/8.12.1) with ESMTP id h7DHpmar031518 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 10:51:48 -0700 Message-Id: <6.0.0.10.0.20030813104325.04296b38@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: inet-list%vo.cnchost.com@127.0.0.1 (Unverified) X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 6.0.0.10 (Beta) Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 10:48:06 -0700 To: listmanagers From: JC Dill Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs In-Reply-To: <31955.1060792199@kanga.nu> References: <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed X-Archive-Number: 200308/24 X-Sequence-Number: 1577 At 09:29 AM 8/13/2003, J C Lawrence wrote: > > What I am seeking is not so much "the answer" as to make sure I've > > asked all the right questions to help me come up with the answer for > > my list. > >For me its a question of what expectations I have of my list posters, >and what responsibilities they assume by being a list member. I'd like to make a clarification about my role here. I've been administering this list for about 5 years, but I'm not the list owner. I do have a lot of say about what goes on (for instance, we recently migrated from majordomo to mailman, at my request), but for changes or clarification of list policy I have to come up with reasons why I want to set a certain policy and then present those reasons to the list owner and get his buy-in before implementing the policy. So, I can't just make policy "because it's my list and I say so". I have to be sure that I've considered all possible sides of the issue and that the policy I want to implement is really the best policy for the list as a whole, for the community as a whole. Thanks to everyone for your replies, they have been very helpful for me! jc From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 13 11:10:23 2003 Received: from mv.mv.com (iridium.mv.net [199.125.85.17]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 315C319674B for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 11:10:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 2659 invoked by uid 101); 13 Aug 2003 14:10:21 -0400 From: "Mark E. Mallett" Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 14:10:21 -0400 To: "David W. Tamkin" Cc: listmanagers Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Message-ID: <20030813181021.GA24240@iridium.mv.net> References: <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> <3F3A6723.2080600@panix.com> <20030813165026.GN15928@iridium.mv.net> <3F3A7681.7010300@panix.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <3F3A7681.7010300@panix.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i X-Archive-Number: 200308/25 X-Sequence-Number: 1578 On Wed, Aug 13, 2003 at 12:33:53PM -0500, David W. Tamkin wrote: > Mark Mallett wrote, > > >However I would stop short of calling them names. > > My uses of "jerk" and "goof" -- and surely also JC's of "miscreant" and > the implicit "luser" in "lart" -- were intended strictly within the > context of list-managers. I'm surprised that you couldn't figure that > out, Mark. I'll take it as a compliment that you think better of me than I actually am :-) On the other hand I wasn't really chastising anybody. Just pointing out that the subscriber who makes use of a tool is not necessarily the one who should be thought badly of (i.e. rather than the tool's author). And mainly I was trying to find a way to seque into the question about a tester for authors of autoresponders. I happen to be contemplating implementing one or more such things as companions to a delivery tool, and I even though I think I know some things about how they ought to operate, I just know I am going to make at least one blunder along the way. Yours, -mm- From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 13 11:11:29 2003 Received: from mail-out2.apple.com (mail-out2.apple.com [17.254.0.51]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id C68AE19687F for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 11:11:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mailgate2.apple.com (A17-129-100-225.apple.com [17.129.100.225]) by mail-out2.apple.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h7DIB5fR021177 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 11:11:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from scv2.apple.com (scv2.apple.com) by mailgate2.apple.com (Content Technologies SMTPRS 4.2.1) with ESMTP id ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 11:11:25 -0700 Received: from plaidworks.com (vg0602e-dhcp175.apple.com [17.216.21.175]) by scv2.apple.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h7DIBGWI020429; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 11:11:17 -0700 (PDT) Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 11:11:24 -0700 Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v552) Cc: Chuq Von Rospach , listmanagers To: Jeffrey Goldberg From: Chuq Von Rospach In-Reply-To: Message-Id: <8CB8F4FF-CDB9-11D7-8BF6-0003934516A8@plaidworks.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.552) X-Archive-Number: 200308/26 X-Sequence-Number: 1579 On Wednesday, August 13, 2003, at 10:51 AM, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote: > On Wed, 13 Aug 2003 mfidelman@ntcorp.com wrote: > >> personally, I don't do anything in these cases - this is not >> unreasonable >> behavior for a vacation autoresponder, > > It is unreasonable. > > To use geek language: Consider how well it scales. > To use environmentalist language: Consider how sustainable it is. > To use economist langauge: Consider aggregate social welfare impact. > To use philosophical language: Consider Kant's categorical imperative. To consider the real world.... When you go on vacation, you tell your friends you're going on vacation. you tell your neighbors you're going on vacation. You call up the newspaper and stop delivery (or you don't, if your neighbors grab them for you). You do NOT call up the newspaper and leave a message for the reporters and columnists that you won't be able to read their stories for a couple of weeks. In this case, a mailing list is like that newspaper. Some folks stop mail list subscriptions while they're gone to avoid being swamped. Others let them pile up, and their mail server acts like a friendly neighbor and collects them for you until you can catch up (or throw them out). In either case, the people writing for that newspaper don't care, and don't need to know, that you're not reading their deathless prose every morning. As long as the mailing list reasonably identifies itself as a mailing list, you shouldn't be mailbotting it. There will be limited exceptions to that, but why should the sports editor care that you aren't around? Is your presence on that list so absolutely crucial that it won't survive your vacation or something? Mailbots serve no purpose responding to mail lists, unless you are the admin, the list is about you, or you are the official, designated expert everyone is listening to in the first place.... and in those cases, a message "I'm gonna be missing for a while" ought to suffice before you leave... >> and personally, there are times that I post something to a list and >> want >> to know that certain people haven't seen it -- > > That may be the case for some small lists. different case. This kind of small list is the community newsletter, not the newspaper. Different realities. Yes, your writer's group needs to know you won't be there for the next meeting, but telling them that when they post to the writer's group list isn't the right way to do that, anyway. They deserve advance notice. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 13 11:18:30 2003 Received: from b.smtp-out.sonic.net (b.smtp-out.sonic.net [208.201.224.39]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with SMTP id ACA1C196768 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 11:18:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 14921 invoked from network); 13 Aug 2003 18:18:28 -0000 Received: from prop.sonic.net (208.201.224.193) by b.smtp-out.sonic.net with SMTP; 13 Aug 2003 18:18:28 -0000 Received: from sonic.net (bolt.sonic.net [208.201.242.18]) by prop.sonic.net (8.11.6p2/8.8.5) with ESMTP id h7DIIS214370 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 11:18:28 -0700 X-envelope-info: Received: from satellite.vo.cnchost.com (IDENT:root@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by sonic.net (8.12.9/8.12.1) with ESMTP id h7DIIQar002376 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 11:18:27 -0700 Message-Id: <6.0.0.10.0.20030813105917.045bfa88@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: inet-list%vo.cnchost.com@127.0.0.1 (Unverified) X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 6.0.0.10 (Beta) Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 11:08:43 -0700 To: listmanagers From: JC Dill Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs In-Reply-To: References: <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed X-Archive-Number: 200308/27 X-Sequence-Number: 1580 At 10:39 AM 8/13/2003, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote: >Consider how it scales. Assume that at any given time, maybe 5% of your >list are "on vacation". Heh. This is a list for people who work at ISPs. In the 5 years I've been administrating this list we have had a problem with an autoresponder maybe once a year. For the most part, ISP folks just don't take vacation, and when they do take a vacation they usually read their email daily while on vacation. For those who take a vacation and use autoresponders, most people are very clueful about how they configure them. jc From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 13 12:15:57 2003 Received: from a.smtp-out.sonic.net (a.smtp-out.sonic.net [208.201.224.38]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 353241965B2 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 12:15:56 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 23925 invoked from network); 13 Aug 2003 19:15:53 -0000 Received: from turbo.sonic.net (208.201.224.26) by a.smtp-out.sonic.net with SMTP; 13 Aug 2003 19:15:53 -0000 Received: from sonic.net (bolt.sonic.net [208.201.242.18]) by turbo.sonic.net (8.11.6p2/8.8.5) with ESMTP id h7DJFr531435 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 12:15:53 -0700 X-envelope-info: Received: from satellite.vo.cnchost.com (IDENT:root@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by sonic.net (8.12.9/8.12.1) with ESMTP id h7DJFqat009582 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 12:15:53 -0700 Message-Id: <6.0.0.10.0.20030813120820.037307e8@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: inet-list%vo.cnchost.com@127.0.0.1 (Unverified) X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 6.0.0.10 (Beta) Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 12:09:21 -0700 To: listmanagers From: JC Dill Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs In-Reply-To: <8CB8F4FF-CDB9-11D7-8BF6-0003934516A8@plaidworks.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed X-Archive-Number: 200308/28 X-Sequence-Number: 1581 At 11:11 AM 8/13/2003, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > Is your presence on that list so absolutely crucial that it won't > survive your vacation or something? For some lists, yes. That's why I don't automatically assume that any OoO reply to any list is always bad, you have to look at the whole picture. jc From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 13 12:29:03 2003 Received: from mail-out2.apple.com (mail-out2.apple.com [17.254.0.51]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id B63021966C2 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 12:29:02 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mailgate1.apple.com (A17-128-100-225.apple.com [17.128.100.225]) by mail-out2.apple.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h7DJSffR027160 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 12:28:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from scv1.apple.com (scv1.apple.com) by mailgate1.apple.com (Content Technologies SMTPRS 4.2.1) with ESMTP id ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 12:28:36 -0700 Received: from plaidworks.com (vg0602e-dhcp175.apple.com [17.216.21.175]) by scv1.apple.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h7DJSisH028677; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 12:28:44 -0700 (PDT) Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 12:28:59 -0700 Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v552) Cc: Chuq Von Rospach , listmanagers To: JC Dill From: Chuq Von Rospach In-Reply-To: <6.0.0.10.0.20030813120820.037307e8@127.0.0.1> Message-Id: <636F5FE4-CDC4-11D7-AC7B-0003934516A8@plaidworks.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.552) X-Archive-Number: 200308/29 X-Sequence-Number: 1582 On Wednesday, August 13, 2003, at 12:09 PM, JC Dill wrote: > At 11:11 AM 8/13/2003, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > >> Is your presence on that list so absolutely crucial that it won't >> survive your vacation or something? > > For some lists, yes. That's why I don't automatically assume that any > OoO reply to any list is always bad, you have to look at the whole > picture. > actually, I'd argue that under most circumstances, THOSE lists need an explicit "I'm going to be gone from x to x" message, since if it's that important, the users probably won't be happy finding out you're gone AFTER you leave and WHEN they need you. I still think a mailbot's the wrong way to inform folks of that -- they need a pro-active warning, not a "oh, by the way, forgot to tell you..." From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 13 13:05:33 2003 Received: from mail1.panix.com (mail1.panix.com [166.84.1.72]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id EEB281967F0 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 13:05:31 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mailspool2.panix.com (mailspool2.panix.com [166.84.1.79]) by mail1.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5088248761 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 16:05:30 -0400 (EDT) Received: from panix.com (cpe-66-87-152-33.il.sprintbbd.net [66.87.152.33]) by mailspool2.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id B691F36DE0 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 16:05:29 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <3F3A9A00.2010603@panix.com> Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 15:05:20 -0500 From: "David W. Tamkin" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win 9x 4.90; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 Netscape/7.0 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: listmanagers Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs References: <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> <3F3A6723.2080600@panix.com> <20030813165026.GN15928@iridium.mv.net> <3F3A7681.7010300@panix.com> <20030813181021.GA24240@iridium.mv.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archive-Number: 200308/30 X-Sequence-Number: 1583 Mark explained, > Just pointing out that the subscriber who makes use of a tool is not > necessarily the one who should be thought badly of (i.e. rather than > the tool's author). It's not necessarily the author either. It could be the short-sighted admin who installed it, assuming that all mail to company addresses is personally directed to all addressees and that every message to an employee on vacation must get a vacation response every time, misconfigured the autoresponding software accordingly even though the author's defaults were sensible, and then got some gullible executive to order all employees to activate it when they are out of the office. Then not only do the employees have no options; they don't know that the software has maleficent shortcomings. That's why I said that JC or any other list administrator should go gently on a first-time offender. The autoresponding subscriber may have had no choice. If it recurs during another absence, then either the subscriber didn't or couldn't do anything about it. In the case of "didn't," ban the jerk; in the case of "couldn't," ban the domain and notify all subscribers at addresses in it that they're welcome to rejoin from different accounts. In my list administering days I ran into both situations. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 13 13:30:48 2003 Received: from kanga.nu (kanga.nu [157.22.12.214]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 65204196510 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 13:30:47 -0700 (PDT) Delivery-date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 13:30:47 -0700 Received: from pcp03381044pcs.groton01.ct.comcast.net ([68.54.123.49]:60686 helo=yabbie) by kanga.nu with asmtp (Exim 4.20 #1 (Debian)) id 19n2Gc-00084Q-Uf; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 13:30:47 -0700 Received: from yabbie ([127.0.0.1] helo=kanga.nu) by yabbie with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 19n2Gb-0001BV-00; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 16:30:45 -0400 To: "David W. Tamkin" Cc: listmanagers Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs In-Reply-To: Message from "David W. Tamkin" of "Wed, 13 Aug 2003 15:05:20 CDT." <3F3A9A00.2010603@panix.com> References: <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> <3F3A6723.2080600@panix.com> <20030813165026.GN15928@iridium.mv.net> <3F3A7681.7010300@panix.com> <20030813181021.GA24240@iridium.mv.net> <3F3A9A00.2010603@panix.com> X-face: ?^_yw@fA`CEX&}--=*&XqXbF-oePvxaT4(kyt\nwM9]{]N!>b^K}-Mb9 YH%saz^>nq5usBlD"s{(.h'_w|U^3ldUq7wVZz$`u>MB(-4$f\a6Eu8.e=Pf\ X-image-url: http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/kanga.face.tiff X-url: http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 16:30:45 -0400 Message-ID: <4556.1060806645@kanga.nu> From: J C Lawrence X-Archive-Number: 200308/31 X-Sequence-Number: 1584 On Wed, 13 Aug 2003 15:05:20 -0500 David W Tamkin wrote: > It's not necessarily the author either. It could be the short-sighted > admin who installed it, assuming that all mail to company addresses is > personally directed to all addressees and that every message to an > employee on vacation must get a vacation response every time, > misconfigured the autoresponding software accordingly even though the > author's defaults were sensible, and then got some gullible executive > to order all employees to activate it when they are out of the office. Right. That's why I escalate to unsubscribing and finally banning the domain in the case of companies. They members will either successfully exert clue-training on the admins, or as a group they are a source of more potential trouble than they are worth. > Then not only do the employees have no options; they don't know that > the software has maleficent shortcomings. Right, that's why you start with a warning. > That's why I said that JC or any other list administrator should go > gently on a first-time offender. The autoresponding subscriber may > have had no choice. If it recurs during another absence, then either > the subscriber didn't or couldn't do anything about it. In the case > of "didn't," ban the jerk; in the case of "couldn't," ban the domain > and notify all subscribers at addresses in it that they're welcome to > rejoin from different accounts. Precisely. > In my list administering days I ran into both situations. Also. -- J C Lawrence ---------(*) Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. claw@kanga.nu He lived as a devil, eh? http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 13 15:24:02 2003 Received: from c001.snv.cp.net (h005.c001.snv.cp.net [209.228.32.119]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 957771962F6 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 15:23:56 -0700 (PDT) Received: (cpmta 28880 invoked from network); 13 Aug 2003 15:23:51 -0700 Received: from 24.96.48.1 (HELO NewHP.rixlists.com) by smtp.rixlists.net (209.228.32.119) with SMTP; 13 Aug 2003 15:23:51 -0700 X-Sent: 13 Aug 2003 22:23:51 GMT Message-Id: <4.3.2.7.2.20030813174412.0308dd20@mail.rixlists.net> X-Sender: admin@rixlists.net@mail.rixlists.net (Unverified) X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 4.3.2 Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 17:50:51 -0400 To: listmanagers From: The Rick of RixLists Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs In-Reply-To: <6.0.0.10.0.20030813105917.045bfa88@127.0.0.1> References: <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" X-Archive-Number: 200308/32 X-Sequence-Number: 1585 Is it possible that the header information might be inviting the "on Vacation" message? I spoke with one systems administrator who said that my messages were being received with PRECEDENCE=NORMAL, and the sysadmin uses that to gauge who gets an auto-responder. If messages arrive with PRECEDENCE=LIST or PRECEDENCE=BULK then their system is set to NOT auto-respond. I have since configured my list as PRECEDENCE=LIST and that made that particular systems administer happy. OTOH, my software seems to filter those automated messages, so it's not really been an issue for me. -- Rick At 11:08 AM 8/13/03 -0700, JC Dil wrote: >At 10:39 AM 8/13/2003, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote: >>Consider how it scales. Assume that at any given time, maybe 5% of your >>list are "on vacation". > >Heh. This is a list for people who work at ISPs. In the 5 years I've been >administrating this list we have had a problem with an autoresponder >maybe once a year. For the most part, ISP folks just don't take vacation, > [Portion deleted for brevity] >_______________________[ End ]_______________________ From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 13 15:30:01 2003 Received: from mail.rev.net (server02.rev.net [206.67.68.98]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id E16FC196774 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 15:29:59 -0700 (PDT) Received: from admin3 (natpool2.rev.net [63.148.93.2] (may be forged)) by mail.rev.net (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id h7DMTxDk006567 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 18:29:59 -0400 From: "Bernie Cosell" Organization: Fantasy Farm Fibers To: listmanagers Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 18:29:58 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Reply-To: bernie@fantasyfarm.com Message-ID: <3F3A83A6.17825.290CF2E@localhost> References: <3F3A3DAF.3149.17F8505@localhost> In-reply-to: X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Windows (v4.02a) Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-description: Mail message body X-Archived: msg.1060813799.ITAlNC@server02.rev.net X-Archive-Number: 200308/33 X-Sequence-Number: 1586 I didn't see this go by on the list, but it was intended to, so I'll reply from my private copy.... On 13 Aug 2003 at 13:56, Miles Fidelman wrote: > Now, on a more practical note, how would people on this list recommend > configuring an autoresponder so that it ignores list traffic entirely, > short of having to configure each list individually? What about the simple "if it is not addressed specifically to me [either in to: or cc:] don't autorespond to it". I can't recall the last time I was on a list that munged the 'to' header to be to-the-person instead of to-the-list. /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 13 15:45:39 2003 Received: from turkey.mail.pas.earthlink.net (turkey.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.126]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 298F0196241 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 15:45:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from 66-215-205-105.riv-eres.charterpipeline.net ([66.215.205.105] helo=lehel.goldmark.private) by turkey.mail.pas.earthlink.net with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1) id 19n4Mz-0001C2-00; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 15:45:29 -0700 Received: from betty.goldmark.private ([192.168.1.51]) by lehel.goldmark.private with esmtp (Exim 3.13 #1) id 19n4Mz-0006hD-00; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 15:45:29 -0700 Received: from jeffrey (helo=localhost) by betty.goldmark.private with local-esmtp (Exim 4.10) id HJKXVT-000871-00; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 15:45:29 -0700 Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 15:45:29 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeffrey Goldberg X-X-Sender: jeffrey@betty.goldmark.private Reply-To: Jeffrey Goldberg To: The Rick of RixLists Cc: listmanagers Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20030813174412.0308dd20@mail.rixlists.net> Message-ID: References: <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> <4.3.2.7.2.20030813174412.0308dd20@mail.rixlists.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Archive-Number: 200308/34 X-Sequence-Number: 1587 On Wed, 13 Aug 2003, The Rick of RixLists wrote: > OTOH, my software seems to filter those automated messages, so it's not > really been an issue for me. How does your system filter automated messages that are sent from an individual "on vacation" list member to a list member who posted? -j -- Jeffrey Goldberg http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/ Relativism is the triumph of authority over truth, convention over justice Hate spam? Boycott MCI! http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/anti-spam/mci/ From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 13 16:05:37 2003 Received: from mail1.panix.com (mail1.panix.com [166.84.1.72]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 33873196782 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 16:05:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mailspool3.panix.com (mailspool3.panix.com [166.84.1.78]) by mail1.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8095448761 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 19:05:35 -0400 (EDT) Received: from panix.com (cpe-66-87-152-33.il.sprintbbd.net [66.87.152.33]) by mailspool3.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 15B98EA6A0 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 19:05:35 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <3F3AC435.2060801@panix.com> Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 18:05:25 -0500 From: "David W. Tamkin" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win 9x 4.90; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 Netscape/7.0 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: listmanagers Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs References: <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> <4.3.2.7.2.20030813174412.0308dd20@mail.rixlists.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archive-Number: 200308/35 X-Sequence-Number: 1588 Rick wrote, > I spoke with one systems administrator who said that my messages were > being received with PRECEDENCE=NORMAL, and the sysadmin uses that to > gauge who gets an auto-responder. So despite all the other indicators, such as having List- headers, coming from an envelope sender address that includes the string "owner" or "request" or "bounce" or "errors" or "admin," and most significantly the absence of the user's address from the To: line, the autoresponder was still allowed to yak away, and the administrator's excuse was that [s]he has decided unilaterally that only one criterion counts? I sent my stuff out with Precedence: list, so if that had happened on any of my lists I would never have known. But if I found out I'd have certainly given that admin the URL to Jeff's rant. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 13 16:22:15 2003 Received: from b.smtp-out.sonic.net (b.smtp-out.sonic.net [208.201.224.39]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 42CCE1968B8 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 16:22:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 8273 invoked from network); 13 Aug 2003 23:22:13 -0000 Received: from sub.sonic.net (208.201.224.8) by b.smtp-out.sonic.net with SMTP; 13 Aug 2003 23:22:13 -0000 Received: from sonic.net (bolt.sonic.net [208.201.242.18]) by sub.sonic.net (8.11.6p2/8.8.5) with ESMTP id h7DNMDD18136 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 16:22:13 -0700 X-envelope-info: Received: from satellite.vo.cnchost.com (IDENT:root@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by sonic.net (8.12.9/8.12.1) with ESMTP id h7DNMBar008343 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 16:22:12 -0700 Message-Id: <6.0.0.10.0.20030813160813.04793dc8@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: inet-list%vo.cnchost.com@127.0.0.1 (Unverified) X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 6.0.0.10 (Beta) Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 16:10:10 -0700 To: listmanagers From: JC Dill Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20030813174412.0308dd20@mail.rixlists.net> References: <6.0.0.10.0.20030813105917.045bfa88@127.0.0.1> <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed X-Archive-Number: 200308/36 X-Sequence-Number: 1589 At 02:50 PM 8/13/2003, The Rick of RixLists wrote: >Is it possible that the header information might be inviting the "on >Vacation" message? > >I spoke with one systems administrator who said that my messages were >being received with PRECEDENCE=NORMAL, and the sysadmin uses that to >gauge who gets an auto-responder. > >If messages arrive with PRECEDENCE=LIST The list uses the Precedence: list header, as well as several List- headers. There is no reason for a properly configured vacation program to treat the list email as "normal" email. jc >At 11:08 AM 8/13/03 -0700, JC Dil wrote: > >At 10:39 AM 8/13/2003, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote: > >>Consider how it scales. Assume that at any given time, maybe 5% of your > >>list are "on vacation". > > > >Heh. This is a list for people who work at ISPs. In the 5 years I've been > >administrating this list we have had a problem with an autoresponder > >maybe once a year. For the most part, ISP folks just don't take vacation, > > [Portion deleted for brevity] > >_______________________[ End ]_______________________ From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 13 16:59:22 2003 Received: from xuxa.iecc.com (xuxa.iecc.com [208.31.42.42]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with SMTP id E2CA2196795 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 16:59:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 25687 invoked by uid 100); 13 Aug 2003 23:59:13 -0000 Date: 13 Aug 2003 23:59:13 -0000 Message-ID: <20030813235913.25686.qmail@xuxa.iecc.com> From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Newsgroups: iecc.lists.list-managers In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20030813174412.0308dd20@mail.rixlists.net> References: <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA Cc: X-Archive-Number: 200308/37 X-Sequence-Number: 1590 > I spoke with one systems administrator who said that my messages > were being received with PRECEDENCE=NORMAL, and the sysadmin uses > that to gauge who gets an auto-responder. I'm glad that sysadmin doesn't get to mess with any of the computers around here. The rule of thumb that Bernie and I have mentioned, only respond to mail that has your address on the To: or Cc: line, has been well known for literally 20 years. This particular wheel really doesn't need reinventing, particularly in view of how badly most people do so. -- John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 330 5711 johnl@iecc.com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, http://iecc.com/johnl, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 13 17:41:05 2003 Received: from mv.mv.com (iridium.mv.net [199.125.85.17]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 5386E1962B7 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 17:41:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 17095 invoked by uid 101); 13 Aug 2003 20:41:01 -0400 From: "Mark E. Mallett" Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 20:41:01 -0400 To: "John R. Levine" Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Message-ID: <20030814004101.GB12289@iridium.mv.net> References: <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> <20030813235913.25686.qmail@xuxa.iecc.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20030813235913.25686.qmail@xuxa.iecc.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i X-Archive-Number: 200308/38 X-Sequence-Number: 1591 On Wed, Aug 13, 2003 at 11:59:13PM -0000, John R. Levine wrote: > > > I spoke with one systems administrator who said that my messages > > were being received with PRECEDENCE=NORMAL, and the sysadmin uses > > that to gauge who gets an auto-responder. > > I'm glad that sysadmin doesn't get to mess with any of the computers > around here. > > The rule of thumb that Bernie and I have mentioned, only respond to > mail that has your address on the To: or Cc: line, has been well known > for literally 20 years. This particular wheel really doesn't need > reinventing, particularly in view of how badly most people do so. Neither guideline is complete in itself. For example I might do a normal group reply on a mailing list and get several individual addresses in the header and be lazy or forgetful and not fix it up (e.g. like this one). As we've seen there are people who argue FOR leaving the individual addresses in the reply header just as vehemently as those who argue against it. Testing for "precedence: {list,bulk}" has been around for ages too-- along with testing for various addresses like "*-request" and somewhat newer tests against various list signatures. But yeah, holding the inverted notion that "precedence:normal" somehow makes it OK is a bit jerklike. mm From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 13 18:16:24 2003 Received: from tom.iecc.com (tom.iecc.com [208.31.42.38]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 090DF196835 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 18:16:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 24767 invoked from network); 14 Aug 2003 01:16:14 -0000 Received: (ofmipd 208.31.42.39); 14 Aug 2003 01:15:52 -0000 Date: 13 Aug 2003 21:16:14 -0400 Message-ID: From: "John R Levine" To: "Mark E. Mallett" Cc: "list-managers@greatcircle.com" Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs In-Reply-To: <20030814004101.GB12289@iridium.mv.net> References: <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> <20030813235913.25686.qmail@xuxa.iecc.com> <20030814004101.GB12289@iridium.mv.net> Cleverness: None detected MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Archive-Number: 200308/39 X-Sequence-Number: 1592 > Neither guideline is complete in itself. For example I might do a > normal group reply on a mailing list and get several individual > addresses in the header and be lazy or forgetful and not fix it up That's fine -- if I get a vacation message from someone to whom I've sent mail directly, that's not a bug. > Testing for "precedence: {list,bulk}" has been around for ages too-- I agree that's also a useful hint, but having written a lot of autoresponders, once you get the To: and Cc: rule and perhaps special case a few addresses like MAILER-DAEMON to avoid responding to bounces, everything else is down in the noise. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner "I dropped the toothpaste", said Tom, crestfallenly. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 13 18:50:30 2003 Received: from penguin.postmodern.com (server.postmodern.com [216.240.39.3]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0E076196891 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 18:50:26 -0700 (PDT) Received: from kanga.nu (kanga.nu [157.22.12.214]) by penguin.postmodern.com (8.12.8/mcb-20021115-1) with ESMTP id h7E17jPw026240 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 18:07:45 -0700 Delivery-date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 18:07:30 -0700 Received: from pcp03381044pcs.groton01.ct.comcast.net ([68.54.123.49]:63183 helo=yabbie) by kanga.nu with asmtp (Exim 4.20 #1 (Debian)) id 19n6aP-00068u-PO; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 18:07:29 -0700 Received: from yabbie ([127.0.0.1] helo=kanga.nu) by yabbie with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 19n6aP-0002eD-00; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 21:07:29 -0400 To: bernie@fantasyfarm.com Cc: listmanagers Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs In-Reply-To: Message from "Bernie Cosell" of "Wed, 13 Aug 2003 18:29:58 EDT." <3F3A83A6.17825.290CF2E@localhost> References: <3F3A3DAF.3149.17F8505@localhost> <3F3A83A6.17825.290CF2E@localhost> X-face: ?^_yw@fA`CEX&}--=*&XqXbF-oePvxaT4(kyt\nwM9]{]N!>b^K}-Mb9 YH%saz^>nq5usBlD"s{(.h'_w|U^3ldUq7wVZz$`u>MB(-4$f\a6Eu8.e=Pf\ X-image-url: http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/kanga.face.tiff X-url: http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 21:07:29 -0400 Message-ID: <10180.1060823249@kanga.nu> From: J C Lawrence X-Archive-Number: 200308/40 X-Sequence-Number: 1593 On Wed, 13 Aug 2003 18:29:58 -0400 Bernie Cosell wrote: > What about the simple "if it is not addressed specifically to me > [either in to: or cc:] don't autorespond to it". I can't recall the > last time I was on a list that munged the 'to' header to be > to-the-person instead of to-the-list. Mailman can do this as a non-default list configuration option. -- J C Lawrence ---------(*) Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. claw@kanga.nu He lived as a devil, eh? http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 13 20:52:12 2003 Received: from swan.mail.pas.earthlink.net (swan.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.123]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9438F19618E for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 20:52:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from 66-215-205-105.riv-eres.charterpipeline.net ([66.215.205.105] helo=lehel.goldmark.private) by swan.mail.pas.earthlink.net with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1) id 19n99i-0002EM-00 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 20:52:06 -0700 Received: from betty.goldmark.private ([192.168.1.51]) by lehel.goldmark.private with esmtp (Exim 3.13 #1) id 19n99i-0006lq-00 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 20:52:06 -0700 Received: from jeffrey (helo=localhost) by betty.goldmark.private with local-esmtp (Exim 4.10) id HJLC2U-00088H-00 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 20:52:06 -0700 Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 20:52:06 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeffrey Goldberg X-X-Sender: jeffrey@betty.goldmark.private Reply-To: Jeffrey Goldberg To: listmanagers Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs In-Reply-To: <3F3AC435.2060801@panix.com> Message-ID: References: <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> <4.3.2.7.2.20030813174412.0308dd20@mail.rixlists.net> <3F3AC435.2060801@panix.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Archive-Number: 200308/41 X-Sequence-Number: 1594 On Wed, 13 Aug 2003, David W. Tamkin wrote: > Rick wrote, > > > I spoke with one systems administrator who said that my messages were > > being received with PRECEDENCE=NORMAL, and the sysadmin uses that to > > gauge who gets an auto-responder. I've heard that before, too. It was one of the few postmaster responses I got from pointing people to my rant. Basically, the short answer is that that is the capability that is built into MS-Exchange. They needed to defend their software choice. > I sent my stuff out with Precedence: list, so if that had happened on > any of my lists I would never have known. But if I found out I'd have > certainly given that admin the URL to Jeff's rant. That is why you aren't seeing this much on the lists you manage. MS-Exchange does test for "Precedence: list". So far, nothing in this discussion has made me think to weaken or soften my rant. Indeed, if I ever actually get around to updating content, I will more heavily emphasize the importance of checking for recipient address in recipient headers. And I will raise the option of limiting that match just to "To". -j -- Jeffrey Goldberg http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/ Relativism is the triumph of authority over truth, convention over justice Hate spam? Boycott MCI! http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/anti-spam/mci/ From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 14 10:02:47 2003 Received: from mx1.eskimo.com (mx1.eskimo.com [204.122.16.48]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id A81E3196A4A for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:02:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: from eskimo.com (berg@eskimo.com [204.122.16.13]) by mx1.eskimo.com (8.9.3/8.8.8) with ESMTP id KAA05694 for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:02:37 -0700 From: Berg Oswell Received: (from berg@localhost) by eskimo.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) id KAA29595 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:02:37 -0700 (PDT) Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:02:37 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <200308141702.KAA29595@eskimo.com> To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs X-Archive-Number: 200308/42 X-Sequence-Number: 1595 Is it any of your business, as list owner, what people send off-list? Even if it's in response to list traffic? Who appointed you the censor of all that someone else sends? If someone misconfigures a vacation autoresponder to spam your list, then by all means, ban the loser. But what gives you the idea that you have any right to ban someone from a list for something that was not sent to the list? How would you feel if someone banned YOU because they dislike your spam filter? Oh, I'm not saying you can't, but if you act arbitrarily and unfairly, you'll kill your list...who wants to be on a list with an unpredictable, arrogant list-owner? From what the original poster has said, the guy running the autoresponder hasn't done anything wrong. If anything, he's being polite, and letting people who send him mail know that he's on vacation and can't answer right away. Given the number of rude jerks on the internet, do you really want to punish someone for being polite and thoughtful? From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 14 10:12:37 2003 Received: from mx1.eskimo.com (mx1.eskimo.com [204.122.16.48]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id D9A21196A3F for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:12:31 -0700 (PDT) Received: from eskimo.com (berg@eskimo.com [204.122.16.13]) by mx1.eskimo.com (8.9.3/8.8.8) with ESMTP id KAA09650 for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:12:27 -0700 From: Berg Oswell Received: (from berg@localhost) by eskimo.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) id KAA29935 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:12:26 -0700 (PDT) Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:12:26 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <200308141712.KAA29935@eskimo.com> To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs X-Archive-Number: 200308/43 X-Sequence-Number: 1596 Jeffrey Goldberg wrote: > Consider how it scales. Assume that at any given time, maybe 5% of your > list are "on vacation". If they all used broken autoresponders, then a > single post to a list of 1000 would generate 50 autoresponses to the > sender. Subsequent posts from the same user would generate fewer, but > still your policy does not scale well unless only a small minority of > users use broken autoresponders. That assumes the auto-responder is broken...from what the original poster has said, this one is not broken, since it has sent just one response to each person that sent it mail. Letting people know you can't answer their email right away is a polite, thoughtful thing to do...providing your autoresponder isn't configured by an idiot. Why punish someone for doing the right thing? Sure, getting 50 emails from one list post saying they're out of town might be annoying...but if the autoresponder is configured properly, you'll get ONLY 50. So what's so bad about 50 emails? Or 500? Or half a million? The point is that the guy running the autoresponder decided to do the polite, proper thing and not leave everybody hanging. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 14 10:17:18 2003 Received: from mx1.eskimo.com (mx1.eskimo.com [204.122.16.48]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 92849196A53 for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:17:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from eskimo.com (berg@eskimo.com [204.122.16.13]) by mx1.eskimo.com (8.9.3/8.8.8) with ESMTP id KAA12177 for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:17:13 -0700 From: Berg Oswell Received: (from berg@localhost) by eskimo.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) id KAA00251 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:17:13 -0700 (PDT) Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:17:13 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <200308141717.KAA00251@eskimo.com> To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs X-Archive-Number: 200308/44 X-Sequence-Number: 1597 Jeffrey Goldberg wrote: > Not if everyone who was "out of office" did it. Is your email system so fragile that it dies if it recieves 50 emails? Are you so technically inept that you can't filter out vacation autoresponders in your filters? Are you really, truly, complaining about people who decide to be polite to others? Does your email reader lack a delete button? Personally, given the choice between technically inept but polite people, and technically savvy jerks...I prefer the inept. If they're ignorant, they can be taught...if they're jerks, you have to resort to killfiles. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 14 10:27:52 2003 Received: from mail-out2.apple.com (mail-out2.apple.com [17.254.0.51]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8CBE5196B2D for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:27:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mailgate2.apple.com (A17-129-100-225.apple.com [17.129.100.225]) by mail-out2.apple.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h7EHRSfR000376 for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:27:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: from scv2.apple.com (scv2.apple.com) by mailgate2.apple.com (Content Technologies SMTPRS 4.2.1) with ESMTP id ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:27:49 -0700 Received: from plaidworks.com (vg0602e-dhcp175.apple.com [17.216.21.175]) by scv2.apple.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h7EHReWI021869; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:27:40 -0700 (PDT) Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:27:46 -0700 Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v552) Cc: Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@greatcircle.com To: Berg Oswell From: Chuq Von Rospach In-Reply-To: <200308141712.KAA29935@eskimo.com> Message-Id: <9EFC2B76-CE7C-11D7-9D95-0003934516A8@plaidworks.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.552) X-Archive-Number: 200308/45 X-Sequence-Number: 1598 > That assumes the auto-responder is broken...from what the original > poster has said, this one is not broken, since it has sent just one > response to each person that sent it mail. > > Letting people know you can't answer their email right away is a > polite, thoughtful thing to do...providing your autoresponder isn't > configured by an idiot. Why punish someone for doing the right thing? it's not the right thing. I didn't send you an e-mail. I sent a mailing list an e-mail. Why do I, as a user of that mail list care that you're not reading it right now? That's a key issue some folks don't seem to be really understanding here. That you got an e-mail from me, doesn't mean I sent you an e-mail. I only care to see a vacation bot message if I send you an email. if I'm mailing something that ends up mailing you, I shouldn't see a mailbot. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 14 10:29:42 2003 Received: from mail-out2.apple.com (mail-out2.apple.com [17.254.0.51]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7AD36196A41 for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:29:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mailgate2.apple.com (A17-129-100-225.apple.com [17.129.100.225]) by mail-out2.apple.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h7EHTJfR001175 for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:29:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from scv2.apple.com (scv2.apple.com) by mailgate2.apple.com (Content Technologies SMTPRS 4.2.1) with ESMTP id ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:29:40 -0700 Received: from plaidworks.com (vg0602e-dhcp175.apple.com [17.216.21.175]) by scv2.apple.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h7EHTVWI022651; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:29:31 -0700 (PDT) Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:29:37 -0700 Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v552) Cc: Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@greatcircle.com To: Berg Oswell From: Chuq Von Rospach In-Reply-To: <200308141702.KAA29595@eskimo.com> Message-Id: Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.552) X-Archive-Number: 200308/46 X-Sequence-Number: 1599 On Thursday, August 14, 2003, at 10:02 AM, Berg Oswell wrote: > > Is it any of your business, as list owner, what people send > off-list? Even if it's in response to list traffic? Who appointed you > the censor of all that someone else sends? Yes. Your service is facilitating the communication. If two people get into a fight through your list, carry it off into private email and it turns abusive, you still have responsibility, because you still have a liability issue. How much liability depends on the situation and who does what, but don't for a second think the court won't see you as at least partially liable as the owner of the source of the abuse. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 14 10:36:55 2003 Received: from zrtps0kn.nortelnetworks.com (zrtps0kn.nortelnetworks.com [47.140.192.55]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 82BF5196A79 for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:36:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: from zrtpd0jn.us.nortel.com (zrtpd0jn.us.nortel.com [47.140.202.35]) by zrtps0kn.nortelnetworks.com (Switch-2.2.6/Switch-2.2.0) with ESMTP id h7EHakM24711 for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 13:36:46 -0400 (EDT) Received: from zrtpd0nd.us.nortel.com ([47.140.202.41]) by zrtpd0jn.us.nortel.com with SMTP (Microsoft Exchange Internet Mail Service Version 5.5.2653.13) id QY0FVTVR; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 13:36:46 -0400 Received: from americasm01.nt.com (sholton-1.us.nortel.com [47.142.213.59]) by zrtpd0nd.us.nortel.com with SMTP (Microsoft Exchange Internet Mail Service Version 5.5.2653.13) id QYJJ7T1T; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 13:36:46 -0400 Message-ID: <3F3BC8AE.5020309@americasm01.nt.com> Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 13:36:46 -0400 X-Sybari-Space: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 From: "Steven Holton" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030314 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: [list-managers] The daily digest for list-managers. V12 #191 References: <20030814170258.84A47196AF0@mycroft.greatcircle.com> In-Reply-To: <20030814170258.84A47196AF0@mycroft.greatcircle.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archive-Number: 200308/47 X-Sequence-Number: 1600 Berg Oswell wrote: > Is it any of your business, as list owner, what people send > off-list? Even if it's in response to list traffic? Who > appointed you the censor of all that someone else sends? Lot's of very interesting opinions here, across the spectrum and all have merit. The end-to-end principle[1] would seem to indicate that mail sent to your list should pass through unhindered, and if the recipient chooses to reply to the sender, that's between the recipient and the sender. Of course, if you (as the list manager) are acting as a moderator, editor, or other active role (I guess so, if you're asking here before taking action) then not only should you be allowed to censor content to further the aims of the list, your subscribers probably expect you to do so. Would it be possible (and appropriate) to switch out-of-office subscribers to "digest" mode? That should prevent _anyone_ from receiving an out-of-office reply (except perhaps you, or the list if reply-to is set such). Plus, you haven't censored or uns+bscr+bed anyone. It still leaves you with the problem of finding-out who is auto-responding, but once you know , this may give you a least-impact way of eliminating the problem. [1] Not that there's much end-to-end left of the Internet today... -- Steve Holton From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 14 10:38:33 2003 Received: from consera1.corpnet.consera.com (dsl081-190-082.sea1.dsl.speakeasy.net [64.81.190.82]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id ABA63196B6B for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:38:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from roger ([192.168.10.58]) by consera1.corpnet.consera.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.0.2195.5329); Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:38:31 -0700 From: "Roger B.A. Klorese" To: "'Chuq Von Rospach'" , "'Berg Oswell'" Cc: Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:38:31 -0700 Message-ID: <7CEFA9CA4D5BE74586551915EC9C9C3347C0CC@consera1.corpnet.consera.com> 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, Build 10.0.2627 Importance: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1165 In-Reply-To: <9EFC2B76-CE7C-11D7-9D95-0003934516A8@plaidworks.com> X-OriginalArrivalTime: 14 Aug 2003 17:38:31.0758 (UTC) FILETIME=[E1122EE0:01C3628A] X-Archive-Number: 200308/48 X-Sequence-Number: 1601 > I didn't send you an e-mail. I sent a mailing list an e-mail. > Why do I, > as a user of that mail list care that you're not reading it right now? Maybe you don't. I, as a user of the mail list, do. And my "I" has as much of a vote as your "I." > That's a key issue some folks don't seem to be really understanding > here. We understand. We disagree. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 14 10:55:33 2003 Received: from www.lofcom.com (unknown [216.105.35.108]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1B19A196522 for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:55:31 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [192.168.123.10] (lof@washdc3-ar10-4-62-171-088.washdc3.dsl-verizon.net [4.62.171.88]) by www.lofcom.com (8.9.3p2/8.9.3) with ESMTP id NAA22363; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 13:55:22 -0400 X-Envelope-From: charlie@lofcom.com X-Sender: lof@oldradio.net Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <200308141712.KAA29935@eskimo.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 13:55:35 -0400 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com From: Charlie Summers Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs X-Archive-Number: 200308/49 X-Sequence-Number: 1602 At 1:12 PM -0400 8/14/03, Berg Oswell is rumored to have typed: > Letting people know you can't answer their email right away is a > polite, thoughtful thing to do In my opinion, telling someone who _needs_ to know is polite; telling everyone in the world who doesn't really care is about as IMpolite as it gets. For example, if I go on vacation, I let the clients I directly service and those I work with know well ahead of time I will be away. YOU, very likely, don't give a rat's tale whether or not I'm on vacation (actually, I am this week, not that anyone asked). If you post to the list-managers list, you should NOT receive something from me you do not care to receive...that isn't "polite," it's invasive. (I really like, and may steal, Chuq's newspaper analogy.) IMHO, these autoresponders are by their very nature worse-than-useless, and on the lists I actively manage one autorespond provokes an immediate unsubscribe. This is neither, "unpredictable" nor "arrogant" - it is a rule of the lists. (Those hosted on the server operated by others, of course, have their own rules; I don't dictate this to any of the other list-moms.) I don't mess with long involved procedures; one autorespond, I run the script that bounces the offender and sends the explaination message, part of which tells them to contact their MIS departments (the majority of them, even on my hobby lists, come from brain-damaged corporate systems). You are welcomed to send out all the vacation mesages you wish, since I have not the right to tell you what you may and may not mail. From a user perspective, if I receive one from you simply because I posted to a mailing list, I am welcomed to bounce any future mail from you (I'll even go so far as to drop your listmail into /dev/null), since I DO have the right to determine who's mail I will and will not RECEIVE. And from a list-mom perspective, if you do it on any list I actively manage, you will receive a polite note telling you you have been unsubscribed, and suggesting that you are welcomed to subscribe as soon as you fix your autoresponder never to bother me or any of my subscribers again, since I DO have the right to determine who is subscribed to my lists. If you _really_ want to be polite, do NOT send out a vacation message to anyone who doesn't absolutely require one. And that, I'm afraid, you can NOT automate, since it requires human thought and discression. Charlie Summers From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 14 10:59:02 2003 Received: from mail.rev.net (server02.rev.net [206.67.68.98]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 527191969FE for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:59:00 -0700 (PDT) Received: from admin3 (natpool2.rev.net [63.148.93.2] (may be forged)) by mail.rev.net (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id h7EHwx42007663 for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 13:58:59 -0400 From: "Bernie Cosell" Organization: Fantasy Farm Fibers To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 13:58:56 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Reply-To: bernie@fantasyfarm.com Message-ID: <3F3B95A0.1577.6BF07FE@localhost> In-reply-to: <200308141702.KAA29595@eskimo.com> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Windows (v4.02a) Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-description: Mail message body X-RAVMilter-Version: 8.3.1(snapshot 20020108) (server02.rev.net) X-Archived: msg.1060883939.gOdbBV@server02.rev.net X-Archive-Number: 200308/50 X-Sequence-Number: 1603 On 14 Aug 2003 at 10:02, Berg Oswell wrote: > Is it any of your business, as list owner, what people send > off-list? Even if it's in response to list traffic? Who appointed you > the censor of all that someone else sends? Indeed, IMO it is my business! If I get a slew of complaints from people on my list that someone is harassing them or otherwise hassling them based on their presence on my mailing list, I *WILL* ban [or at least warn] the offender. Makes no difference to me if it is spamming the folk or vacation-bombing them or posting annoying things or anything else. If you're to be allowed on a list I run, you have to "Play nice". It isn't a slam-dunk, of course -- one complaint clearly won't get someone banned and you have to make allowances for differences in 'style', but if my list gets 100posts a day and all 100 complain about getting the vacation [or anything else] from a particular person, they're off *my* list.. Obviously, YMMV. > Oh, I'm not saying you can't, but if you act arbitrarily and > unfairly, you'll kill your list...who wants to be on a list with an > unpredictable, arrogant list-owner? What's "unfair" -- if you misbehave and for whatever reason piss off/irritate enough of the other listmembers, how is dropping you off the list acting arbitrarily? > From what the original poster has said, the guy running the > autoresponder hasn't done anything wrong. You need to be careful about judgmental words like "wrong" here. I think there is a consensus [at the very least it is my opinion] that sending a vacation message to someone who sent a message to a mailing list is "wrong behavior" -- polite or not, it is still "wrong" in my book... > . If anything, he's being polite, > and letting people who send him mail know that he's on vacation and can't > answer right away. Who cares? I don't know who that person was, I don't care that he either did or did not get a copy of the message -- if I cared, I'd have sent him a copy personally/directly [and in that case, a 'vacation' is just right]. If you post to list-managers, do you really want 200 "I'm on vacation" messages from random folk you don't know and have never heard of? > ... Given the number of rude jerks on the internet, do you > really want to punish someone for being polite and thoughtful? Polite, yes --- but thoughtful, no. We've been through all that. /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 14 11:48:14 2003 Received: from mail-out2.apple.com (mail-out2.apple.com [17.254.0.51]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id B3264196A43 for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 11:43:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mailgate1.apple.com (A17-128-100-225.apple.com [17.128.100.225]) by mail-out2.apple.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h7EIhZfR009047 for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 11:43:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: from scv3.apple.com (scv3.apple.com) by mailgate1.apple.com (Content Technologies SMTPRS 4.2.1) with ESMTP id ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 11:43:29 -0700 Received: from plaidworks.com (vg0602e-dhcp175.apple.com [17.216.21.175]) by scv3.apple.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h7EIhZeq024882; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 11:43:35 -0700 (PDT) Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 11:43:52 -0700 Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v552) Cc: Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@greatcircle.com To: Charlie Summers From: Chuq Von Rospach In-Reply-To: Message-Id: <40080744-CE87-11D7-9D95-0003934516A8@plaidworks.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.552) X-Archive-Number: 200308/51 X-Sequence-Number: 1604 On Thursday, August 14, 2003, at 10:55 AM, Charlie Summers wrote: > If you _really_ want to be polite, > do NOT send out a vacation message to anyone who doesn't absolutely > require > one. And that, I'm afraid, you can NOT automate, since it requires > human > thought and discression. > And this is exactly why I stopped using a vacation bot years ago. I tell the people who need to know before I leave. I also don't believe in making it clear to the entire universe that my house and home are open to visitors (ahem) because I'm not there (even though we have people visiting and watching and sitting, depending on the trip, my sitters don't need that excitement, either). From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 14 12:07:28 2003 Received: from goose.mail.pas.earthlink.net (goose.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.18]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2F3C8196227 for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 12:07:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from 66-215-205-105.riv-eres.charterpipeline.net ([66.215.205.105] helo=lehel.goldmark.private) by goose.mail.pas.earthlink.net with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1) id 19nNRS-0002yw-00 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 12:07:22 -0700 Received: from betty.goldmark.private ([192.168.1.51]) by lehel.goldmark.private with esmtp (Exim 3.13 #1) id 19nNRS-00074T-00 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 12:07:22 -0700 Received: from jeffrey (helo=localhost) by betty.goldmark.private with local-esmtp (Exim 4.10) id HJMIGA-0008DD-00 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 12:07:22 -0700 Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 12:07:22 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeffrey Goldberg X-X-Sender: jeffrey@betty.goldmark.private Reply-To: Jeffrey Goldberg To: List Managers Mailing list Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs In-Reply-To: <200308141712.KAA29935@eskimo.com> Message-ID: References: <200308141712.KAA29935@eskimo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Archive-Number: 200308/52 X-Sequence-Number: 1605 On Thu, 14 Aug 2003, Berg Oswell wrote: > Jeffrey Goldberg wrote: > > Consider how it scales. [...] > Sure, getting 50 emails from one list post saying they're out of > town might be annoying...but if the autoresponder is configured properly, > you'll get ONLY 50. So what's so bad about 50 emails? Or 500? Or half a > million? The point is that the guy running the autoresponder decided to > do the polite, proper thing and not leave everybody hanging. You must be using the words "polite" and "proper" in a ways that are unfamiliar to me. May I have your permission to quote your message on or from my rant on this matter? -j -- Jeffrey Goldberg http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/ Relativism is the triumph of authority over truth, convention over justice Hate spam? Boycott MCI! http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/anti-spam/mci/ From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 14 13:24:06 2003 Received: from pickering.cc.nd.edu (pickering.cc.nd.edu [129.74.250.225]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9E3D51969D6 for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 13:24:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nd.edu (humphrey.cc.nd.edu [129.74.33.19]) (authenticated bits=0) by pickering.cc.nd.edu (Switch-3.1.0/Switch-3.1.0) with ESMTP id h7EKO2NM027283 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=RC4-MD5 bits=128 verify=NO) for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 15:24:03 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <3F3BEFDC.8040906@nd.edu> Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 15:23:56 -0500 From: Paul Russell Organization: University of Notre Dame User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5b) Gecko/20030723 Thunderbird/0.1 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs References: <200308141702.KAA29595@eskimo.com> In-Reply-To: <200308141702.KAA29595@eskimo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-ND-MTA-Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 15:24:04 -0500 (EST) X-ND-Virus-Scan: engine v4.2.40; dat v4285 X-Archive-Number: 200308/53 X-Sequence-Number: 1606 > Is it any of your business, as list owner, what people send > off-list? Even if it's in response to list traffic? Who appointed you > the censor of all that someone else sends? I am one of several co-owners of a self-moderated list with 1250 subscribers. We own the list and we set the rules for continued participation, so I guess you could say that we appointed ourselves. We do not force anyone to join the list, we do not force anyone to remain on the list, and we do not charge anyone for the privilege of belonging to the list. If they do not like the way we run the list, they can leave and start their own list. Perhaps this sounds arrogant, but the fact is, we are providing a free service on our own time, and we believe we have both the right and the obligation to determine how that service is used. Most of our subscribers apparently share our belief that it is wholly inappropriate to send an OOO in response to a list posting, because more than half of the complaints sent to the list owners are about OOOs. -- Paul Russell From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 14 13:32:29 2003 Received: from igtc.igtc.com (igtc.igtc.com [66.166.73.180]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id C9386195FAE for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 13:32:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: from igtc.igtc.com (IDENT:clvBb77tmvVKGRoP8KcsDSOGOqcTWtel@localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by igtc.igtc.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h7EKWK90024031; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 13:32:20 -0700 Received: (from pmm@localhost) by igtc.igtc.com (8.12.9/8.12.9/Submit) id h7EKWJ9m024030; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 13:32:19 -0700 Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 13:32:19 -0700 From: "Paul M. Moriarty" To: Chuq Von Rospach Cc: Berg Oswell , list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Message-ID: <20030814203219.GF21886@igtc.igtc.com> References: <200308141702.KAA29595@eskimo.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.4i X-Archive-Number: 200308/54 X-Sequence-Number: 1607 Chuq Von Rospach writes: > [...] > > Yes. Your service is facilitating the communication. If two people get > into a fight through your list, carry it off into private email and it > turns abusive, you still have responsibility, because you still have a > liability issue. How much liability depends on the situation and who > does what, but don't for a second think the court won't see you as at > least partially liable as the owner of the source of the abuse. Can you cite the case law using mailing lists or a similar form of electronic distribution where the distributor was held liable? From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 14 13:34:12 2003 Received: from mail-out2.apple.com (mail-out2.apple.com [17.254.0.51]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 90FC51965C6 for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 13:34:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mailgate1.apple.com (A17-128-100-225.apple.com [17.128.100.225]) by mail-out2.apple.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h7EKXofR002219 for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 13:33:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: from scv1.apple.com (scv1.apple.com) by mailgate1.apple.com (Content Technologies SMTPRS 4.2.1) with ESMTP id ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 13:33:41 -0700 Received: from plaidworks.com (vg0602e-dhcp175.apple.com [17.216.21.175]) by scv1.apple.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h7EKXnsH005399; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 13:33:49 -0700 (PDT) Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 13:34:01 -0700 Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v552) Cc: Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@greatcircle.com, Berg Oswell To: "Paul M. Moriarty" From: Chuq Von Rospach In-Reply-To: <20030814203219.GF21886@igtc.igtc.com> Message-Id: Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.552) X-Archive-Number: 200308/55 X-Sequence-Number: 1608 On Thursday, August 14, 2003, at 01:32 PM, Paul M. Moriarty wrote: > > > Can you cite the case law using mailing lists or a similar form of > electronic distribution where the distributor was held liable? > > yeah, actually, but I'm not going to take the time to go look it up. sorry, just no time. Can you cite case law where they were found to not be liable? From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 14 13:38:49 2003 Received: from mail-out2.apple.com (mail-out2.apple.com [17.254.0.51]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id DC89719697F for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 13:38:48 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mailgate2.apple.com (A17-129-100-225.apple.com [17.129.100.225]) by mail-out2.apple.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h7EKcRfR006727 for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 13:38:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from scv2.apple.com (scv2.apple.com) by mailgate2.apple.com (Content Technologies SMTPRS 4.2.1) with ESMTP id ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 13:38:41 -0700 Received: from plaidworks.com (vg0602e-dhcp175.apple.com [17.216.21.175]) by scv2.apple.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h7EKcXWI000734; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 13:38:33 -0700 (PDT) Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 13:38:40 -0700 Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v552) Cc: Berg Oswell , list-managers@greatcircle.com, "Paul M. Moriarty" To: Chuq Von Rospach From: Chuq Von Rospach In-Reply-To: Message-Id: <4A1C1744-CE97-11D7-9D95-0003934516A8@plaidworks.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.552) X-Archive-Number: 200308/56 X-Sequence-Number: 1609 and apologies in advance if this sounds snarky, because, well, it's snarky... But IMHO, anyone who builds their system policy on an assumption of "we will assume we won't be held liable until proven otherwise" needs to sit down and talk to their lawyers, and if their lawyers buy off on that strategy, get better lawyers. Especially given today's legal climate, assuming liability exists until proven otherwise isn't paranoid, it's prudent. So it shouldn't be up to me to convince you to expect liability, I expect you to convince me my beliefs are unfounded. show me cases where it's been proven not to be true. The burden of proof here is on the people who believe they're safe, not on me to convince you that you aren't. Any other attitude is asking for trouble, and IMHO, foolhardy. On Thursday, August 14, 2003, at 01:34 PM, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > yeah, actually, but I'm not going to take the time to go look it up. > sorry, just no time. Can you cite case law where they were found to > not be liable? From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 14 14:37:21 2003 Received: from igtc.igtc.com (igtc.igtc.com [66.166.73.180]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id BD9E6196B78 for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 14:37:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from igtc.igtc.com (IDENT:WVi3CEGrxmNZZWo8RMDQUZIPlSnjvT73@localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by igtc.igtc.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h7ELbJ90024434; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 14:37:19 -0700 Received: (from pmm@localhost) by igtc.igtc.com (8.12.9/8.12.9/Submit) id h7ELbIKQ024433; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 14:37:18 -0700 Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 14:37:18 -0700 From: "Paul M. Moriarty" To: Chuq Von Rospach Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com, Berg Oswell Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Message-ID: <20030814213718.GI21886@igtc.igtc.com> References: <20030814203219.GF21886@igtc.igtc.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.4i X-Archive-Number: 200308/57 X-Sequence-Number: 1610 Chuq Von Rospach writes: [...] > > yeah, actually, but I'm not going to take the time to go look it up. > sorry, just no time. Can you cite case law where they were found to not > be liable? > uhhh... IANAL, but I seem to recall something about burden of proof and preponderance of the evidence. Oh, and all the legal thrillers I read always remind me that you can't prove a negative. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 14 14:37:44 2003 Received: from grouse.mail.pas.earthlink.net (grouse.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.116]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 21B25196A4F for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 14:37:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: from h-66-167-132-158.phndaz91.covad.net ([66.167.132.158] helo=Vaio.earthlink.net) by grouse.mail.pas.earthlink.net with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1) id 19nPmo-0004i1-00 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 14:37:35 -0700 Message-Id: <5.2.0.9.2.20030814142808.02713500@pop.earthlink.net> X-Sender: bobbish@pop.earthlink.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.2.0.9 Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 14:37:33 -0700 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com From: Bob Bish Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs In-Reply-To: <20030814203219.GF21886@igtc.igtc.com> References: <200308141702.KAA29595@eskimo.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed X-Archive-Number: 200308/58 X-Sequence-Number: 1611 > > Yes. Your service is facilitating the communication. If two people get > > into a fight through your list, carry it off into private email and it > > turns abusive, you still have responsibility, because you still have a > > liability issue. How much liability depends on the situation and who > > does what, but don't for a second think the court won't see you as at > > least partially liable as the owner of the source of the abuse. This is utterly ridiculous. I'm not an attorney, but a law degree isn't necessary to see the obvious holes in this so-called "logic". For one, e-mail could not possibly hold up as evidence in a court of law. It is far too easy to fake. There was an AOL subscriber on one of my lists who was very abusive to other list members both on- and off-list. Can I sue AOL because it facilitated the abusive communications? Can each member of that list also sue AOL? Gee, I don't think so! If this was true there would be no Internet. It would have been litigated out of existence years ago. Millions of lawsuits would be filed every day. ...Bob From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 14 15:02:48 2003 Received: from smtp01.nyc.untd.com (outbound20-2.nyc.untd.com [64.136.20.160]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 8813F196A92 for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 15:02:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 5248 invoked from network); 14 Aug 2003 22:02:44 -0000 Received: from dialup-67.31.202.27.dial1.tampa1.level3.net (HELO netzero.net) (67.31.202.27) by smtp01.nyc.untd.com with SMTP; 14 Aug 2003 22:02:44 -0000 Message-ID: <3F3C0726.8070205@netzero.net> Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 18:03:18 -0400 From: Kirk Bailey Organization: Silas Dent Memorial Cabal of ERIS Esoteric and hot dog boiling society User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: [list-managers] The daily digest for list-managers. V12 #191 References: <20030814170258.84A47196AF0@mycroft.greatcircle.com> <3F3BC8AE.5020309@americasm01.nt.com> In-Reply-To: <3F3BC8AE.5020309@americasm01.nt.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archive-Number: 200308/59 X-Sequence-Number: 1612 For the record, please quote the accepted wording of the 'end to end principle'. Steven Holton wrote: > Berg Oswell wrote: > >> Is it any of your business, as list owner, what people send off-list? >> Even if it's in response to list traffic? Who appointed you the >> censor of all that someone else sends? > > > Lot's of very interesting opinions here, across the spectrum > and all have merit. > > The end-to-end principle[1] would seem to indicate that mail sent > to your list should pass through unhindered, and if the recipient > chooses to reply to the sender, that's between the recipient and > the sender. > > Of course, if you (as the list manager) are acting as a moderator, > editor, or other active role (I guess so, if you're asking here before > taking action) then not only should you be allowed to censor content to > further the aims of the list, your subscribers > probably expect you to do so. > > Would it be possible (and appropriate) to switch out-of-office > subscribers to "digest" mode? That should prevent _anyone_ from > receiving an out-of-office reply (except perhaps you, or the list if > reply-to is set such). Plus, you haven't censored or uns+bscr+bed > anyone. It still leaves you with the problem of finding-out who > is auto-responding, but once you know , this may give you a least-impact > way of eliminating the problem. > > [1] Not that there's much end-to-end left of the Internet today... > -- -- end Cheers! Kirk D Bailey + think + http://www.howlermonkey.net +-----+ http://www.tinylist.org http://www.listville.net | BOX | http://www.sacredelectron.org Thou art free"-ERIS +-----+ 'Got a light?'-Promethieus + think + Fnord. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 14 15:20:01 2003 Received: from mail-out2.apple.com (mail-out2.apple.com [17.254.0.51]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7656F196A7A for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 15:20:00 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mailgate1.apple.com (A17-128-100-225.apple.com [17.128.100.225]) by mail-out2.apple.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h7EMJcfR020526 for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 15:19:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from scv1.apple.com (scv1.apple.com) by mailgate1.apple.com (Content Technologies SMTPRS 4.2.1) with ESMTP id ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 15:19:34 -0700 Received: from plaidworks.com (vg0602e-dhcp175.apple.com [17.216.21.175]) by scv1.apple.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h7EMJfsH009732; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 15:19:41 -0700 (PDT) Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 15:19:56 -0700 Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v552) Cc: Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@greatcircle.com To: Bob Bish From: Chuq Von Rospach In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.2.20030814142808.02713500@pop.earthlink.net> Message-Id: <6FA9F382-CEA5-11D7-9D95-0003934516A8@plaidworks.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.552) X-Archive-Number: 200308/60 X-Sequence-Number: 1613 On Thursday, August 14, 2003, at 02:37 PM, Bob Bish wrote: > For one, e-mail could not possibly hold up as evidence in a court > of law. It is far too easy to fake. My organization has been involved in discovery of email from backups in a number of legal cases. Trust me, it *can* hold up. And then there are the wall street people who got nailed because they promoted stocks in public, and wrote emails trashing them. If email can't be used as evidence, how'd that happen? > There was an AOL subscriber on one of my lists who was very abusive > to other list members both on- and off-list. Can I sue AOL because it > facilitated the abusive communications? Can each member of that list > also sue AOL? Gee, I don't think so! can you sue? Yes. Will you win? depends on the situation. But you most certainly can sue, and if AOL was asked to step in and terminate the abuse and didn't, you'd likely win. This isn't much different from the case Verizon was fighting (and lost) over handing over indentification info to the RIAA. Or the John Doe lawsuits companies file against anonymous posters in chatrooms to get discovery capability to gain their identity (see AquaCool vs. Yahoo), or to stop leaking of confidential information (see Apple vs. "worker bee"). unfortunately, bob, what you wish to be true ain't. > If this was true there would be no Internet. It would have been > litigated out of existence years ago. Millions of lawsuits would be > filed every day. > No, but we're headed in that direction. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 14 15:22:29 2003 Received: from ntcorp.com (ntcorp.com [198.65.128.165]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id C50EA195FAE for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 15:22:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (fidelman@localhost) by ntcorp.com (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id h7EMMRe09057 for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 18:22:28 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 18:22:27 -0400 (EDT) From: X-X-Sender: To: Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Archive-Number: 200308/61 X-Sequence-Number: 1614 It occurs to me that, over the past few days, I've received more email on this one topic, from this one list, than I've received vacation messages from all sources combined. Miles From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 14 15:39:05 2003 Received: from penguin.postmodern.com (server.postmodern.com [216.240.39.3]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id D2FFC196AF1 for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 15:37:59 -0700 (PDT) Received: from postmodern.com (sfo.postmodern.com [216.240.39.8]) by penguin.postmodern.com (8.12.8/mcb-20021115-1) with ESMTP id h7EMcIPw008081 for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 15:38:18 -0700 Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 15:38:19 -0700 Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v552) From: "Michael C. Berch" To: List Managers List Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.2.20030814142808.02713500@pop.earthlink.net> Message-Id: <00DB7BB9-CEA8-11D7-B1FF-003065F94B0A@postmodern.com> X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.552) X-Archive-Number: 200308/62 X-Sequence-Number: 1615 On Thursday, August 14, 2003, at 02:37 PM, Bob Bish wrote: > This is utterly ridiculous. I'm not an attorney, but a law degree > isn't necessary to see the obvious holes in this so-called "logic". > For one, e-mail could not possibly hold up as evidence in a court > of law. It is far too easy to fake. Excuse me? E-mail is introduced as evidence in zillions of cases, civil and criminal, all over the country every day. Like other types of documents, it can be faked, and just like those other documents, it can be authenticated by a number of methods. A company I consult for is involved with the authentication and analysis of e-mail and other messaging for litigation support. It's a multi-million dollar business, and as more communications moves from paper to electronic messaging, it's getting bigger fast. I tend to agree that the liability proposition alluded to is somewhat weak, but it's not nonexistent, and certainly not by reason of the inadmissibility of e-mail as evidence. -- Michael C. Berch mcb@postmodern.com / mcb@greatcircle.com From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 14 15:42:33 2003 Received: from igtc.igtc.com (igtc.igtc.com [66.166.73.180]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id BC836196C5C for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 15:42:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from igtc.igtc.com (IDENT:Qn2HRBIOGKxZpF5XR48LvDKKjlYCJm5X@localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by igtc.igtc.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h7EMgW90024967; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 15:42:32 -0700 Received: (from pmm@localhost) by igtc.igtc.com (8.12.9/8.12.9/Submit) id h7EMgWFs024966; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 15:42:32 -0700 Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 15:42:32 -0700 From: "Paul M. Moriarty" To: Chuq Von Rospach Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Provider liability in lawsuits [was: Re: list policies about vacation programs] Message-ID: <20030814224232.GB24871@igtc.igtc.com> References: <5.2.0.9.2.20030814142808.02713500@pop.earthlink.net> <6FA9F382-CEA5-11D7-9D95-0003934516A8@plaidworks.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <6FA9F382-CEA5-11D7-9D95-0003934516A8@plaidworks.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.4i X-Archive-Number: 200308/63 X-Sequence-Number: 1616 Chuq Von Rospach writes: [...] > > can you sue? Yes. Will you win? depends on the situation. But you most > certainly can sue, and if AOL was asked to step in and terminate the > abuse and didn't, you'd likely win. This isn't much different from the > case Verizon was fighting (and lost) over handing over indentification > info to the RIAA. Or the John Doe lawsuits companies file against > anonymous posters in chatrooms to get discovery capability to gain > their identity (see AquaCool vs. Yahoo), or to stop leaking of > confidential information (see Apple vs. "worker bee"). In which of these cases was the provider sued for damages? Unless I'm missing something I fail to see the relevance to stating that a provider can be held liable for damages. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 14 16:11:22 2003 Received: from consera1.corpnet.consera.com (dsl081-190-082.sea1.dsl.speakeasy.net [64.81.190.82]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id D7F0F1962FA for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 16:11:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: from roger ([192.168.10.58]) by consera1.corpnet.consera.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.0.2195.5329); Thu, 14 Aug 2003 16:11:21 -0700 From: "Roger B.A. Klorese" To: "'Paul M. Moriarty'" , "'Chuq Von Rospach'" Cc: Subject: Re: Provider liability in lawsuits [was: Re: list policies about vacation programs] Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 16:11:21 -0700 Message-ID: <7CEFA9CA4D5BE74586551915EC9C9C3347C0E4@consera1.corpnet.consera.com> 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, Build 10.0.2627 Importance: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1165 In-Reply-To: <20030814224232.GB24871@igtc.igtc.com> X-OriginalArrivalTime: 14 Aug 2003 23:11:21.0181 (UTC) FILETIME=[5FC650D0:01C362B9] X-Archive-Number: 200308/64 X-Sequence-Number: 1617 > From: list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com > [mailto:list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com] On Behalf Of > Paul M. Moriarty > > In which of these cases was the provider sued for damages? > Unless I'm missing something I fail to see the relevance to > stating that a provider can be held liable for damages. There are costs other than damages. Unless the suit is held to be not only unworthy but frivolous, you're out the legal costs, and who can afford that? From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 14 16:46:23 2003 Received: from ntcorp.com (ntcorp.com [198.65.128.165]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0F4F11966BD for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 10:56:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (fidelman@localhost) by ntcorp.com (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id h7DHupw16359; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 13:56:51 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 13:56:51 -0400 (EDT) From: Miles Fidelman X-X-Sender: To: Bernie Cosell Cc: listmanagers Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs In-Reply-To: <3F3A3DAF.3149.17F8505@localhost> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Archive-Number: 200308/65 X-Sequence-Number: 1618 Hey Bernie :-) On Wed, 13 Aug 2003, Bernie Cosell wrote: > > ..and personally, there are times > > that I post something to a list and want to know that certain people > > haven't seen it -- the impact on the list and the subscribers is minimal > > (as compared to autoresponses that cause mail loops) > > That last is true, but if this became common do you really want hundreds, or > thousands, of vacation messages in response to a post to a list, on the off > chance that you'll be able to pick out 'certain people' from the mess that > comes back? I haven't found it a problem. I'm on a LOT of lists, and post a reasonable amount, and so far the volume of vacation messages I get is in the noise, as compared to, say, the volume of spam I get. On the other hand, the occaisional vacation robot that replies to one of the lists I run is a nightmare - mail loops are not fun. Now, on a more practical note, how would people on this list recommend configuring an autoresponder so that it ignores list traffic entirely, short of having to configure each list individually? Miles From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 14 17:12:32 2003 Received: from grassyhill.org (grassyhill.org [208.231.0.71]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 23B37196682 for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:36:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [192.168.0.22] (lyme_fw [204.60.148.242]) by grassyhill.org (8.11.0/8.11.0) with ESMTP id h7EHaUm48388 for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 13:36:30 -0400 (EDT) X-Envelope-To: Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 13:36:28 -0400 From: Tom Neff To: listmanagers Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Message-ID: <135775015.1060868188@[192.168.0.22]> X-Mailer: Mulberry/3.1.0b4 (Win32) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; FORMAT=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline X-Archive-Number: 200308/66 X-Sequence-Number: 1619 This thread seems to have drifted. I think the original complaint was that list postings were generating out-of-list vacation responses directly to posters, and not to the list or any list admin address. I don't really care about manifestos on what other people's email software ought to do. We will never be able to control that. This is a list managers list and the focus ought to be on what can do as list managers to avoid the problem or cope when it arises. One drastic option is to cloak the email address of the author of each posting so that vacationing members' mail software, however rudely configured, will only be able to respond to the list addresses. This can be done so that human beings wanting to send a private response to a list poster can 'figure out' where to send it, while autoresponders are out of luck. Another technique, as I said before, is to make sure you post fairly frequently (definitely once per week, preferably Mondays or Fridays) to lists you administer, so that you see any autoresponses that other posters are seeing. Also, you can impress upon your members (in whatever periodic FAQ-type posting you have) that they should suspend their delivery when they're out of the office rather than using 'vacation', AND that they should immediately forward any vacation autoresponses they receive straight to you as list manager, so that you can deal with it. My personal policy is this: * Direct-to-poster vacation autoresponses result in an instant nomail for the offender, because I can't have that inflicted on my members. * To-list (posting or admin address) vacation responses are caught and held for inspection. * If someone is (a) a Digest recipient and (b) on a SHORT vacation (a couple of days, like a business trip) then I do nothing. I don't mind eating a couple of messages in exchange for not getting into a big thing over it. * But if someone is (a) getting individual messages or (b) away for more than a few days, I nomail them. When they get back, they either silently reactivate themselves or send me an inquiry; in the latter case I tell them what happened and why, and suggest they do it themselves next time. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 14 17:15:22 2003 Received: from plaidworks.com (www.plaidworks.com [64.81.78.180]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1072C19672F for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 08:35:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (dsl081-078-186.sfo1.dsl.speakeasy.net [64.81.78.186]) by plaidworks.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h7DFYZvj023350; Wed, 13 Aug 2003 08:34:35 -0700 (PDT) Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 08:34:34 -0700 Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v552) Cc: Chuq Von Rospach , listmanagers To: JC Dill From: Chuq Von Rospach In-Reply-To: <6.0.0.10.0.20030813075308.046d67a0@127.0.0.1> Message-Id: Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.552) X-Archive-Number: 200308/67 X-Sequence-Number: 1620 my policy is simple: if you mailbot a mailing list message, you get unsubscribed to make it stop. It doesn't matter to me if it's to the list or to posters that report it to me. It's wrong, so I'll stop delivery because of it. When they come back from vacation, they can resubscribe if they want. If it happens from the same account twice, they can't resubscribe a third time. Once is a mistake. Twice is not caring. I used to try to be nice about this, and found it got me nowhere. Unsubscriptions and warnings seem to be needed to effect change, or at least protect my list users from those who won't change. And as bill cosby so nicely noted once, "parents don't want justice. they want quiet". I'll take quiet for $20. On Wednesday, August 13, 2003, at 08:04 AM, JC Dill wrote: > A few days ago a vacation program started replying to every message > posted, sending the reply back *to the list* (not to the message > author). > From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 14 17:17:42 2003 Received: from turkey.mail.pas.earthlink.net (turkey.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.126]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3154D1965AE for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 12:23:58 -0700 (PDT) Received: from 66-215-205-105.riv-eres.charterpipeline.net ([66.215.205.105] helo=lehel.goldmark.private) by turkey.mail.pas.earthlink.net with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1) id 19nNhR-0007lF-00 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 12:23:53 -0700 Received: from betty.goldmark.private ([192.168.1.51]) by lehel.goldmark.private with esmtp (Exim 3.13 #1) id 19nNhR-00074b-00 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 12:23:53 -0700 Received: from jeffrey (helo=localhost) by betty.goldmark.private with local-esmtp (Exim 4.10) id HJMJ7T-0008DI-00 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 12:23:53 -0700 Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 12:23:53 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeffrey Goldberg X-X-Sender: jeffrey@betty.goldmark.private Reply-To: Jeffrey Goldberg To: List Managers Mailing list Subject: Don't feed Troll: [Was: list policies about vacation programs] In-Reply-To: <200308141717.KAA00251@eskimo.com> Message-ID: References: <200308141717.KAA00251@eskimo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Archive-Number: 200308/68 X-Sequence-Number: 1621 On Thu, 14 Aug 2003, Berg Oswell trolled: > Are you so technically inept that you can't filter out vacation > autoresponders in your filters? > [...] Does your email reader lack a delete button? Is it fun to troll list managers? Do you get extra points for us taking the bait? The pity is is that you make it hard for those who disagree with me to actually speak up. I would like to hear a reasonable case argued in a reasonable fashion for situations where my (and others') recommendations might be wrong. -j -- Jeffrey Goldberg http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/ Relativism is the triumph of authority over truth, convention over justice Hate spam? Boycott MCI! http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/anti-spam/mci/ From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 14 19:38:04 2003 Received: from sccrmhc13.comcast.net (sccrmhc13.comcast.net [204.127.202.64]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id B8B93196B97 for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 19:38:02 -0700 (PDT) Received: from n5470.pinefields.com (pcp03067768pcs.frncna01.pa.comcast.net[68.81.198.80](untrusted sender)) by comcast.net (sccrmhc13) with SMTP id <20030815023801016009d7p3e>; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 02:38:01 +0000 Message-Id: <5.2.1.1.0.20030814223711.00b41c60@wxsat> X-Sender: pavilion@wxsat X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.2.1 Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 22:37:56 -0400 To: , From: "Richard B. Emerson" Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed X-Archive-Number: 200308/69 X-Sequence-Number: 1622 Amen! With that, I'm outta here until sanity returns, after the end of the summer silly season. At 06:22 PM 8/14/2003 -0400, mfidelman@ntcorp.com wrote: >It occurs to me that, over the past few days, I've received more email on >this one topic, from this one list, than I've received vacation messages >from all sources combined. > >Miles From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 14 20:04:57 2003 Received: from plaidworks.com (www.plaidworks.com [64.81.78.180]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7FE7D196ABB for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 20:04:56 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (dsl081-078-186.sfo1.dsl.speakeasy.net [64.81.78.186]) by plaidworks.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h7F34Tvj023273; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 20:04:29 -0700 (PDT) Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 20:04:28 -0700 Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v552) Cc: Chuq Von Rospach , , To: "Richard B. Emerson" From: Chuq Von Rospach In-Reply-To: <5.2.1.1.0.20030814223711.00b41c60@wxsat> Message-Id: <2EF42E4C-CECD-11D7-8FDB-0003934516A8@plaidworks.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.552) X-Archive-Number: 200308/70 X-Sequence-Number: 1623 (specifically: [...] I've always wondered about: when a group of people on a list get into a topic and really start a lively conversation, someone invariably pops up and tells them all to shut up; it's as if they think the list is there to be subscribed to, but not really used. [...]) On Thursday, August 14, 2003, at 07:37 PM, Richard B. Emerson wrote: > Amen! With that, I'm outta here until sanity returns, after the end > of the summer silly season. > > At 06:22 PM 8/14/2003 -0400, mfidelman@ntcorp.com wrote: >> It occurs to me that, over the past few days, I've received more >> email on >> this one topic, from this one list, than I've received vacation >> messages >> from all sources combined. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Fri Aug 15 00:52:17 2003 Received: from mail-svr1.cs.utah.edu (brahma.cs.utah.edu [155.99.198.200]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9C8E9196C40 for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 00:52:15 -0700 (PDT) Received: from vitesse.cs.utah.edu (vitesse.cs.utah.edu [155.99.197.71]) by mail-svr1.cs.utah.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id DB1B334769 for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 01:52:14 -0600 (MDT) Received: by vitesse.cs.utah.edu (Postfix, from userid 124) id 98BA8118357; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 01:52:14 -0600 (MDT) From: "Mark J. Bradakis" To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: That's nice Message-Id: <20030815075214.98BA8118357@vitesse.cs.utah.edu> Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 01:52:14 -0600 (MDT) X-Archive-Number: 200308/71 X-Sequence-Number: 1624 Here we go again: <<< 554-(RLY:B1) The information presently available to AOL indicates this <<< 554-server is generating high volumes of member complaints from AOL's <<< 554-member base. Based on AOL's Unsolicited Bulk E-mail policy at <<< 554-http://www.aol.com/info/bulkemail.html AOL may not accept further <<< 554-e-mail transactions from this server or domain. For more information, <<< 554 please visit http://postmaster.info.aol.com. At this rate, aol.com is going in the DISCARD pile RealSoonNow. mjb. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Fri Aug 15 01:58:20 2003 Received: from ntcorp.com (ntcorp.com [198.65.128.165]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 22741196B8A for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 01:58:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (fidelman@localhost) by ntcorp.com (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id h7F8wIZ18565 for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 04:58:18 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 04:58:18 -0400 (EDT) From: Miles Fidelman X-X-Sender: To: Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs In-Reply-To: <2EF42E4C-CECD-11D7-8FDB-0003934516A8@plaidworks.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Archive-Number: 200308/72 X-Sequence-Number: 1625 On Thu, 14 Aug 2003, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > > > (specifically: [...] I've always wondered about: when a group of people > on a list get into a topic and really start a lively conversation, > someone invariably pops up and tells them all to shut up; it's as if > they think the list is there to be subscribed to, but not really used. > [...]) Chuq... a nice piece of writing ..Miles Regarding the current thread: we haven't gotten anywhere near the point where people are invoking Nazi analogies :-) Miles From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Fri Aug 15 02:44:03 2003 Received: from mx1.eskimo.com (mx1.eskimo.com [204.122.16.48]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 345CC195B2A for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 02:44:02 -0700 (PDT) Received: from eskimo.com (berg@eskimo.com [204.122.16.13]) by mx1.eskimo.com (8.9.3/8.8.8) with ESMTP id CAA12671 for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 02:44:01 -0700 From: Berg Oswell Received: (from berg@localhost) by eskimo.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) id CAA04176 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 02:44:01 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 02:44:01 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <200308150944.CAA04176@eskimo.com> To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs X-Archive-Number: 200308/73 X-Sequence-Number: 1626 Bernie Cosell wrote: > What's "unfair" -- if you misbehave and for whatever reason piss > off/irritate enough of the other listmembers, how is dropping you off > the list acting arbitrarily? If the irritation is being relayed through the list, then by all means, it's quite fair to drop someone. But how is it fair to drop someone off of a list for their activities off of that list? Granted, the reply the autoresponder sent was in response to list traffic; But since the auto-response didn't go through the list server, it doesn't involve the list. Therefore the list owner has no business getting involved; If people have complaints, they should go to the ISP the auto-responder is running on, not the list-owner. When you sign up for something online, how much authority are you granting the person who runs that service? From the majority of the opinions on this issue, the answer seems to be "total authority over everything I send or say". But turn the problem around: If you sign up for a mailing list, or sign up with an ISP, or subscribe to a funny-picture-of-the-day service...how much authority do the owners of those services have over your activities that do not travel through those services? If I sign up with, say, Earthlink, but also buy DSL connectivity from Qwest, does Earthlink have any right to tell me what I can send through Qwest, that does not travel across Earthlink's portion of the internet? How about if I'm discussing something that was on an Earthlink chatroom with someone who was also in that chatroom, but not using Earthlink to do it? If I use my AT&T local phone line to dial in to Earthlink, and do something that isn't against the TOS at Earthlink (that does not involve Qwest's network at all) but IS against Qwest's TOS, does Qwest have any right to terminate my broadband account for what I did on Earthlink? The answer is no. And the same thing applies to a list-owner, when someone does something they dislike off-list. The list-owner has authority over the list, and authority over the subscribers for their activities on that list...but that authority ends very sharply where the list ends. If you choose to exercise authority you do not have anyway, that is arbitrary and unfair. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Fri Aug 15 02:52:58 2003 Received: from mx1.eskimo.com (mx1.eskimo.com [204.122.16.48]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3350B195F1E for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 02:52:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: from eskimo.com (berg@eskimo.com [204.122.16.13]) by mx1.eskimo.com (8.9.3/8.8.8) with ESMTP id CAA15522 for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 02:52:56 -0700 From: Berg Oswell Received: (from berg@localhost) by eskimo.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) id CAA04359 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 02:52:56 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 02:52:56 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <200308150952.CAA04359@eskimo.com> To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs X-Archive-Number: 200308/74 X-Sequence-Number: 1627 You wrote: > May I have your permission to quote your message on or from my rant on > this matter? Sure. > You must be using the words "polite" and "proper" in a ways that are > unfamiliar to me. As for politeness...I've often been in conversation with people by email; More than once, the other end of the conversation (sometimes multiple ends, in large conversations) has suddenly gone out of town, and simply vanishes for several weeks. This is intensely annoying, especially when I need their answer for something; I send them an email, and it hits their mailbox after they leave. No notification, nothing to say whether they were hit by a bus or merely left on one, nothing. On the other side of it, I have very bad short term memory, and I often forget to let everybody know that needs to know when I go out of town. I use an auto-responder just for this reason. So that I don't have to remember the email addresses of 100-odd people that might need to know I'll be gone. The advantage of the auto-responder is that the people who don't send me email while I am out of town usually don't need to know I'm gone...and those that do will recieve one email saying so, no matter how many things they send me. I can and do filter responses, since a list for posting fanfics has no need to know I'm not reading...but one I discuss things on might; But even then, the responses are individual, not to the list. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Fri Aug 15 02:56:05 2003 Received: from mx1.eskimo.com (mx1.eskimo.com [204.122.16.48]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 69F72196AFD for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 02:56:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from eskimo.com (berg@eskimo.com [204.122.16.13]) by mx1.eskimo.com (8.9.3/8.8.8) with ESMTP id CAA16815 for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 02:56:03 -0700 From: Berg Oswell Received: (from berg@localhost) by eskimo.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) id CAA04404 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 02:56:03 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 02:56:03 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <200308150956.CAA04404@eskimo.com> To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs X-Archive-Number: 200308/75 X-Sequence-Number: 1628 Paul Russell wrote: > Perhaps this sounds arrogant, but the fact is, we are providing a free > service on our own time, and we believe we have both the right and the > obligation to determine how that service is used. Most of our > subscribers apparently share our belief that it is wholly inappropriate > to send an OOO in response to a list posting, because more than half of > the complaints sent to the list owners are about OOOs. Sending something, anything, off-list does not use your service. Do your list rules specifically forbid the use of auto-responders by people on the list? If so, then you can ban someone for using one, if the penalty for using one, in the rules they agreed to, specify banning. But if it's not in the rules, then you have no right to govern someone's activities off-list. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Fri Aug 15 03:00:57 2003 Received: from mx1.eskimo.com (mx1.eskimo.com [204.122.16.48]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 949D1196BF0 for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 03:00:56 -0700 (PDT) Received: from eskimo.com (berg@eskimo.com [204.122.16.13]) by mx1.eskimo.com (8.9.3/8.8.8) with ESMTP id DAA18005 for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 03:00:55 -0700 From: Berg Oswell Received: (from berg@localhost) by eskimo.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) id DAA04738 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 03:00:55 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 03:00:55 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <200308151000.DAA04738@eskimo.com> To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Don't feed Troll: [Was: list policies about vacation programs] X-Archive-Number: 200308/76 X-Sequence-Number: 1629 Jeffrey Goldberg wrote: > Is it fun to troll list managers? Do you get extra points for us taking > the bait? I don't know...why don't you tell me? The [post of yours that I responded to sure sounded trollish to me... > The pity is is that you make it hard for those who disagree with me to > actually speak up. I would like to hear a reasonable case argued in a > reasonable fashion for situations where my (and others') recommendations > might be wrong. I have been arguing a reasonable case; I just took offense at one of your posts, and responded with a mild, limited-scope flame of it. I am certainly not making it hard for those who disagree with you to speak up; I have been speaking up in disagreement of you...and you call me a troll for doing so. Seems to me that you're the one who is making it hard to speak up and disagree with you. The real pity is that those who disagree are labeled trolls... Since when is offering a dissenting opinion a troll? Do you prefer that everybody agree with you, no matter what, and remain polite even when you are not? From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Fri Aug 15 03:06:14 2003 Received: from mx1.eskimo.com (mx1.eskimo.com [204.122.16.48]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 48E60196DF1 for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 03:06:12 -0700 (PDT) Received: from eskimo.com (berg@eskimo.com [204.122.16.13]) by mx1.eskimo.com (8.9.3/8.8.8) with ESMTP id DAA20138; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 03:06:10 -0700 From: Berg Oswell Received: (from berg@localhost) by eskimo.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) id DAA04863; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 03:06:10 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 03:06:10 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <200308151006.DAA04863@eskimo.com> To: chuqui@plaidworks.com Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Cc: berg@eskimo.com, list-managers@greatcircle.com, pmm@igtc.com X-Archive-Number: 200308/77 X-Sequence-Number: 1630 Chuq Von Raspach wrote: > The burden of proof here is on the people who believe they're safe, not > on me to convince you that you aren't. Any other attitude is asking for > trouble, and IMHO, foolhardy. On the subject of lawsuits; Suppose you did ban someone for some communication they sent that did not violate the list rules, and did not take place on the list. I realize the law applies to governments, not to private citizens, but still...there's the possibility of getting sued for first amendment violations against the person you banned. They'd probably lose, but do you want to stick your neck out that far? Nobody is safe from a lawsuit at any time; Frivolous lawsuits and ones based on an incorrect understanding of the law happen all the time. List-owners have enough trouble within the area where they have undisputed authority (their lists) without borrowing trouble by trying to police everything people do, whether it's on the list or not. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Fri Aug 15 03:15:09 2003 Received: from mx1.eskimo.com (mx1.eskimo.com [204.122.16.48]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 18A8D195FB3 for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 03:15:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: from eskimo.com (berg@eskimo.com [204.122.16.13]) by mx1.eskimo.com (8.9.3/8.8.8) with ESMTP id DAA23819 for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 03:15:06 -0700 From: Berg Oswell Received: (from berg@localhost) by eskimo.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) id DAA05031 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 03:15:07 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 03:15:07 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <200308151015.DAA05031@eskimo.com> To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs X-Archive-Number: 200308/78 X-Sequence-Number: 1631 Miles Fidelman wrote: > I haven't found it a problem. I'm on a LOT of lists, and post a > reasonable amount, and so far the volume of vacation messages I get is > in the noise, as compared to, say, the volume of spam I get. Same here. And I'd rather get deluged by vacation responses than have one person I'm chatting with by email suddenly drop off the net for a couple weeks. > On the other hand, the occaisional vacation robot that replies to one of > the lists I run is a nightmare - mail loops are not fun. I've seen this happen as well; Which is one of the best arguments for a well-designed, properly configured auto-responder. > Now, on a more practical note, how would people on this list recommend > configuring an autoresponder so that it ignores list traffic entirely, > short of having to configure each list individually? In no particular order: 1) Allow the responder to have a file of addresses it is not to respond to. 2) Once a single response is sent, add the recipient address to the do-not-respond list. 3) Ignore any bulk precedence mail; You may or may not extend this to list precedence. 4) Turn it off promptly when you return. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Fri Aug 15 03:23:21 2003 Received: from mx1.eskimo.com (mx1.eskimo.com [204.122.16.48]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 291A3196DAF for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 03:23:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from eskimo.com (berg@eskimo.com [204.122.16.13]) by mx1.eskimo.com (8.9.3/8.8.8) with ESMTP id DAA26892 for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 03:23:15 -0700 From: Berg Oswell Received: (from berg@localhost) by eskimo.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) id DAA05142 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 03:23:11 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 03:23:11 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <200308151023.DAA05142@eskimo.com> To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs X-Archive-Number: 200308/79 X-Sequence-Number: 1632 Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > (specifically: [...] I've always wondered about: when a group of people > on a list get into a topic and really start a lively conversation, > someone invariably pops up and tells them all to shut up; it's as if > they think the list is there to be subscribed to, but not really used. > [...]) I don't understand it either; I've seen it go as far as spam complaints to ISPs. Happened once on a list I used to run; I actually got nasty-grams from three different ISPs over an active discussion of something wholly on-topic for the list. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Fri Aug 15 05:42:30 2003 Received: from grassyhill.org (grassyhill.org [208.231.0.71]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id F33FA19685F for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 05:42:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [192.168.0.22] (lyme_fw [204.60.148.242]) by grassyhill.org (8.11.0/8.11.0) with ESMTP id h7FCgPm96686 for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 08:42:25 -0400 (EDT) X-Envelope-To: Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 08:42:20 -0400 From: Tom Neff To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Message-ID: <204527515.1060936940@[192.168.0.22]> In-Reply-To: <2EF42E4C-CECD-11D7-8FDB-0003934516A8@plaidworks.com> References: <2EF42E4C-CECD-11D7-8FDB-0003934516A8@plaidworks.com> X-Mailer: Mulberry/3.1.0b4 (Win32) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline X-Archive-Number: 200308/80 X-Sequence-Number: 1633 --On Thursday, August 14, 2003 8:04 PM -0700 Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > (specifically: [...] I've always wondered about: when a group of people > on a list get into a topic and really start a lively conversation, > someone invariably pops up and tells them all to shut up; it's as if they > think the list is there to be subscribed to, but not really used. [...]) That's like wondering why some people join lists on concrete topics like Beekeeping and use them to post messages wondering about aspects of list philosophy. Mind you, concrete is not much used in Beekeeping. The alkaline quality of the cement discourages hive formation. Personally, I've always wondered why on this list, and almost no other I'm on, every Reply requires machete'ing back a wild thicket of Cc's and multiple To's for various people who have recently spoken in a thread. It's like we (a bunch of list managers) are trying to do it the PRE-listserv way, with hand managed recipient lists, and occasionally remembering to toss in the list itself as an afterthought. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Fri Aug 15 05:53:28 2003 Received: from argent.heraldsnet.org (argent.heraldsnet.org [64.83.41.80]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id ECBB9196A7A for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 05:53:26 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [192.168.1.15] (gules.heraldsnet.org [192.168.1.15]) by argent.heraldsnet.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 50DFC17 for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 08:53:20 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 08:53:16 -0400 From: Jim Trigg To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Message-ID: <2147483647.1060937596@[192.168.1.15]> In-Reply-To: <200308151015.DAA05031@eskimo.com> References: <200308151015.DAA05031@eskimo.com> X-Mailer: Mulberry/3.0.3 (Mac OS/PPC) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline X-Archive-Number: 200308/81 X-Sequence-Number: 1634 --On Friday, August 15, 2003 03:15 -0700 Berg Oswell wrote: > Miles Fidelman wrote: >> Now, on a more practical note, how would people on this list recommend >> configuring an autoresponder so that it ignores list traffic entirely, >> short of having to configure each list individually? > > In no particular order: > > 1) Allow the responder to have a file of addresses it is not to > respond to. > > 2) Once a single response is sent, add the recipient address to > the do-not-respond list. > > 3) Ignore any bulk precedence mail; You may or may not extend this > to list precedence. > > 4) Turn it off promptly when you return. 5) Ignore messages that contain any List*, Mailing-List* or X-List* headers. Jim -- Jim Trigg, Lord High Everything Else O- /"\ SKA Seigneur Blaise de Cormeilles \ / ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN Silver Nautilus Pursuivant, Atlantia X HELP CURE HTML MAIL Webmaster, Academy of S. Gabriel / \ From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Fri Aug 15 06:31:15 2003 Received: from kanga.nu (kanga.nu [157.22.12.214]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3CDD11965D3 for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 06:30:37 -0700 (PDT) Delivery-date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 06:30:37 -0700 Received: from pcp03381044pcs.groton01.ct.comcast.net ([68.54.123.49]:62022 helo=yabbie) by kanga.nu with asmtp (Exim 4.20 #1 (Debian)) id 19nef6-0004Yf-DT; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 06:30:36 -0700 Received: from yabbie ([127.0.0.1] helo=kanga.nu) by yabbie with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 19nef5-0001Nw-00; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 09:30:35 -0400 To: Chuq Von Rospach Cc: Charlie Summers , list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs In-Reply-To: Message from Chuq Von Rospach of "Thu, 14 Aug 2003 11:43:52 PDT." <40080744-CE87-11D7-9D95-0003934516A8@plaidworks.com> References: <40080744-CE87-11D7-9D95-0003934516A8@plaidworks.com> X-face: ?^_yw@fA`CEX&}--=*&XqXbF-oePvxaT4(kyt\nwM9]{]N!>b^K}-Mb9 YH%saz^>nq5usBlD"s{(.h'_w|U^3ldUq7wVZz$`u>MB(-4$f\a6Eu8.e=Pf\ X-image-url: http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/kanga.face.tiff X-url: http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 09:30:35 -0400 Message-ID: <5327.1060954235@kanga.nu> From: J C Lawrence X-Archive-Number: 200308/82 X-Sequence-Number: 1635 On Thu, 14 Aug 2003 11:43:52 -0700 Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > On Thursday, August 14, 2003, at 10:55 AM, Charlie Summers wrote: >> If you _really_ want to be polite, do NOT send out a vacation message >> to anyone who doesn't absolutely require one. And that, I'm afraid, >> you can NOT automate, since it requires human thought and >> discression. > And this is exactly why I stopped using a vacation bot years ago. I > tell the people who need to know before I leave. I also don't believe > in making it clear to the entire universe that my house and home are > open to visitors (ahem) because I'm not there (even though we have > people visiting and watching and sitting, depending on the trip, my > sitters don't need that excitement, either). Precisely, and that's why I don't use vacation bots of any form. However there does remain a need for some sort of status communications: I currently do/do not have time to do the following sorts of things... be that participate in specific mailing lists, moderate, respond to direct email, etc. Umm, isn't that what .plan files and `finger` are for, or even their more recent incarnations as blogs? -- J C Lawrence ---------(*) Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. claw@kanga.nu He lived as a devil, eh? http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Fri Aug 15 06:34:40 2003 Received: from kanga.nu (kanga.nu [157.22.12.214]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 73E9319685F for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 06:32:49 -0700 (PDT) Delivery-date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 06:32:49 -0700 Received: from pcp03381044pcs.groton01.ct.comcast.net ([68.54.123.49]:62025 helo=yabbie) by kanga.nu with asmtp (Exim 4.20 #1 (Debian)) id 19nehC-00055Q-Ij; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 06:32:46 -0700 Received: from yabbie ([127.0.0.1] helo=kanga.nu) by yabbie with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 19nehB-0001P2-00; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 09:32:45 -0400 To: "Roger B.A. Klorese" Cc: "'Chuq Von Rospach'" , "'Berg Oswell'" , list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs In-Reply-To: Message from "Roger B.A. Klorese" of "Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:38:31 PDT." <7CEFA9CA4D5BE74586551915EC9C9C3347C0CC@consera1.corpnet.consera.com> References: <7CEFA9CA4D5BE74586551915EC9C9C3347C0CC@consera1.corpnet.consera.com> X-face: ?^_yw@fA`CEX&}--=*&XqXbF-oePvxaT4(kyt\nwM9]{]N!>b^K}-Mb9 YH%saz^>nq5usBlD"s{(.h'_w|U^3ldUq7wVZz$`u>MB(-4$f\a6Eu8.e=Pf\ X-image-url: http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/kanga.face.tiff X-url: http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 09:32:45 -0400 Message-ID: <5395.1060954365@kanga.nu> From: J C Lawrence X-Archive-Number: 200308/83 X-Sequence-Number: 1636 On Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:38:31 -0700 Roger B A Klorese wrote: >> I didn't send you an e-mail. I sent a mailing list an e-mail. Why do >> I, as a user of that mail list care that you're not reading it right >> now? > Maybe you don't. > I, as a user of the mail list, do. > And my "I" has as much of a vote as your "I." Which would be interesting and useful if there were anybody collecting or interested in votes -- but in the standard cases not only isn't there anybody, but the people that are about have positively reinforced strong interests in NOT considering votes. -- J C Lawrence ---------(*) Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. claw@kanga.nu He lived as a devil, eh? http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Fri Aug 15 07:02:31 2003 Received: from kanga.nu (kanga.nu [157.22.12.214]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id B8BB5196C4C for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 07:02:29 -0700 (PDT) Delivery-date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 07:02:29 -0700 Received: from pcp03381044pcs.groton01.ct.comcast.net ([68.54.123.49]:62310 helo=yabbie) by kanga.nu with asmtp (Exim 4.20 #1 (Debian)) id 19nf9x-0006RX-5a; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 07:02:29 -0700 Received: from yabbie ([127.0.0.1] helo=kanga.nu) by yabbie with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 19nf9w-0001Uo-00; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 10:02:28 -0400 To: Berg Oswell Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs In-Reply-To: Message from Berg Oswell of "Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:02:37 PDT." <200308141702.KAA29595@eskimo.com> References: <200308141702.KAA29595@eskimo.com> X-face: ?^_yw@fA`CEX&}--=*&XqXbF-oePvxaT4(kyt\nwM9]{]N!>b^K}-Mb9 YH%saz^>nq5usBlD"s{(.h'_w|U^3ldUq7wVZz$`u>MB(-4$f\a6Eu8.e=Pf\ X-image-url: http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/kanga.face.tiff X-url: http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 10:02:28 -0400 Message-ID: <5753.1060956148@kanga.nu> From: J C Lawrence X-Archive-Number: 200308/84 X-Sequence-Number: 1637 On Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:02:37 -0700 (PDT) Berg Oswell wrote: > Is it any of your business, as list owner, what people send off-list? > Even if it's in response to list traffic? Who appointed you the > censor of all that someone else sends? It can be. A lot of this comes down to the character of the list and the shared expectations between the list owner and the list member. In some cases the list moderator has explicit and driving interest, in others he has little to none. I run my lists as extensions of my living room. List members are essentially social guests at a dinner party in my house and are expected to behave as such. How guests treat each other at my house is of interest to me, as well as how they treat each other outside of my house because of things that happened inside. No matter where you misbehave, by whatever criteria I set, I'm quite willing and even eager to kick you out and not invite you back, or to actively recruit you and ask you to attend. My house, my party, my people, my choices. Other lists have different characters, different charters, different relationships with their list members, and even points of legal liability and contractual responsibility. These can colour the waters significantly. Sometimes they chum the waters, but that's another matter for another thread. > If someone misconfigures a vacation autoresponder to spam your > list, then by all means, ban the loser. But what gives you the idea > that you have any right to ban someone from a list for something that > was not sent to the list? How would you feel if someone banned YOU > because they dislike your spam filter? Quite fine in fact -- its already happened to me, twice, and there were no were no surprises or hurt feelings involved. In fact I was recently kicked off a list for admitting that I used a procmail filter to auto-strip the embedded adverts from list posts so I didn't have to see them. All quite acceptable. > Oh, I'm not saying you can't, but if you act arbitrarily and unfairly, > you'll kill your list...who wants to be on a list with an > unpredictable, arrogant list-owner? All list owners are unpredictable and arrogant for some definitions of "list member". All of them. I recently rejected four posts over a 6 week period from a member with a rejection message that summated to: Please support your assertions and use constructive criticism. His posts were ridiculing a recent commercial service launch and were particularly fact-free. Each time he didn't reply except for the last time when he replied with an expletive filled message accusing me of anatomical impossibilities and rank favouritism to said service in my moderation decisions, at which point he unsubscribed himself. During the same period of time I rejected another member's posting with a message ala: Please cite your sources and state an actual contention. After a considerable delay he submitted a new, far meatier and well researched post, obviously based off the first, and accompanied it with an inline comment of thanks to me for the earlier rejection, stating that he hadn't realised how little he knew about the area and how very appreciative he was that I hadn't let him embarrass himself with his prior post. Obviously I'm a capricious, arrogant and carpingly critical petty dictator. Isn't it wonderful? > From what the original poster has said, the guy running the > autoresponder hasn't done anything wrong. If anything, he's being > polite, and letting people who send him mail know that he's on > vacation and can't answer right away. Given the number of rude jerks > on the internet, do you really want to punish someone for being polite > and thoughtful? Good manners are always contextual and "wrong" is always in the eye of the beholder. Always. If you don't define the context you can't define "good manners" -- and robots and author automated systems are not particularly known for their insight or thoughtful characteristics. -- J C Lawrence ---------(*) Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. claw@kanga.nu He lived as a devil, eh? http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Fri Aug 15 07:04:03 2003 Received: from plaidworks.com (www.plaidworks.com [64.81.78.180]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 11FF71969AE for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 07:04:02 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (dsl081-078-186.sfo1.dsl.speakeasy.net [64.81.78.186]) by plaidworks.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h7FE3Jvj002455; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 07:03:19 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 07:03:17 -0700 Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v552) Cc: Chuq Von Rospach , "Roger B.A. Klorese" , "'Berg Oswell'" , list-managers@greatcircle.com To: J C Lawrence From: Chuq Von Rospach In-Reply-To: <5395.1060954365@kanga.nu> Message-Id: <3855CBCA-CF29-11D7-8FDB-0003934516A8@plaidworks.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.552) X-Archive-Number: 200308/85 X-Sequence-Number: 1638 On Friday, August 15, 2003, at 06:32 AM, J C Lawrence wrote: >> And my "I" has as much of a vote as your "I." > > Which would be interesting and useful if there were anybody collecting > or interested in votes -- but in the standard cases not only isn't > there > anybody, but the people that are about have positively reinforced > strong > well, I announced about 2 years ago an intent to do a net-wide survey of mailing list users (sigh). I still plan on doing so. I actually think I'll get to it this fall, too. and we can put this On The List. It'll have to wait until after Mars finishes this close pass, since I plan on spending some quality time losing sleep with the ETX-90... From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Fri Aug 15 07:21:04 2003 Received: from mallard.mail.pas.earthlink.net (mallard.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.48]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0A3E51965D3 for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 07:21:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: from 66-215-205-105.riv-eres.charterpipeline.net ([66.215.205.105] helo=lehel.goldmark.private) by mallard.mail.pas.earthlink.net with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1) id 19nfRs-0000Lw-00; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 07:21:00 -0700 Received: from betty.goldmark.private ([192.168.1.51]) by lehel.goldmark.private with esmtp (Exim 3.13 #1) id 19nfRr-0007LT-00; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 07:20:59 -0700 Received: from jeffrey (helo=localhost) by betty.goldmark.private with local-esmtp (Exim 4.10) id HJNZUZ-0008KT-00; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 07:20:59 -0700 Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 07:20:59 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeffrey Goldberg X-X-Sender: jeffrey@betty.goldmark.private Reply-To: Jeffrey Goldberg To: listmanagers Cc: Miles Fidelman Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Archive-Number: 200308/86 X-Sequence-Number: 1639 [posted and cc'ed] On Wed, 13 Aug 2003, Miles Fidelman wrote: > I haven't found it a problem. I'm on a LOT of lists, and post a > reasonable amount, and so far the volume of vacation messages I get is in > the noise, as compared to, say, the volume of spam I get. I agree that it is currently a minor annoyance, and not a serious problem. But I try to warn against it because it doesn't scale. That is, if everyone on vacation behaved the same way, it would turn into a serious enough problem that people may be reluctant to post to large lists. > Now, on a more practical note, how would people on this list recommend > configuring an autoresponder so that it ignores list traffic entirely, > short of having to configure each list individually? Well, I've put in a shameless plug for my rant twice. But I guess this calls for a third time http://www.goldmark.org/netrants/auto-resp/ The most relevant part is: ================= Proper auto-responders (among other things) shouldn't respond to messages posted to mailing lists. There are several tricks that auto-responders traditionally use to achieve this. 1. They only respond to messages with a specific address in the To: or Cc: fields of an email message. For example, if I set up an auto-responder, I should set it so that it only sends a response to mail that is explicitly addressed to jeffrey@goldberg.org. I could list a handful of alternatives addresses as well to be responded to. Most auto-responders do this by default. ================= That is how autoresponder have been designed since the begining of autoresponders. You tell them only to respond to mail that explicitly names you in the headers. That makes configuration simple and easy. The advantage of this is that you don't have to worry about lists that you might have forgotten. If you are on a list where it might be appropriate to have such autoresponses then you add that list address specfically to the "handful of alternative addressess to be responded to." As I've been trying to say. The problem I and others are complaining about has been solved for decades. I am just asking people to use that solution. -j -- Jeffrey Goldberg http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/ Relativism is the triumph of authority over truth, convention over justice Hate spam? Boycott MCI! http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/anti-spam/mci/ From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Fri Aug 15 07:22:14 2003 Received: from kanga.nu (kanga.nu [157.22.12.214]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id D6FEA196E1F for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 07:22:12 -0700 (PDT) Delivery-date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 07:22:12 -0700 Received: from pcp03381044pcs.groton01.ct.comcast.net ([68.54.123.49]:62481 helo=yabbie) by kanga.nu with asmtp (Exim 4.20 #1 (Debian)) id 19nfT2-0007Yb-Ci; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 07:22:12 -0700 Received: from yabbie ([127.0.0.1] helo=kanga.nu) by yabbie with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 19nfT1-0001Z5-00; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 10:22:11 -0400 To: Berg Oswell Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs In-Reply-To: Message from Berg Oswell of "Fri, 15 Aug 2003 02:44:01 PDT." <200308150944.CAA04176@eskimo.com> References: <200308150944.CAA04176@eskimo.com> X-face: ?^_yw@fA`CEX&}--=*&XqXbF-oePvxaT4(kyt\nwM9]{]N!>b^K}-Mb9 YH%saz^>nq5usBlD"s{(.h'_w|U^3ldUq7wVZz$`u>MB(-4$f\a6Eu8.e=Pf\ X-image-url: http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/kanga.face.tiff X-url: http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 10:22:11 -0400 Message-ID: <6018.1060957331@kanga.nu> From: J C Lawrence X-Archive-Number: 200308/87 X-Sequence-Number: 1640 On Fri, 15 Aug 2003 02:44:01 -0700 (PDT) Berg Oswell wrote: > Bernie Cosell wrote: > If the irritation is being relayed through the list, then by all > means, it's quite fair to drop someone. But how is it fair to drop > someone off of a list for their activities off of that list? People are social creatures. Social structures are rarely, if ever, clearly bounded and delineated. There's not question of fairness here, there are merely questions of social expectation and implication. > Granted, the reply the autoresponder sent was in response to list > traffic; But since the auto-response didn't go through the list > server, it doesn't involve the list. Therefore the list owner has no > business getting involved; If people have complaints, they should go > to the ISP the auto-responder is running on, not the list-owner. If you use some aspect of a service I provide to do something I don't like, in whatever regard, for whatever reason, in whatever manner, then I'm likely to respond. You are using something I provide to do something I don't want. Sounds to me like a perfect excuse for me to stop providing to you so that you won't do that. Maybe you're using the lawn mower I let you borrow to mow down the wild flowers I like on the back forty, or maybe you're using mail from a list I run to do something else that I don't like. Doesn't really matter. I stop letting you borrow the mower, and I stop letting you participate in my list. > When you sign up for something online, how much authority are you > granting the person who runs that service? From the majority of the > opinions on this issue, the answer seems to be "total authority over > everything I send or say". No, just over the service provided and the uses to which it is put or leveraged. > The answer is no. And the same thing applies to a list-owner, when > someone does something they dislike off-list. The list-owner has > authority over the list, and authority over the subscribers for their > activities on that list...but that authority ends very sharply where > the list ends. ...and (partial) authority over the uses the data which flows over that list are put to. Again, people are social critters and social structures are, by nature, not well bounded. Let's take a really trivial and simple example. You run a list. It doesn't matter which and it largely doesn't matter what its topic is. Its just a list. Perhaps its one of Chuq's sports lists, a highly technical geek list, a political debate list or say even a glorified coffee klatch. Doesn't matter. There is a poster on that list who emails every list poster with a female name proposing sexual dalliances etc. This happens entirely off-list, but the messages are (often enough) off-list replies to list messages. On-list this same member is well behaved and perhaps even a quality poster. Would you kick him off? Why, or why not? He's not doing anything offensive on-list after all. > If you choose to exercise authority you do not have anyway, that is > arbitrary and unfair. In almost all cases any decision is preferable to no decision, and decisions can be changed. -- J C Lawrence ---------(*) Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. claw@kanga.nu He lived as a devil, eh? http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Fri Aug 15 07:25:57 2003 Received: from falcon.mail.pas.earthlink.net (falcon.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.74]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 18B3A196EC2 for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 07:25:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: from 66-215-205-105.riv-eres.charterpipeline.net ([66.215.205.105] helo=lehel.goldmark.private) by falcon.mail.pas.earthlink.net with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1) id 19nfWb-0005IA-00 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 07:25:53 -0700 Received: from betty.goldmark.private ([192.168.1.51]) by lehel.goldmark.private with esmtp (Exim 3.13 #1) id 19nfWa-0007LZ-00 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 07:25:52 -0700 Received: from jeffrey (helo=localhost) by betty.goldmark.private with local-esmtp (Exim 4.10) id HJO034-0008KW-00 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 07:25:52 -0700 Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 07:25:52 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeffrey Goldberg X-X-Sender: jeffrey@betty.goldmark.private Reply-To: Jeffrey Goldberg To: listmanagers Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs In-Reply-To: <135775015.1060868188@[192.168.0.22]> Message-ID: References: <135775015.1060868188@[192.168.0.22]> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Archive-Number: 200308/88 X-Sequence-Number: 1641 On Thu, 14 Aug 2003, Tom Neff wrote: > you can impress upon your members (in whatever periodic FAQ-type posting > you have) that they should suspend their delivery when they're out of > the office rather than using 'vacation', I disagree. That is asking too much. The "vacation" program will do the right thing on its own. It is only users of poorly designed autoresponders who need to worry about suspending delivery. Properly designed autoresponders will do the right thing with no special action or effort. -j -- Jeffrey Goldberg http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/ Relativism is the triumph of authority over truth, convention over justice Hate spam? Boycott MCI! http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/anti-spam/mci/ From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Fri Aug 15 08:38:34 2003 Received: from alpha3.runestone.net (alpha3.runestone.net [206.147.20.7]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0A67E195A0A for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 08:38:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from 192.168.0.2 (public194.rea-alp.com [63.175.64.194]) by alpha3.runestone.net (8.12.6/8.12.6) with ESMTP id h7FFcVJZ032605 for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 10:38:31 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from jay@rea-alp.com) From: Jay Clark Organization: REA-ALP Internet Services To: listmanagers Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 10:38:31 -0500 User-Agent: KMail/1.5 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200308151038.31051.jay@rea-alp.com> X-Archive-Number: 200308/89 X-Sequence-Number: 1642 How can I get off this list? From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Fri Aug 15 09:12:08 2003 Received: from plaidworks.com (www.plaidworks.com [64.81.78.180]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 48810196BF1 for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 09:12:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (dsl081-078-186.sfo1.dsl.speakeasy.net [64.81.78.186]) by plaidworks.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h7FGAwvj004399; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 09:10:58 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 09:10:57 -0700 Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v552) Cc: Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@greatcircle.com, Berg Oswell To: J C Lawrence From: Chuq Von Rospach In-Reply-To: <6018.1060957331@kanga.nu> Message-Id: <0DF896A0-CF3B-11D7-B575-0003934516A8@plaidworks.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.552) X-Archive-Number: 200308/90 X-Sequence-Number: 1643 On Friday, August 15, 2003, at 07:22 AM, J C Lawrence wrote: > > People are social creatures. Social structures are rarely, if ever, > clearly bounded and delineated. There's not question of fairness here, > there are merely questions of social expectation and implication. Beyond that -- if you are managing a group of some sort, your responsibility is to make decisions in a way that when the needs/interests of the group are in conflict with the needs/interests of an individual in that group, the group's needs/interests take precedence. There are always individuals that have trouble with that concept, assuming or demanding that they be the center of the universe, or at least be catered to. Unless the group is *about you*, any group of size > 2 is about building a consensus compromise among the members so things work as well as possible for as many as possible. Any individual who can't/won't accept that compromise isn't really part of the group, and is a destructive force on the group. Some users don't like not being the center of the universe, and generally blame the admin for having to point out that reality. It's part of the job. But the primary responsibility of the admin is to make sure the group flourishes, not that it caters to the needs of every individual who wants to be part of the group. Not all individuals are going to fit into the group. that's pure human nature, and making these groups virtual doesn't change that reality (although we sure tried, didn't we?) >> server, it doesn't involve the list. Therefore the list owner has no >> business getting involved; Baloney. To push an analogy into an unrecognizable form to make a point, the group admin is the sheepdog; the wolf has just told the sheepdog had has no right to interfere with his interactions with the sheep, because the wolf didn't attack the sheepdog directly. I, as sheepdog, don't particularly care what the wolf's attitude towards this is. Which tends to piss off the wolves, but I'm only interested in keeping the sheep happy. >> When you sign up for something online, how much authority are you >> granting the person who runs that service? From the majority of the >> opinions on this issue, the answer seems to be "total authority over >> everything I send or say". > > No, just over the service provided and the uses to which it is put or > leveraged. I don't care, as long as you don't cause problems for the group. If you follow the rules set out for the group, and I don't get complaints, then things are fine. And under most circumstances, even if you don't fully follow the rules and I don't get cmoplaints, things are still fine. But when I start getting complaints.... > There is a poster on that list who emails every list poster with a > female name proposing sexual dalliances etc. This happens entirely > off-list, but the messages are (often enough) off-list replies to > list > messages. On-list this same member is well behaved and perhaps even > a > quality poster. > > Would you kick him off? Why, or why not? He's not doing anything > offensive on-list after all. He gets a warning. if it continues, he gets nuked. if it still continues, I (as sheepdog) go to his isp, his boss, his wife, his CPA, his lawyer, whatever it takes, as representative of my group of users to get him to stop, because it's my responsibility to protect them, and I have an ability to carry the cause of the group, which lends force to it that a set of individuals can't do. And on a purely pragmatic level, if my group gets a reputation for being a place where people are harrassed and abused and nobody does anything about it -- my group dies. Everyone leaves and goes somewhere safer. Except the trolls and wolves. >> If you choose to exercise authority you do not have anyway, that is >> arbitrary and unfair. > > In almost all cases any decision is preferable to no decision, and > decisions can be changed. > In all cases the decision of the chosen leader is preferable to leaving it to random decisions by people who might not be interested in making the group better. or even care if the group survives. Someone has to be the mommy. Groups that don't have that tend to turn into Lord of the Flies, or an empty lecture hall with the doors open to the weather. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Fri Aug 15 09:13:04 2003 Received: from plaidworks.com (www.plaidworks.com [64.81.78.180]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 59D83196C8A for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 09:13:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (dsl081-078-186.sfo1.dsl.speakeasy.net [64.81.78.186]) by plaidworks.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h7FGCivj004416; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 09:12:44 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 09:12:43 -0700 Subject: Re: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v552) Cc: Chuq Von Rospach , listmanagers To: Jay Clark From: Chuq Von Rospach In-Reply-To: <200308151038.31051.jay@rea-alp.com> Message-Id: <4D5F3AE4-CF3B-11D7-B575-0003934516A8@plaidworks.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.552) X-Archive-Number: 200308/91 X-Sequence-Number: 1644 On Friday, August 15, 2003, at 08:38 AM, Jay Clark wrote: > How can I get off this list? > yuo can't. you're here with us forever. relax and enjoy the show. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Fri Aug 15 11:39:21 2003 Received: from penguin.postmodern.com (server.postmodern.com [216.240.39.3]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id AC3CD196E39 for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 11:39:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from postmodern.com (sfo.postmodern.com [216.240.39.8]) by penguin.postmodern.com (8.12.8/mcb-20021115-1) with ESMTP id h7FIdfPw020971 for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 11:39:41 -0700 Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 11:39:40 -0700 Subject: Re: How can I get off this list? Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v552) From: "Michael C. Berch" To: List Managers List Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In-Reply-To: <200308151038.31051.jay@rea-alp.com> Message-Id: X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.552) X-Archive-Number: 200308/92 X-Sequence-Number: 1645 On Friday, August 15, 2003, at 08:38 AM, Jay Clark wrote: > How can I get off this list? OK, there's another string to put in the Majordomo administrivia filter... -- MCB From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Fri Aug 15 12:25:03 2003 Received: from mail.messagingengine.com (out4.smtp.messagingengine.com [66.111.4.28]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 26634195F5B for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 12:25:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail.messagingengine.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by localhost.localdomain (Postfix) with ESMTP id CAB2ACF120; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 15:14:06 -0400 (EDT) Received: from 10.202.2.150 ([10.202.2.150] helo=mail.messagingengine.com) by messagingengine.com with SMTP; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 15:14:06 -0400 X-Epoch: 1060974846 X-Sasl-enc: mUHLI743du/f7v8W6y4HRw Received: from [192.168.1.110] (adsl-67-127-15-66.dsl.lsan03.pacbell.net [67.127.15.66]) by mail.messagingengine.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1D5FFB5EAA; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 14:28:00 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 11:28:00 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeffrey Goldberg X-X-Sender: admin@admins-computer.local Reply-To: Jeffrey Goldberg To: Berg Oswell Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Don't feed Troll: [Was: list policies about vacation programs] In-Reply-To: <200308151000.DAA04738@eskimo.com> Message-ID: References: <200308151000.DAA04738@eskimo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Archive-Number: 200308/93 X-Sequence-Number: 1646 [posted and mailed] I unequivocally apologize for the troll accusation message. Indeed, I hoped that it never would actually get to the list. (I'd fortunately posted from the wrong adddress and so it required manual approval and I'd tried to ask the list manager not to approve it, but was either too late or too unclear.) In either case, I did compose and try to send it to the list. I was wrong to do so. I would also say that since the time of my composing that inappropriate message (very early in the thread), it has become even more clear that my early assessment was way off base. My apologies to you and to other list members for my very ill-advised post. -j -- Jeffrey Goldberg http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/ Relativism is the triumph of convention over truth, authority over justice Hate spam? Boycott MCI http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/anti-spam/mci/ From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Fri Aug 15 19:27:26 2003 Received: from pickering.cc.nd.edu (pickering.cc.nd.edu [129.74.250.225]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5C644196B11 for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 19:27:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nd.edu (vpn-9-10.vpn.nd.edu [129.74.9.10]) (authenticated bits=0) by pickering.cc.nd.edu (Switch-3.1.0/Switch-3.1.0) with ESMTP id h7G2RGNM002359 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=RC4-MD5 bits=128 verify=NO) for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2003 21:27:16 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <3F3D9680.4000806@nd.edu> Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 21:27:12 -0500 From: Paul Russell Organization: University of Notre Dame User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5b) Gecko/20030723 Thunderbird/0.1 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs References: <200308150956.CAA04404@eskimo.com> In-Reply-To: <200308150956.CAA04404@eskimo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-ND-MTA-Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 21:27:17 -0500 (EST) X-ND-Virus-Scan: engine v4.2.40; dat v4285 X-Archive-Number: 200308/94 X-Sequence-Number: 1647 Berg Oswell wrote: > > Sending something, anything, off-list does not use your service. > > Do your list rules specifically forbid the use of auto-responders > by people on the list? If so, then you can ban someone for using one, if > the penalty for using one, in the rules they agreed to, specify banning. > But if it's not in the rules, then you have no right to govern someone's > activities off-list. > The OOO was triggered by a posting to the list. It does not matter that it was sent off-list. If the OOO-sender had not been subscribed to the list, or if the OOO-sender had configured the auto-responder to ignore list postings, or if the OOO-sender had set his/her list subscription to NOMAIL or DIGEST before leaving, the OOO would not have been sent. We do not actively monitor the list for OOOs, but if the list owners receive complaints about OOOs sent in response to list postings, we take appropriate action. We may decide to notify the OOO-sender that his/her subscription has been set to NOMAIL, and that he/she can reset it when he/she disables the OOO-bot. If we have had previous problems with the subscriber, we may decide that it is time to dump the problem child and block future subscription requests. It is our list and we can run it any way we like. Those who do not like the way we run it are free to leave. If we run it in an arbitrary, capricious, and boneheaded manner, we will eventually lose all our subscribers. People do not use a free service because it is free; they use it because it is useful. If it ceases to be useful, they will stop using it. In another posting to this list, you suggested that the recipient of an unwanted OOO should complain to the OOO-sender's Internet service provider. Do you honestly believe that any ISP is going to do anything at all about a single complaint regarding a single unwanted OOO? Even those who actually do something about real abuse reports are likely send your report to the Big Bit Bucket in the Sky. I am the owner or co-owner of several lists, including a discussion list with over 1200 international subscribers who post approximately 150 messages per day; the primary sysadmin of a list server with over 9,000 lists and half a million subscribers; and the primary postmaster for an .edu domain with approximately 20,000 email accounts and a quarter of a million local deliveries per day. I have no doubt there are others on this list with more responsibility and more experience; I simply want to make it clear that my position on this issue is based on actual experience, not some philosophical ideal of The Way The World Ought To Be. -- pdr From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Sat Aug 16 08:44:19 2003 Received: from mx2.eskimo.com (mx2.eskimo.com [204.122.16.49]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3BDD2195F50 for ; Sat, 16 Aug 2003 08:40:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: from eskimo.com (root@eskimo.com [204.122.16.13]) by mx2.eskimo.com (8.9.1a/8.8.8) with ESMTP id IAA06193 for ; Sat, 16 Aug 2003 08:40:02 -0700 (PDT) From: Berg Oswell Received: (from berg@localhost) by eskimo.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) id IAA19922 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sat, 16 Aug 2003 08:37:45 -0700 (PDT) Date: Sat, 16 Aug 2003 08:37:45 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <200308161537.IAA19922@eskimo.com> To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs X-Archive-Number: 200308/95 X-Sequence-Number: 1648 J C Lawrence wrote: > be that participate in specific mailing lists, moderate, respond to > direct email, etc. Umm, isn't that what .plan files and `finger` are > for, or even their more recent incarnations as blogs? Finger hasn't worked on most systems for years... From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Sat Aug 16 09:00:11 2003 Received: from mx2.eskimo.com (mx2.eskimo.com [204.122.16.49]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 94F99195FC2 for ; Sat, 16 Aug 2003 09:00:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: from eskimo.com (root@eskimo.com [204.122.16.13]) by mx2.eskimo.com (8.9.1a/8.8.8) with ESMTP id JAA10717 for ; Sat, 16 Aug 2003 09:00:07 -0700 (PDT) From: Berg Oswell Received: (from berg@localhost) by eskimo.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) id IAA20678 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sat, 16 Aug 2003 08:55:18 -0700 (PDT) Date: Sat, 16 Aug 2003 08:55:18 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <200308161555.IAA20678@eskimo.com> To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs X-Archive-Number: 200308/96 X-Sequence-Number: 1649 Chuq Von Rospach wrote: >> server, it doesn't involve the list. Therefore the list owner has no >> business getting involved; > Baloney. To push an analogy into an unrecognizable form to make a > point, the group admin is the sheepdog; the wolf has just told the > sheepdog had has no right to interfere with his interactions with the > sheep, because the wolf didn't attack the sheepdog directly. Baloney (or bologna, if you prefer). Your analogy is flawed; Your hypothetical sheepdog isn't dealing with a wolf in this case; He just tore the throat out of one of his own sheep because it strayed five feet from the rest of the flock. Worse, the same logic that caused him to attack his own sheep will inevitably lead him to attack his master, and the sheep belonging to his master's neighbors. Your analogy describes a sheepdog that needs to be put down, not one I'd want guarding my sheep... > towards this is. Which tends to piss off the wolves, but I'm only > interested in keeping the sheep happy. I suppose you can argue that since dead sheep don't feel anything, including unhappy, this may be the case. And if a wolf comes sniffing around your flock (stealing list addresses to spam them, for example) then by all means sheepdog, run him off. But what do you do when the sheepdog dislikes his sheep's behavior, so instead of gently herding them back into place, he starts killing them? >>> When you sign up for something online, how much authority are you >>> granting the person who runs that service? From the majority of the >>> opinions on this issue, the answer seems to be "total authority over >>> everything I send or say". >> >> No, just over the service provided and the uses to which it is put or >> leveraged. > I don't care, as long as you don't cause problems for the group. If you > follow the rules set out for the group, and I don't get complaints, > then things are fine. And under most circumstances, even if you don't > fully follow the rules and I don't get cmoplaints, things are still > fine. But when I start getting complaints.... But what do you do when people start complaining about behavior that is not against the rules? > He gets a warning. if it continues, he gets nuked. if it still > continues, I (as sheepdog) go to his isp, his boss, his wife, his CPA, > his lawyer, whatever it takes, as representative of my group of users > to get him to stop, because it's my responsibility to protect them, and > I have an ability to carry the cause of the group, which lends force to > it that a set of individuals can't do. You have an ability, but no right. Just because you CAN, does not mean you SHOULD, or have any RIGHT. If it happens off-list, then it is none of your business. How would you feel if you were the victim of some out of control admin type, who acts just like you say you do? > And on a purely pragmatic level, if my group gets a reputation for > being a place where people are harrassed and abused and nobody does > anything about it -- my group dies. Everyone leaves and goes somewhere > safer. Except the trolls and wolves. But the harassment is not taking place in your group, it is taking place outside of it. If you run a bar, then you can dictate what behavior is acceptable in it...but it's none of your business what people say to eachother at someone else's bar. >> In almost all cases any decision is preferable to no decision, and >> decisions can be changed. In other words, doing anything, even the wrong thing, is better than doing nothing? > In all cases the decision of the chosen leader is preferable to leaving > it to random decisions by people who might not be interested in making > the group better. or even care if the group survives. Wrong. The decision of a chosen leader is only preferable within that leader's authority; If the leader is exceeding his/her authority, then the group can only suffer, not benefit, from the decision. > Someone has to be the mommy. Groups that don't have that tend to turn > into Lord of the Flies, or an empty lecture hall with the doors open to > the weather. The mommy may have the responsibility to police the list, but you are arguing that he/she also has the responsibility to police everything people do, even outside of the lecture hall. How would you feel if you joined a club and then found out that the club leader, for violating a club rule (or even just annoying the leader) was trying to smear you? Get you fired, get you evicted, ruin your reputation, etc? From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Sat Aug 16 09:43:23 2003 Received: from mail3.panix.com (mail3.panix.com [166.84.1.74]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id B8AF9195AE2 for ; Sat, 16 Aug 2003 09:43:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mailspool3.panix.com (mailspool3.panix.com [166.84.1.78]) by mail3.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 09F47983F8 for ; Sat, 16 Aug 2003 12:43:21 -0400 (EDT) Received: from ord351473 (cpe-66-87-152-33.il.sprintbbd.net [66.87.152.33]) by mailspool3.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2C102F5E84 for ; Sat, 16 Aug 2003 12:43:21 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <010501c36415$770ae780$21985742@ord351473> From: "David W. Tamkin" To: "listmanagers" References: Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Date: Sat, 16 Aug 2003 11:43:01 -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 6.00.2800.1123 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1123 X-Archive-Number: 200308/97 X-Sequence-Number: 1650 Tom Neff wrote, : When they get back, they either silently : reactivate themselves or send me an inquiry ... and Chuq Von Rospach said, | When they come back from vacation, they can | resubscribe if they want. But do they? I found that they rarely do. Virtually none who send vacation replies to lists or to posters -- whether they're inept with email, constrained by clue-proof sysadmins, or just thoughtless in their treatment of other list members -- ever react to the sudden dry-up of their subscriptions. Nearly 100% of them either don't really care about receiving the list or are too spacy to notice the difference. By the same token, nearly 100% of them were lurkers whose only responses to anything on the list were vacation replies, so they were not missed. There might be a difference: if you call it to their attention by telling them "I'm shutting off your subscription until you tell me that you're back, that you've turned off your autoresponder, and that you've fixed it so that this won't recur when you go away again," they're a lot more likely to be aware than if you do as I did, which was to figure that there was no point in notifying them because they weren't there to read email anyway, and just quietly shut the subscription off and wait until they realize that it's dried up (which usually was never) and initiate correspondence with you. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Sat Aug 16 09:57:32 2003 Received: from plaidworks.com (www.plaidworks.com [64.81.78.180]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1D91D195F67 for ; Sat, 16 Aug 2003 09:57:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (dsl081-078-186.sfo1.dsl.speakeasy.net [64.81.78.186]) by plaidworks.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h7GGuPVK024387; Sat, 16 Aug 2003 09:56:25 -0700 (PDT) Date: Sat, 16 Aug 2003 09:56:24 -0700 Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v552) Cc: Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@greatcircle.com To: Berg Oswell From: Chuq Von Rospach In-Reply-To: <200308161555.IAA20678@eskimo.com> Message-Id: <91C533EB-D00A-11D7-9034-0003934516A8@plaidworks.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.552) X-Archive-Number: 200308/98 X-Sequence-Number: 1651 On Saturday, August 16, 2003, at 08:55 AM, Berg Oswell wrote: > > > Baloney (or bologna, if you prefer). Your analogy is flawed; No, it's not. but you're welcome to come up with your own administrative philosophy, and use it for your own lists. Just don't assume it'll work if you subscribe to mine... I'm not telling people to do it my way. If it works for you, fine. If not, not. > Worse, the same logic that caused him to attack his own sheep will > inevitably lead him to attack his master, and the sheep belonging to > his > master's neighbors. yeah, right... and then aliens will land and anal probe everyone... love those conspiracy theories. > But what do you do when people start complaining about behavior > that is not against the rules? ah, finally, a serious question, not a rhetorical fantasy. answer is simple: yo tell the complainers to stop it. If it's not against the rules, it's not against the rules. Just because you're complaining doesn't mean you're right. > If it happens off-list, then it is > none of your business. How would you feel if you were the victim of > some > out of control admin type, who acts just like you say you do? spoken like a true wolf. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Sat Aug 16 11:13:43 2003 Received: from grassyhill.org (grassyhill.org [208.231.0.71]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id A3939196032 for ; Sat, 16 Aug 2003 11:13:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [192.168.0.22] (lyme_fw [204.60.148.242]) by grassyhill.org (8.11.0/8.11.0) with ESMTP id h7GIDZm75738 for ; Sat, 16 Aug 2003 14:13:35 -0400 (EDT) X-Envelope-To: Date: Sat, 16 Aug 2003 14:13:39 -0400 From: Tom Neff To: listmanagers Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Message-ID: <310798390.1061043219@[192.168.0.22]> In-Reply-To: <010501c36415$770ae780$21985742@ord351473> References: <010501c36415$770ae780$21985742@ord351473> X-Mailer: Mulberry/3.1.0b4 (Win32) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline X-Archive-Number: 200308/99 X-Sequence-Number: 1652 --On Saturday, August 16, 2003 11:43 AM -0500 "David W. Tamkin" wrote: > Tom Neff wrote, > > : When they get back, they either silently > : reactivate themselves or send me an inquiry ... > > and Chuq Von Rospach said, > >| When they come back from vacation, they can >| resubscribe if they want. > > But do they? I found that they rarely do. Virtually none who send > vacation replies to lists or to posters -- whether they're inept with > email, constrained by clue-proof sysadmins, or just thoughtless in their > treatment of other list members -- ever react to the sudden dry-up of > their subscriptions. Nearly 100% of them either don't really care about > receiving the list or are too spacy to notice the difference. By the > same token, nearly 100% of them were lurkers whose only responses to > anything on the list were vacation replies, so they were not missed. My percentages are different, but I agree with this analysis; I just don't really care. In my experience, active posting members who get dropped for vacation autoresponses, overflowing inbox quotas etc, almost always rejoin. Lurkers, on the other hand, frequently use this as the excuse to stop receiving a digest they never read anymore anyway. And that is fine by me. I feel no special responsibility to retain members who don't really want to be on the list anyway. Should I? From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Sat Aug 16 13:12:41 2003 Received: from hawk.mail.pas.earthlink.net (hawk.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.22]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 191C4196018 for ; Sat, 16 Aug 2003 13:12:39 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cpe-66-87-152-33.il.sprintbbd.net ([66.87.152.33] helo=panix.com) by hawk.mail.pas.earthlink.net with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1) id 19o7Pf-0004Vx-00 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sat, 16 Aug 2003 13:12:35 -0700 Message-ID: <3F3E901E.9000704@panix.com> Date: Sat, 16 Aug 2003 15:12:14 -0500 From: "David W. Tamkin" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win 9x 4.90; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 Netscape/7.0 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Cc: listmanagers Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs References: <010501c36415$770ae780$21985742@ord351473> <310798390.1061043219@[192.168.0.22]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archive-Number: 200308/100 X-Sequence-Number: 1653 Guess my point didn't come across. I'll try again. Tom Neff wrote: > In my experience, active posting members who get dropped for vacation > autoresponses, overflowing inbox quotas etc, almost always rejoin. In my experience, actively posting members, or even actively reading members, don't end up sending vacation autoresponses to the list, nor letting their inboxes fill, so they don't get suspended in the first place. Those who get suspended reasons tend largely to have little interest and not to miss the list any more than it misses them. In the end, I kept a record of suspension dates and, if the reason for the shut-off didn't merit a permanent ban but the subscriber didn't get in touch within twelve months to reactive, I'd purge the record. Examples of such reasons might be (1) bounces for a full mailbox, so long as they were sent to the list's error address on the envelope instead of going to posters; (2) going to no-mail and just staying there; or (3) being an innocent user of a badly configured provider to which I would no longer send the list, but who declined my suggestion to get an additional email address somewhere less poisonous. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Sat Aug 16 14:51:14 2003 Received: from grassyhill.org (grassyhill.org [208.231.0.71]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 233511961F0 for ; Sat, 16 Aug 2003 14:51:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [192.168.0.22] (lyme_fw [204.60.148.242]) by grassyhill.org (8.11.0/8.11.0) with ESMTP id h7GLp4m84905 for ; Sat, 16 Aug 2003 17:51:04 -0400 (EDT) X-Envelope-To: Date: Sat, 16 Aug 2003 17:51:09 -0400 From: Tom Neff To: listmanagers Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Message-ID: <323848406.1061056269@[192.168.0.22]> In-Reply-To: <3F3E901E.9000704@panix.com> References: <010501c36415$770ae780$21985742@ord351473> <310798390.1061043219@[192.168.0.22]> <3F3E901E.9000704@panix.com> X-Mailer: Mulberry/3.1.0b4 (Win32) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline X-Archive-Number: 200308/101 X-Sequence-Number: 1654 --On Saturday, August 16, 2003 3:12 PM -0500 "David W. Tamkin" wrote: > Guess my point didn't come across. I'll try again. I thought David got his point across all right - I'm just disagreeing with it :) > Tom Neff wrote: >> In my experience, active posting members who get dropped for vacation >> autoresponses, overflowing inbox quotas etc, almost always rejoin. > > In my experience, actively posting members, or even actively reading > members, don't end up sending vacation autoresponses to the list, nor > letting their inboxes fill, so they don't get suspended in the first > place. Those who get suspended reasons tend largely to have little > interest and not to miss the list any more than it misses them. I am saying that active members who do get dropped usually rejoin; you are saying that active members don't usually get dropped. We can actually both be right on this! Usually the actives aren't dropped, but when it does happen, they usually rejoin. In the previous message you listed "constrained by clue-proof sysadmins" as one of the causes for vacation bounces. In my world this is a big factor, and not one you can easily blame on the member. Lots of folks take one vacation per year. Between the last one they took and this one, the Information Systems elves have made one or more policy changes, often without telling employees or explaining the consequences. If you're marked out in the personnel database, the company mailserver sends an autoresponse for you and you never even see it. Or they've reduced your inbox quota to 512K, which you never notice as long as you're actively at work reading and deleting, but when you go away, a week's worth of list messages that used to queue up just fine now bust the quota. Also, there seems to be a high (but certainly not 100%) correlation between active posting membership and knowing how to get yourself back on. Probably two-thirds of my rejoining users do so without my intervention. > In the end, I kept a record of suspension dates and, if the reason for > the shut-off didn't merit a permanent ban but the subscriber didn't get > in touch within twelve months to reactive, I'd purge the record. Examples > of such reasons might be (1) bounces for a full mailbox, so long as they > were sent to the list's error address on the envelope instead of going to > posters; (2) going to no-mail and just staying there; or (3) being an > innocent user of a badly configured provider to which I would no longer > send the list, but who declined my suggestion to get an additional email > address somewhere less poisonous. As for the going to "nomail and staying there," you have to be careful, because with some listserv systems and settings, the only way you can post from more than one address is by having a ghost membership with the second address set to nomail. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Sat Aug 16 15:18:15 2003 Received: from hawk.mail.pas.earthlink.net (hawk.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.22]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0A940195AD1 for ; Sat, 16 Aug 2003 15:18:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cpe-66-87-152-33.il.sprintbbd.net ([66.87.152.33] helo=panix.com) by hawk.mail.pas.earthlink.net with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1) id 19o9NF-0007jb-00 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sat, 16 Aug 2003 15:18:13 -0700 Message-ID: <3F3EAD71.5040508@panix.com> Date: Sat, 16 Aug 2003 17:17:21 -0500 From: "David W. Tamkin" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win 9x 4.90; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 Netscape/7.0 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: listmanagers Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs References: <010501c36415$770ae780$21985742@ord351473> <310798390.1061043219@[192.168.0.22]> <3F3E901E.9000704@panix.com> <323848406.1061056269@[192.168.0.22]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archive-Number: 200308/102 X-Sequence-Number: 1655 Tom Neff wrote: > We can actually both be right on this! Yes! That's why, when you presented your findings as if they contradicted mine, you appered to believe that I had said something that you were refuting. Ergo I concluded that you had misunderstood me. > Or they've reduced your inbox quota to > 512K, which you never notice as long as you're actively at work reading and > deleting, but when you go away, a week's worth of list messages that used > to queue up just fine now bust the quota. Now that's an NDN, not a vacation autoresponse. Unless you find out that it was artificially generated by the subscriber or that the subscriber is the mail admin for the site, you can figure that an uninformative or badly addressed NDN is not the subscriber's fault and that the subscriber can do nothing about it. A vacation replier, particularly if the subscriber is at an address from a retail provider rather than an employee or student account, might likely be under the subscriber's control. > As for the going to "nomail and staying there," you have to be careful, > because with some listserv systems and settings, the only way you can post > from more than one address is by having a ghost membership with the second > address set to nomail. True for the general case, but my lists allowed auxiliary posting addresses for subscribers. Moreover, I noted the purge date (usually twelve months from the date of suspension) in the record's comment field, so all I would have had to do is put "never purge" there. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Sun Aug 17 07:34:23 2003 Received: from rowan.oak-wood.co.uk (rowan.oak-wood.co.uk [62.3.200.114]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id D0E22196EAD for ; Sun, 17 Aug 2003 07:34:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by rowan.oak-wood.co.uk (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7072331F8E for ; Sun, 17 Aug 2003 15:34:19 +0100 (BST) Received: from rowan.oak-wood.co.uk ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (rowan.oak-wood.co.uk [127.0.0.1:10024]) (amavisd-new) with LMTP id 70978-01 for ; Sun, 17 Aug 2003 15:34:18 +0100 (BST) Received: from celandine.oak-wood.co.uk (celandine.oak-wood.co.uk [62.3.200.115]) by rowan.oak-wood.co.uk (Postfix) with ESMTP id 04CAE31F8C for ; Sun, 17 Aug 2003 15:34:17 +0100 (BST) Message-ID: Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2003 15:34:04 +0100 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com From: Chris Hastie Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs References: <200308141712.KAA29935@eskimo.com> In-Reply-To: <200308141712.KAA29935@eskimo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=us-ascii;format=flowed User-Agent: Turnpike/6.02-U () X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new-20021116 on rowan.oak-wood.co.uk X-Archive-Number: 200308/103 X-Sequence-Number: 1656 On Thu, 14 Aug 2003, Berg Oswell wrote >Jeffrey Goldberg wrote: >> Consider how it scales. Assume that at any given time, maybe 5% of your >> list are "on vacation". If they all used broken autoresponders, then a >> single post to a list of 1000 would generate 50 autoresponses to the >> sender. Subsequent posts from the same user would generate fewer, but >> still your policy does not scale well unless only a small minority of >> users use broken autoresponders. > > > That assumes the auto-responder is broken...from what the original >poster has said, this one is not broken, since it has sent just one >response to each person that sent it mail. > I would have to disagree. A vacation response, a message that says "Your message can not be read right now because no-one is here to read it" is, IMHO, a delivery status notification. As such it should be sent to the SMTP reverse path, not to the address in the From: header. Since the reverse path of list messages is almost invariably an address associated with the list in some way, not the address of the original poster, the auto-responder was broken. When you post to a large list you do not expect to receive DSNs for those addresses that are now dead but have yet to be removed from the list. Why is it OK to receive a vacation message? > Letting people know you can't answer their email right away is a >polite, thoughtful thing to do... In many cases, I'd have to disagree again. If, as a customer, I mail an employee of a company about a particular issue is it really good customer care if I receive a message saying "I'll get around to looking at your mail in a month or so; right now I'm working on my tan in Barbados". From my point of view I don't care about his/her holiday, I care about getting a prompt response to my enquiry. What would be far better customer care would be if my mail was forwarded to the colleague covering, read, dealt with and replied to. -- Chris Hastie From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Sun Aug 17 07:56:25 2003 Received: from rowan.oak-wood.co.uk (rowan.oak-wood.co.uk [62.3.200.114]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 786B919677D for ; Sun, 17 Aug 2003 07:56:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by rowan.oak-wood.co.uk (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7607831F8F for ; Sun, 17 Aug 2003 15:56:19 +0100 (BST) Received: from rowan.oak-wood.co.uk ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (rowan.oak-wood.co.uk [127.0.0.1:10024]) (amavisd-new) with LMTP id 70978-03 for ; Sun, 17 Aug 2003 15:56:18 +0100 (BST) Received: from celandine.oak-wood.co.uk (celandine.oak-wood.co.uk [62.3.200.115]) by rowan.oak-wood.co.uk (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9420531F8E for ; Sun, 17 Aug 2003 15:56:18 +0100 (BST) Message-ID: Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2003 15:55:51 +0100 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com From: Chris Hastie Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs References: <200308151015.DAA05031@eskimo.com> <2147483647.1060937596@[192.168.1.15]> In-Reply-To: <2147483647.1060937596@[192.168.1.15]> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=us-ascii User-Agent: Turnpike/6.02-U () X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new-20021116 on rowan.oak-wood.co.uk X-Archive-Number: 200308/104 X-Sequence-Number: 1657 On Fri, 15 Aug 2003, Jim Trigg wrote >--On Friday, August 15, 2003 03:15 -0700 Berg Oswell >wrote: > >> Miles Fidelman wrote: > >>> Now, on a more practical note, how would people on this list recommend >>> configuring an autoresponder so that it ignores list traffic entirely, >>> short of having to configure each list individually? >> >> In no particular order: >> >> 1) Allow the responder to have a file of addresses it is not to >> respond to. >> >> 2) Once a single response is sent, add the recipient address to >> the do-not-respond list. >> >> 3) Ignore any bulk precedence mail; You may or may not extend this >> to list precedence. >> >> 4) Turn it off promptly when you return. > >5) Ignore messages that contain any List*, Mailing-List* or X-List* headers. > 6) Do not respond to messages that do not explicitly contain your address in the To: or Cc: headers. 7) If you really must respond, do so to the SMTP reverse-path, not the From: or Reply-to: header address 8) Use a null reverse path for the OOO, and list owners configure lists to reject or route for moderation anything with a null reverse path. -- Chris Hastie From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Sun Aug 17 09:03:00 2003 Received: from mail3.panix.com (mail3.panix.com [166.84.1.74]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5600A195F99 for ; Sun, 17 Aug 2003 09:02:58 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mailspool3.panix.com (mailspool3.panix.com [166.84.1.78]) by mail3.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 74D799825F for ; Sun, 17 Aug 2003 12:02:57 -0400 (EDT) Received: from ord351473 (cpe-66-87-152-33.il.sprintbbd.net [66.87.152.33]) by mailspool3.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 10425F5E84 for ; Sun, 17 Aug 2003 12:02:57 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <001401c364d8$fdff8200$21985742@ord351473> From: "David W. Tamkin" To: References: <200308151015.DAA05031@eskimo.com> <2147483647.1060937596@[192.168.1.15]> Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2003 11:02:32 -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 6.00.2800.1123 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1123 X-Archive-Number: 200308/105 X-Sequence-Number: 1658 Chris Hastie added, |6) Do not respond to messages that do not explicitly contain your | address in the To: or Cc: headers. I've said this once already, but it's been a few days and people such as Chris seem to be trickling in and just now catching up with the thread: if you're carboned on a message, then you're a bystander, and your perusal is neither urgent nor critical. In my opinion, don't send a vacation response if your address is in Cc:, only if it's in To:. |7) If you really must respond, do so to the SMTP reverse-path, not | the From: or Reply-to: header address. There I disagree strongly. An OoO is not a DSN. A message that gets a vacation response was delivered successfully, so no DSN is called for. The subsequent journey from the recipient's mailspool to the recipient's eyes is a separate matter. I'd say that on the occasions when an OoO is justified in the first place, it should be sent to the address where a reply would go, because that's where anyone who cares about the message's being read would be looking for mail from the recipient. Like a reply, the content of an OoO is about the human factors, not about the computers. In my view it is a penepessimum argument. I can think of no circumstances where a vacation response to From: or Reply-To: is bad yet one to the return-path is good, just cases where using the return-path would be the least evil of three bad ideas (as in Chris's example of a mailing list) but sending none at all is even better. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Sun Aug 17 09:53:16 2003 Received: from rowan.oak-wood.co.uk (rowan.oak-wood.co.uk [62.3.200.114]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 76B06195F99 for ; Sun, 17 Aug 2003 09:53:12 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by rowan.oak-wood.co.uk (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7A91531F8E for ; Sun, 17 Aug 2003 17:53:11 +0100 (BST) Received: from rowan.oak-wood.co.uk ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (rowan.oak-wood.co.uk [127.0.0.1:10024]) (amavisd-new) with LMTP id 71649-01 for ; Sun, 17 Aug 2003 17:53:10 +0100 (BST) Received: from celandine.oak-wood.co.uk (celandine.oak-wood.co.uk [62.3.200.115]) by rowan.oak-wood.co.uk (Postfix) with ESMTP id 16F4931F8C for ; Sun, 17 Aug 2003 17:53:09 +0100 (BST) Message-ID: <$g9UhwQdL7P$Ewoc@celandine.oak-wood.co.uk> Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2003 17:52:45 +0100 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com From: Chris Hastie Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs References: <200308151015.DAA05031@eskimo.com> <2147483647.1060937596@[192.168.1.15]> <001401c364d8$fdff8200$21985742@ord351473> In-Reply-To: <001401c364d8$fdff8200$21985742@ord351473> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=us-ascii;format=flowed User-Agent: Turnpike/6.02-U () X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new-20021116 on rowan.oak-wood.co.uk X-Archive-Number: 200308/106 X-Sequence-Number: 1659 On Sun, 17 Aug 2003, David W. Tamkin wrote >Chris Hastie added, > >|6) Do not respond to messages that do not explicitly contain your >| address in the To: or Cc: headers. > > if you're >carboned on a message, then you're a bystander, and your perusal is neither >urgent nor critical. In my opinion, don't send a vacation response if your >address is in Cc:, only if it's in To:. Fair enough. > >|7) If you really must respond, do so to the SMTP reverse-path, not >| the From: or Reply-to: header address. > >There I disagree strongly. Better get your comments in on then. Section 4 begins |4. Where to send automatic responses (and where not to send them) | |In general, automatic responses SHOULD be sent to the Return-Path field |if generated after delivery. If the response is generated prior to |delivery, the response SHOULD be sent to the reverse-path from the SMTP |MAIL FROM command, or (in a non-SMTP system) to the envelope return |address which serves as the destination for nondelivery reports. and goes on |The Reply-To field SHOULD NOT be used as the destination for automatic |responses from Personal or Group Responders. -- Chris Hastie From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Sun Aug 17 10:41:32 2003 Received: from albatross.mail.pas.earthlink.net (albatross.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.120]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6DFCA195FEF for ; Sun, 17 Aug 2003 10:41:31 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cpe-66-87-152-33.il.sprintbbd.net ([66.87.152.33] helo=panix.com) by albatross.mail.pas.earthlink.net with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1) id 19oRX0-0006Hd-00 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 17 Aug 2003 10:41:30 -0700 Message-ID: <3F3FBE46.4030708@panix.com> Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2003 12:41:26 -0500 From: "David W. Tamkin" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win 9x 4.90; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 Netscape/7.0 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs References: <200308151015.DAA05031@eskimo.com> <2147483647.1060937596@[192.168.1.15]> <001401c364d8$fdff8200$21985742@ord351473> <$g9UhwQdL7P$Ewoc@celandine.oak-wood.co.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archive-Number: 200308/107 X-Sequence-Number: 1660 Chris Hastie followed up that if I think the return-path is not the place to send a vacation response, > Better get your comments in on > > > then. Section 4 begins > > |4. Where to send automatic responses (and where not to send them) > | > |In general, automatic responses SHOULD be sent to the Return-Path field > |if generated after delivery. > > and goes on > > |The Reply-To field SHOULD NOT be used as the destination for automatic > |responses from Personal or Group Responders. OK. I'm backing down on several counts (any reference to Reply-To: here implies "or From: if Reply-To: is not present"): 1. If Reply-To: and Return-Path: aren't the same, both addresses should be watched for incoming mail anyway, and an automated reaction such as an OoO will come sooner, often immediately, just like an NDN. 2. If that draft becomes official, people will expect OoO's to come to Return-Path: and that's where they'll be looking for them. 3. Like NDNs, OoO's for redirected mail (if they should be sent at all) should go to the redirector. After all, the writer of the content didn't send that message to the recipient. 4. Mail where Reply-To: != Return-Path: includes mailing list distributions, so one can even take that as an indicator against sending an OoO at all. If one sends an OoO only if Reply-To: = Return-Path:, then it doesn't matter which of those the bot reads the address from. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Sun Aug 17 11:10:51 2003 Received: from a.smtp-out.sonic.net (a.smtp-out.sonic.net [208.201.224.38]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with SMTP id AA743195F2A for ; Sun, 17 Aug 2003 11:10:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 2383 invoked from network); 17 Aug 2003 17:55:03 -0000 Received: from turbo.sonic.net (208.201.224.26) by a.smtp-out.sonic.net with SMTP; 17 Aug 2003 17:55:03 -0000 Received: from sonic.net (bolt.sonic.net [208.201.242.18]) by turbo.sonic.net (8.11.6p2/8.8.5) with ESMTP id h7HHt3J11553 for ; Sun, 17 Aug 2003 10:55:03 -0700 X-envelope-info: Received: from satellite.vo.cnchost.com (IDENT:root@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by sonic.net (8.12.9/8.12.1) with ESMTP id h7HHt2ar018575 for ; Sun, 17 Aug 2003 10:55:02 -0700 Message-Id: <6.0.0.10.0.20030817104204.049f2e28@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: inet-list%vo.cnchost.com@127.0.0.1 (Unverified) X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 6.0.0.10 (Beta) Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2003 10:44:39 -0700 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com From: JC Dill Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs In-Reply-To: <$g9UhwQdL7P$Ewoc@celandine.oak-wood.co.uk> References: <001401c364d8$fdff8200$21985742@ord351473> <200308151015.DAA05031@eskimo.com> <2147483647.1060937596@[192.168.1.15]> <001401c364d8$fdff8200$21985742@ord351473> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed X-Archive-Number: 200308/108 X-Sequence-Number: 1661 At 09:52 AM 8/17/2003, Chris Hastie wrote: >On Sun, 17 Aug 2003, David W. Tamkin wrote >>Chris Hastie added, >> >>|6) Do not respond to messages that do not explicitly contain your >>| address in the To: or Cc: headers. >> >>if you're >>carboned on a message, then you're a bystander, and your perusal is neither >>urgent nor critical. In my opinion, don't send a vacation response if your >>address is in Cc:, only if it's in To:. > >Fair enough. Playing Devil's Advocate here: What if I have emailed someone and cc'd that person's boss because I need the boss's buy-in on what I'm asking? The person knows their boss has an OoO program telling everyone that the boss is away, and assumes I get an OoO, and so doesn't tell me directly. So, I'm sitting there waiting for the boss to reply, not knowing that the boss is gone. IMHO, replying to a CC is an individual matter that each person should decide when setting up their OoO based on how often that person is CC'd on matters of importance. jc From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Sun Aug 17 12:29:36 2003 Received: from albatross.mail.pas.earthlink.net (albatross.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.120]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0C3FA1962F4 for ; Sun, 17 Aug 2003 12:29:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cpe-66-87-152-33.il.sprintbbd.net ([66.87.152.33] helo=panix.com) by albatross.mail.pas.earthlink.net with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1) id 19oTDa-0005yA-00 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 17 Aug 2003 12:29:34 -0700 Message-ID: <3F3FD78D.9060402@panix.com> Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2003 14:29:17 -0500 From: "David W. Tamkin" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win 9x 4.90; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 Netscape/7.0 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs References: <001401c364d8$fdff8200$21985742@ord351473> <200308151015.DAA05031@eskimo.com> <2147483647.1060937596@[192.168.1.15]> <001401c364d8$fdff8200$21985742@ord351473> <6.0.0.10.0.20030817104204.049f2e28@127.0.0.1> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archive-Number: 200308/109 X-Sequence-Number: 1662 JC Dill wrote, > Playing Devil's Advocate here: When Robert Altman cast Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyl in "Popeye," one critic whose review I read called it "the role she was born to play." > So, I'm sitting there waiting for the boss to reply, not knowing > that the boss is gone. Then why did you relegate the boss to Cc:? People from whom a response is important belong on the To: line. The boss, either not on vacation or back from vacation, could very logically look at your message, see that [s]he was merely carboned, and figure that you just wanted him/her to read the message and that that would be enough; that you would probably not find a reply from him/her unwelcome, but you weren't expecting one. > IMHO ... IMConsideredO, Cc: is for advisory copies to peripheral parties. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Sun Aug 17 14:38:42 2003 Received: from b.smtp-out.sonic.net (b.smtp-out.sonic.net [208.201.224.39]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 32EB2196226 for ; Sun, 17 Aug 2003 14:38:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 16215 invoked from network); 17 Aug 2003 20:25:06 -0000 Received: from tempest.sonic.net (208.201.224.25) by b.smtp-out.sonic.net with SMTP; 17 Aug 2003 20:25:06 -0000 Received: from sonic.net (bolt.sonic.net [208.201.242.18]) by tempest.sonic.net (8.11.6p2/8.8.5) with ESMTP id h7HKP6521631 for ; Sun, 17 Aug 2003 13:25:06 -0700 X-envelope-info: Received: from satellite.vo.cnchost.com (IDENT:root@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by sonic.net (8.12.9/8.12.1) with ESMTP id h7HKP6ar032559 for ; Sun, 17 Aug 2003 13:25:06 -0700 Message-Id: <6.0.0.10.0.20030817131444.04acfda0@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: inet-list%vo.cnchost.com@127.0.0.1 (Unverified) X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 6.0.0.10 (Beta) Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2003 13:18:20 -0700 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com From: JC Dill Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs In-Reply-To: <3F3FD78D.9060402@panix.com> References: <001401c364d8$fdff8200$21985742@ord351473> <200308151015.DAA05031@eskimo.com> <2147483647.1060937596@[192.168.1.15]> <001401c364d8$fdff8200$21985742@ord351473> <6.0.0.10.0.20030817104204.049f2e28@127.0.0.1> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed X-Archive-Number: 200308/110 X-Sequence-Number: 1663 At 12:29 PM 8/17/2003, David W. Tamkin wrote: >JC Dill wrote, > >>Playing Devil's Advocate here: > >When Robert Altman cast Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyl in "Popeye," one >critic whose review I read called it "the role she was born to play." > >>So, I'm sitting there waiting for the boss to reply, not knowing >>that the boss is gone. > >Then why did you relegate the boss to Cc:? People from whom a response is >important belong on the To: line. IMHO, you use the To: line for the person the email is addressed TO. You CC: others who you want to keep appraised of the discussion. >The boss, either not on vacation or back from vacation, could very >logically look at your message, see that [s]he was merely carboned, and >figure that you just wanted him/her to read the message and that that >would be enough; that you would probably not find a reply from him/her >unwelcome, but you weren't expecting one. It depends on the way the organization works. At many organizations I've worked at, the CC entry works the way I described it, and sending an OoO to emails you are CC'd on would be appropriated to let the parties know that you aren't going to be responding right away. So, that's why I feel that electing to implement an OoO to reply to a CC'd email is an individual decision. jc jc From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Sun Aug 17 16:12:49 2003 Received: from scaup.mail.pas.earthlink.net (scaup.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.49]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0D533196435 for ; Sun, 17 Aug 2003 16:12:48 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cpe-66-87-152-33.il.sprintbbd.net ([66.87.152.33] helo=panix.com) by scaup.mail.pas.earthlink.net with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1) id 19oWha-0000FP-00 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 17 Aug 2003 16:12:46 -0700 Message-ID: <3F400BE6.1000904@panix.com> Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2003 18:12:38 -0500 From: "David W. Tamkin" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win 9x 4.90; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 Netscape/7.0 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs References: <001401c364d8$fdff8200$21985742@ord351473> <200308151015.DAA05031@eskimo.com> <2147483647.1060937596@[192.168.1.15]> <001401c364d8$fdff8200$21985742@ord351473> <6.0.0.10.0.20030817104204.049f2e28@127.0.0.1> <6.0.0.10.0.20030817131444.04acfda0@127.0.0.1> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archive-Number: 200308/111 X-Sequence-Number: 1664 JC Dill wrote: > IMHO, you use the To: line for the person the email is addressed TO. Or PERSONS. There can be more than one addressee there. You know that. > You CC: others who you want to keep appraised of the discussion. Exactly. Someone whom you want to respond, whom you in fact expect to reply as in your earlier example, is not merely being kept apprised [the word I trust you meant] but is actively involved. People whose immediate attention matters belong on the To: line. In your illustrations, the Cc: line is ambiguous: if you send me a carbon, how much attention and time should I give it? Are you saying I'm peripheral, or that I'm integral to the discussion but somebody else is more important than I, and you just refuse to put more than one address into To:? Would replying be butting in where I should just be listening, or would not replying be rudely ignoring the matter and the other people? You say there are companies where that's how it's done. No doubt there are. I'm saying that they handle it badly. Existence doesn't prove merit. In my illustrations, the last person in To: is still integral and the first person in Cc: is already peripheral. You know how much involvement the sender ascribes to you. There's no guessing. > So, that's why I feel that electing to implement an OoO to reply to a > CC'd email is an individual decision. Then one thing we can agree on is that allowing the user the choice is a far better idea than hard-coding the software or hard-lining the policy. DWT I've often apprised bosses to their faces on company time but have appraised them only behind their backs after hours. Otherwise the appraisals would have led to reprisals. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Mon Aug 18 03:49:39 2003 Received: from mx1.eskimo.com (mx1.eskimo.com [204.122.16.48]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5DE1A1964DB for ; Mon, 18 Aug 2003 03:49:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from eskimo.com (berg@eskimo.com [204.122.16.13]) by mx1.eskimo.com (8.9.3/8.8.8) with ESMTP id DAA15560 for ; Mon, 18 Aug 2003 03:49:36 -0700 From: Berg Oswell Received: (from berg@localhost) by eskimo.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) id DAA10938 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 18 Aug 2003 03:49:36 -0700 (PDT) Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2003 03:49:36 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <200308181049.DAA10938@eskimo.com> To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Carbon Copies (Was Re: list policies about vacation programs) X-Archive-Number: 200308/112 X-Sequence-Number: 1665 David W. Tamkin wrote: > Then why did you relegate the boss to Cc:? People from whom a response > is important belong on the To: line. The boss, either not on vacation > or back from vacation, could very logically look at your message, see > that [s]he was merely carboned, and figure that you just wanted him/her > to read the message and that that would be enough; that you would > probably not find a reply from him/her unwelcome, but you weren't > expecting one. > > > IMConsideredO, Cc: is for advisory copies to peripheral parties. In your opinion, but not in everybody's opinion. I've run across mailreading software that won't let you put more than one name in the To: line before...I've also run across one mailreader that lacks a Cc: ability. Either way though, getting an email by Cc is not necessarily a sign that it's unimportant that you reply; Just the opposite in fact, since if you didn't need to see it, you wouldn't have. Assuming that you don't need to reply because you're not the direct recipient is just that... Ass U Me. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Mon Aug 18 09:29:51 2003 Received: from mail.eskimo.com (mail.eskimo.com [204.122.16.4]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3D32A19661F for ; Mon, 18 Aug 2003 09:29:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from big-dog.dogswood.com (root@dialport39.tukwila.eskimo.net [208.187.159.231]) by mail.eskimo.com (8.9.1a/8.8.8) with ESMTP id JAA12574 for ; Mon, 18 Aug 2003 09:29:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from jimo@localhost) by big-dog.dogswood.com (8.11.6/8.11.6/SuSE Linux 0.5) id h7IGRtx02985 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 18 Aug 2003 09:27:55 -0700 Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2003 09:27:55 -0700 From: Jim Osborn To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Message-ID: <20030818162755.GA601@eskimo.com> References: <200308161537.IAA19922@eskimo.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <200308161537.IAA19922@eskimo.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4i X-Archive-Number: 200308/113 X-Sequence-Number: 1666 On Sat, Aug 16, 2003 at 8:37:45AM -0700, Berg Oswell wrote: > J C Lawrence wrote: > > Umm, isn't that what .plan files and `finger` are > > for, or even their more recent incarnations as blogs? > > Finger hasn't worked on most systems for years... Works on Eskimo, though: $: finger berg@eskimo.com [eskimo.com/204.122.16.13] Login name: berg In real life: Berg Oswell Directory: /u/b/berg Shell: /usr/local/esh Last login Mon Aug 18 03:43 on ttyp7 from 12-228-30-158.cl New mail received Mon Aug 18 08:51:31 2003; unread since Mon Aug 18 04:17:53 2003 Project: Trying not to go insane. No Plan. ... :) From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Tue Aug 19 00:41:57 2003 Received: from kanga.nu (kanga.nu [157.22.12.214]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 22EA9196822 for ; Tue, 19 Aug 2003 00:32:21 -0700 (PDT) Delivery-date: Tue, 19 Aug 2003 00:32:22 -0700 Received: from pcp03381044pcs.groton01.ct.comcast.net ([68.54.123.49]:63836 helo=yabbie) by kanga.nu with asmtp (Exim 4.20 #1 (Debian)) id 19p0yR-0004PN-UE; Tue, 19 Aug 2003 00:32:12 -0700 Received: from yabbie ([127.0.0.1] helo=kanga.nu) by yabbie with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 19p0yR-0000xT-00; Tue, 19 Aug 2003 03:32:11 -0400 To: Jim Osborn Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs In-Reply-To: Message from Jim Osborn of "Mon, 18 Aug 2003 09:27:55 PDT." <20030818162755.GA601@eskimo.com> References: <200308161537.IAA19922@eskimo.com> <20030818162755.GA601@eskimo.com> X-face: ?^_yw@fA`CEX&}--=*&XqXbF-oePvxaT4(kyt\nwM9]{]N!>b^K}-Mb9 YH%saz^>nq5usBlD"s{(.h'_w|U^3ldUq7wVZz$`u>MB(-4$f\a6Eu8.e=Pf\ X-image-url: http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/kanga.face.tiff X-url: http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2003 03:32:11 -0400 Message-ID: <3686.1061278331@kanga.nu> From: J C Lawrence X-Archive-Number: 200308/114 X-Sequence-Number: 1667 On Mon, 18 Aug 2003 09:27:55 -0700 Jim Osborn wrote: > On Sat, Aug 16, 2003 at 8:37:45AM -0700, Berg Oswell wrote: >> J C Lawrence wrote: >> Finger hasn't worked on most systems for years... > Works on Eskimo, though: The more accurate version is that like identd, its frequently not installed. -- J C Lawrence ---------(*) Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. claw@kanga.nu He lived as a devil, eh? http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Tue Aug 19 14:03:05 2003 Received: from parrot.squawk.com (parrot.squawk.com [64.244.111.110]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5B73B196227 for ; Tue, 19 Aug 2003 14:03:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: from toshiba.scifi.squawk.com (toshiba.squawk.com [199.74.151.118]) by parrot.squawk.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1614625B2B0 for ; Tue, 19 Aug 2003 17:02:56 -0400 (EDT) X-America-Has-Resolve: yes X-Message-Flag: Microsoft Outlook is insecure. Upgrade your Mail Program Now! Message-Id: <5.2.1.1.0.20030818003027.179a54a8@199.74.151.1> X-Sender: njs@199.74.151.1 (Unverified) X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.2.1 Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2003 16:24:19 -0400 To: listmanagers From: Nick Simicich Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs In-Reply-To: <10180.1060823249@kanga.nu> References: <3F3A83A6.17825.290CF2E@localhost> <3F3A3DAF.3149.17F8505@localhost> <3F3A83A6.17825.290CF2E@localhost> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; x-avg-checked=avg-ok-7711679; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Archive-Number: 200308/115 X-Sequence-Number: 1668 At 09:07 PM 2003-08-13 -0400, J C Lawrence wrote: >On Wed, 13 Aug 2003 18:29:58 -0400 >Bernie Cosell wrote: > > > What about the simple "if it is not addressed specifically to me > > [either in to: or cc:] don't autorespond to it". I can't recall the > > last time I was on a list that munged the 'to' header to be > > to-the-person instead of to-the-list. > >Mailman can do this as a non-default list configuration option. As can majordomo2. But I can't recall a list (real list, not requested advertising by e-mail) that sends mail like that. The worst offender in this whole mess is, in my opinion, Lotus Notes. I know of one large company that uses Lotus Notes and which also, in many departments, actually requires that their employees use autoresponders if they will not be able to answer their mail that business day or early the next if sent after 4 PM. Lotus Notes used to throw away the original header completely, you could not see the received lines (for example) if you were an end user. The new version of the gateway may keep the original RFC822 header as a data field, although I think that is configurable. But in that case, the autoresponder, which is running on the Lotus Notes database box, which is past the gateway, may simply not have the original header. Things like Precedence: are lost, as are the original literal contents of To:, minor fields like Sender, and so forth. You had to make a decision, according to some formula, about what you would put in "From" from the RFC822 header, and there was only one thing that could be migrated to "To:" and that was the internal form of the address. This had to be added (including promoting from the RFC821 header) if it was not there already. Some of Lotus's e-mail products were far short of competently executed. It was not clear why they were so actively bad, but they were. In some cases, I was led to believe that the design assumption was that internal mail (from and to an internal destination) was more important than external mail, and thus, the design considered that external mail as an afterthought. -- He said: "There are people from Baath here reporting everything that goes on. There are cameras here recording our faces. If the Americans were to withdraw and everything were to return to the way it was before, we want to make sure that we survive the massacre that would follow as Baath go house to house killing anyone who voiced opposition to Saddam. In public, we always pledge our allegiance to Saddam, but in our hearts we feel something else." Nick Simicich - njs@scifi.squawk.com From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Tue Aug 19 14:34:25 2003 Received: from mv.mv.com (iridium.mv.net [199.125.85.17]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 7C846196FD7 for ; Tue, 19 Aug 2003 14:34:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 16944 invoked by uid 101); 19 Aug 2003 17:34:17 -0400 From: "Mark E. Mallett" Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2003 17:34:17 -0400 To: Nick Simicich Cc: listmanagers Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs Message-ID: <20030819213417.GI7196@iridium.mv.net> References: <3F3A83A6.17825.290CF2E@localhost> <3F3A3DAF.3149.17F8505@localhost> <3F3A83A6.17825.290CF2E@localhost> <5.2.1.1.0.20030818003027.179a54a8@199.74.151.1> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <5.2.1.1.0.20030818003027.179a54a8@199.74.151.1> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i X-Archive-Number: 200308/116 X-Sequence-Number: 1669 On Tue, Aug 19, 2003 at 04:24:19PM -0400, Nick Simicich wrote: > At 09:07 PM 2003-08-13 -0400, J C Lawrence wrote: > > >On Wed, 13 Aug 2003 18:29:58 -0400 > >Bernie Cosell wrote: > > > >> What about the simple "if it is not addressed specifically to me > >> [either in to: or cc:] don't autorespond to it". I can't recall the > >> last time I was on a list that munged the 'to' header to be > >> to-the-person instead of to-the-list. > > > >Mailman can do this as a non-default list configuration option. > > As can majordomo2. But I can't recall a list (real list, not requested > advertising by e-mail) that sends mail like that. I'm on quite a few that do that. (Maybe I am on too many lists). Mainly they appear to be mail using "lyris" and "mojo mail" but there are a few others too. The "To" test is a good one, but not an exclusive one. mm From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Tue Aug 19 22:03:13 2003 Received: from parrot.squawk.com (parrot.squawk.com [64.244.111.110]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6659D196C23 for ; Tue, 19 Aug 2003 22:03:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: from toshiba.scifi.squawk.com (toshiba.squawk.com [199.74.151.118]) by parrot.squawk.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6BBCE25AF98 for ; Wed, 20 Aug 2003 01:03:06 -0400 (EDT) X-America-Has-Resolve: yes X-Message-Flag: Microsoft Outlook is insecure. Upgrade your Mail Program Now! Message-Id: <5.2.1.1.0.20030819231703.06293c90@199.74.151.1> X-Sender: njs@199.74.151.1 (Unverified) X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.2.1 Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2003 23:22:05 -0400 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com From: Nick Simicich Subject: Re: list policies about vacation programs In-Reply-To: <200308141712.KAA29935@eskimo.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; x-avg-checked=avg-ok-356858; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Archive-Number: 200308/117 X-Sequence-Number: 1670 At 10:12 AM 2003-08-14 -0700, Berg Oswell wrote: > That assumes the auto-responder is broken...from what the original >poster has said, this one is not broken, since it has sent just one >response to each person that sent it mail. If the autoresponder is responding to mail that comes through the list by sending mail to the person who posted to the list, it is broken. The right place for automatic notifications of delayed delivery to go (if it is appropriate to send them at all) is to the RFC821 envelope address, and not to any address in the RFC822 header. > Letting people know you can't answer their email right away is a >polite, thoughtful thing to do...providing your autoresponder isn't >configured by an idiot. Why punish someone for doing the right thing? Because it is not the right thing for an auto-responder to respond to list mail. I am not talking about mail that is sent directly and copied to the list, I am talking about list mail that comes through a mailing list. And, as a list owner, it is right to become involved in this. I have seen broken undeliverable bounces that go to the poster to a list rather than to the list address. This is exactly the same situation - when someone is generating automatic mail to posters to a list, for whatever reason, you unsub them. Whether the mail claims that they are out of town and that this would be the perfect time to rob their house, or whether it says that they no longer have an account. (This is not a new problem - see RFC 1211 "Problems with the Maintenance of Large Mailing Lists" section 3.1, "Misdirected Error Reports"). I am a purist on this matter who believes that content is immaterial. I remove someone for the action of automatically sending a response to any poster, and not for the content of the response. Vacation message, notice of non-delivery, political message, or whatever, the content is immaterial. > Sure, getting 50 emails from one list post saying they're out of >town might be annoying...but if the autoresponder is configured properly, >you'll get ONLY 50. So what's so bad about 50 emails? Or 500? Or half a >million? The point is that the guy running the autoresponder decided to >do the polite, proper thing and not leave everybody hanging. There are lists I will not post to because of the auto-responder mail. I find it very annoying, more annoying than the equivalent amount of spam. Reading ahead, you quoted the "end-to-end" principle, which is certainly a red herring: A properly configured mailing list ALWAYS changes the RFC821 sender address, so that it can get non-deliverability bounces. In my opinion, it should change other things in the header as well, for maximum usability, but there is no denying that it should change the envelope sender address. It is clear to me that a vacation notice is simply another form of notice of delay of deliverability, and therefore should always go to the RFC821 sender address. See RFC2821, section 3.10.2. > The return address in the envelope is changed so that all > error messages generated by the final deliveries will be returned to > a list administrator, not to the message originator, who generally > has no control over the contents of the list and will typically find > error messages annoying. Also section 2.3.1, Mail Objects: >The SMTP envelope is sent as a series of SMTP protocol units > (described in section 3). It consists of an originator address (to >which error reports should be directed); [....] Finally, there is a RFC1855 (also known as fyi28), Netiquette Guidelines, which has a section 3, discussing "mailing lists and Netnews". Section 3.1.1. General Guidelines for mailing lists and NetNews under section 3.1 User Guidelines: >Delivery receipts, non-delivery notices, and vacation programs are neither >totally standardized nor totally reliable across the range of systems >connected to Internet mail. They are invasive when sent to mailing lists, >and some people consider delivery receipts an invasion of privacy. In short, >do not use them. Personally, I consider this to be the best advice of all. It is not the right thing to let any random person who e-mails you know that you are out of town, and (if you are a security administrator, say) that this is the right week to run the exhaustive password guessing attack. And it is a violation of common netiquette to use such an autoresponder with list mail. I also edit headers that I pass through to remove any headers which (1) set priorities (2) ask for delivery receipts. I do other edits as well, to standardize the headers produced by mailing lists. It is clear that this is an opinion, and that not everyone agrees. By the way, I used to move people to digest when they started bouncing and later I would remove them if they kept bouncing. I no longer do that. It confused people more than simply being unsubscribed. I will move someone off digest for posting to the mailing list and attaching the entire digest or for using the digest subject in the response. Those people are frequently so out of it that they don't notice anyway. -- He said: "There are people from Baath here reporting everything that goes on. There are cameras here recording our faces. If the Americans were to withdraw and everything were to return to the way it was before, we want to make sure that we survive the massacre that would follow as Baath go house to house killing anyone who voiced opposition to Saddam. In public, we always pledge our allegiance to Saddam, but in our hearts we feel something else." Nick Simicich - njs@scifi.squawk.com From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Tue Aug 26 20:07:28 2003 Received: from mercury.ccmr.cornell.edu (mercury.ccmr.cornell.edu [128.84.231.97]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 70A15510B1 for ; Tue, 26 Aug 2003 20:07:26 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ori.ccmr.cornell.edu (ori.ccmr.cornell.edu [128.84.231.243]) by mercury.ccmr.cornell.edu (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h7R37MOr020761 for ; Tue, 26 Aug 2003 23:07:22 -0400 Received: from localhost (mitch@localhost) by ori.ccmr.cornell.edu (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h7R37Lu7010523 for ; Tue, 26 Aug 2003 23:07:22 -0400 X-Authentication-Warning: ori.ccmr.cornell.edu: mitch owned process doing -bs Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2003 23:07:21 -0400 (EDT) From: Mitch Collinsworth To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: What's up with SPEWS? Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Content-ID: X-Archive-Number: 200308/118 X-Sequence-Number: 1671 Am trying to figure out what's up with spews.org. Suddenly we're getting a bunch of bounces that look like this: ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors ----- xxx@yyy.zzz (reason: 550 5.7.1 ... Mail from spam source 128.84.231.97 refused - see http://www.spews.org/) (expanded from: ) ----- Transcript of session follows ----- ... while talking to mail.gnsbiotech.com.: >>> RCPT To: <<< 550 5.7.1 ... Mail from spam source 128.84.231.97 refused - see http://www.spews.org/ 550 5.1.1 xxx@gnsbiotech.com... User unknown Essentially, user 'xxx' at our site has a .forward that sends his mail to user 'xxx' at gnsbiotech.com. Suddenly all his mail is bouncing like this. From the headers in the bounce it appears that a lot of the bouncing messages were actually spam to begin with. At 1st glance I thought our server had been blacklisted. But I can't get to www.spews.org to find out. It seems their DNS has disappeared. So... now I'm wondering whether a) we're on a blacklist that we can't even communicate with to get off of, or b) spews.org going off the net caused (some of) the sites using their blacklist to default to blacklisting everyone. I also saw a few cases, beginning at about the same time, of some similar bounces claiming we were on a blacklist at osirusoft.com. Could this mean we're on 2 blacklists? Or is it just some sort of domino effect between cooperating blacklists? -Mitch From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Tue Aug 26 20:17:05 2003 Received: from planet.fef.com (planet.fef.com [157.22.35.7]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 544D0513F9 for ; Tue, 26 Aug 2003 20:17:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from planet.fef.com (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by planet.fef.com (8.12.9/8.12.9/check_local-5) with ESMTP id h7R3GNH3013918; Tue, 26 Aug 2003 20:16:24 -0700 Received: (from alvin@localhost) by planet.fef.com (8.12.9/8.12.4/Submit) id h7R3GNFg013917; Tue, 26 Aug 2003 20:16:23 -0700 From: Alvin Oga Message-Id: <200308270316.h7R3GNFg013917@planet.fef.com> Subject: Re: What's up with SPEWS? To: mitch@ccmr.cornell.edu (Mitch Collinsworth) Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2003 20:16:23 -0700 (PDT) Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com In-Reply-To: from "Mitch Collinsworth" at Aug 26, 2003 11:07:21 PM X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL1] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archive-Number: 200308/119 X-Sequence-Number: 1672 hi ya i think osirusoft.com and other shared db has been contiminated you need to remove those RBLs from your rbl list of servers to check i'd hate to be working at spews/osirusoft right now ... they;ve got some big problems to go fix... c ya alvin > Mitch Collinsworth wrote: > > > Am trying to figure out what's up with spews.org. Suddenly we're > getting a bunch of bounces that look like this: > > > ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors ----- > xxx@yyy.zzz > (reason: 550 5.7.1 ... Mail from spam source 128.84.231.97 refused - see http://www.spews.org/) > (expanded from: ) > > ----- Transcript of session follows ----- > ... while talking to mail.gnsbiotech.com.: > >>> RCPT To: > <<< 550 5.7.1 ... Mail from spam source 128.84.231.97 refused - see http://www.spews.org/ > 550 5.1.1 xxx@gnsbiotech.com... User unknown > From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Tue Aug 26 20:21:36 2003 Received: from smtp9.Stanford.EDU (smtp9.Stanford.EDU [171.67.16.36]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9F176513DF for ; Tue, 26 Aug 2003 20:21:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: from windlord.stanford.edu (windlord.Stanford.EDU [171.64.19.147]) by smtp9.Stanford.EDU (8.12.9/8.12.9) with SMTP id h7R3LGBf000650 for ; Tue, 26 Aug 2003 20:21:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 15606 invoked by uid 1000); 27 Aug 2003 03:21:16 -0000 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: What's up with SPEWS? In-Reply-To: (Mitch Collinsworth's message of "Tue, 26 Aug 2003 23:07:21 -0400 (EDT)") References: From: Russ Allbery Organization: The Eyrie Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2003 20:21:16 -0700 Message-ID: <87he433hw3.fsf@windlord.stanford.edu> User-Agent: Gnus/5.1002 (Gnus v5.10.2) XEmacs/21.4 (Common Lisp, linux) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Archive-Number: 200308/120 X-Sequence-Number: 1673 Mitch Collinsworth writes: > I also saw a few cases, beginning at about the same time, of some > similar bounces claiming we were on a blacklist at osirusoft.com. Could > this mean we're on 2 blacklists? Or is it just some sort of domino > effect between cooperating blacklists? The best information that I have currently is that Osirusoft is currently returning positives for every IP address. I believe that SPEWS was also served out through Osirusoft, so I think the two problems are related. In other words, I don't think you're alone, I don't think this is evidence there's anything wrong with your servers in particular, and there seems to be some sort of blacklist meltdown in progress at the moment. See the current lead story on Slashdot. -- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Tue Aug 26 20:28:30 2003 Received: from mail.yaffa.com.au (mail.yaffa.com.au [203.111.75.194]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with SMTP id D3D04510AE for ; Tue, 26 Aug 2003 20:28:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: From yaffa.com.au ([128.1.1.117]) by mail.yaffa.com.au (WebShield SMTP v4.5 MR1a); id 1061955197756; Wed, 27 Aug 2003 13:33:17 +1000 Received: from ITTOWER ([128.1.1.11]) by mail.yaffa.com.au with BCware NoSPAM SMTP Daemon (v1.5.1); Wed, 27 Aug 2003 13:33:17 Message-ID: <3F4C2442.9020407@yaffa.com.au> Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2003 13:23:46 +1000 From: Cameron Biggart User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5b) Gecko/20030723 Thunderbird/0.1 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: What's up with SPEWS? References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archive-Number: 200308/121 X-Sequence-Number: 1674 Mitch Collinsworth wrote: > b) spews.org going off the net caused (some of) the sites using their > blacklist to default to blacklisting everyone. > > > I also saw a few cases, beginning at about the same time, of some > similar bounces claiming we were on a blacklist at osirusoft.com. > Could this mean we're on 2 blacklists? Or is it just some sort of > domino effect between cooperating blacklists? > > -Mitch > *.osirusoft.com has gone down and has listed the entire IPv4 range bouncing any message from anywhere with the response Please stop using relays.osirusoft.com. Some of the SPEWS listings reflect osirusoft listings so are similarly contaminated. Both SPEWS.org and osirusoft.com have been hit with DDoS attacks over the last few days and it seems that osirusoft.com decided the easier route was to stop being a blacklist source. See the news.admin.net-abuse.email newsgroup for further discussions on this topic. -- Regards Cameron Biggart IT Manager Yaffa Publishing (02) 9281 2333 cameronb@yaffa.com.au From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Tue Aug 26 20:38:02 2003 Received: from houston.wolf.com (houston.wolf.com [216.40.226.30]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 043EC5051B for ; Tue, 26 Aug 2003 20:38:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 19314 invoked by uid 511); 27 Aug 2003 03:37:58 -0000 Message-ID: <20030827033758.19313.qmail@houston.wolf.com> References: <200308270316.h7R3GNFg013917@planet.fef.com> In-Reply-To: <200308270316.h7R3GNFg013917@planet.fef.com> From: "Angel Rivera" To: Alvin Oga Cc: mitch@ccmr.cornell.edu (Mitch Collinsworth), list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: What's up with SPEWS? Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2003 03:37:58 GMT Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archive-Number: 200308/122 X-Sequence-Number: 1675 I am working on some software for a client that requires email being sent to my server and the maillog for the client has: "451 Please stop using relays.osirusoft.com)" From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Tue Aug 26 20:45:37 2003 Received: from plaidworks.com (www.plaidworks.com [64.81.78.180]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 130AB5045C for ; Tue, 26 Aug 2003 20:45:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (dsl081-078-186.sfo1.dsl.speakeasy.net [64.81.78.186]) by plaidworks.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h7R3iIVK004018; Tue, 26 Aug 2003 20:44:18 -0700 (PDT) Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2003 20:44:16 -0700 Subject: Re: What's up with SPEWS? Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v552) Cc: Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@greatcircle.com To: Russ Allbery From: Chuq Von Rospach In-Reply-To: <87he433hw3.fsf@windlord.stanford.edu> Message-Id: Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.552) X-Archive-Number: 200308/123 X-Sequence-Number: 1676 On Tuesday, August 26, 2003, at 08:21 PM, Russ Allbery wrote: > and there seems to > be some sort of blacklist meltdown in progress at the moment. > > See the current lead story on Slashdot. > > set querytype=TXT > 1.2.3.4.relays.osirusoft.com Server: x.x.x.x Address: x.x.x.x Non-authoritative answer: 1.2.3.4.relays.osirusoft.com text = "Please stop using relays.osirusoft.com" Authoritative answers can be found from: osirusoft.com nameserver = ns4.osirusoft. etc... > I think this answers it. They quit. their idea of passing the word is shutting down everyone that depended on them to make them notice. God knows how much collateral damage this is causing, but hell, who expected anything better from Spews? From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Tue Aug 26 20:58:21 2003 Received: from mercury.ccmr.cornell.edu (mercury.ccmr.cornell.edu [128.84.231.97]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4150751566 for ; Tue, 26 Aug 2003 20:58:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ori.ccmr.cornell.edu (ori.ccmr.cornell.edu [128.84.231.243]) by mercury.ccmr.cornell.edu (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h7R3wGOr022864; Tue, 26 Aug 2003 23:58:16 -0400 Received: from localhost (mitch@localhost) by ori.ccmr.cornell.edu (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h7R3wGNM010683; Tue, 26 Aug 2003 23:58:16 -0400 X-Authentication-Warning: ori.ccmr.cornell.edu: mitch owned process doing -bs Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2003 23:58:16 -0400 (EDT) From: Mitch Collinsworth To: Russ Allbery Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: What's up with SPEWS? In-Reply-To: <87he433hw3.fsf@windlord.stanford.edu> Message-ID: References: <87he433hw3.fsf@windlord.stanford.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Archive-Number: 200308/124 X-Sequence-Number: 1677 On Tue, 26 Aug 2003, Russ Allbery wrote: > See the current lead story on Slashdot. Duh. Thanks, Russ. Why didn't I think of that? Ok, midnight, going to bed now. My world is not (currently) broken. :-) -Mitch From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Tue Aug 26 21:03:32 2003 Received: from houston.wolf.com (houston.wolf.com [216.40.226.30]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9D49250B9B for ; Tue, 26 Aug 2003 21:03:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 21278 invoked by uid 511); 27 Aug 2003 04:03:30 -0000 Message-ID: <20030827040330.21277.qmail@houston.wolf.com> References: In-Reply-To: From: "Angel Rivera" To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: What's up with SPEWS? Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2003 04:03:30 GMT Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archive-Number: 200308/125 X-Sequence-Number: 1678 good thing I downloaded both their level1 and level2 lists. now i have a nice project for tomorrow nite. Chuq Von Rospach writes: > > On Tuesday, August 26, 2003, at 08:21 PM, Russ Allbery wrote: > >> and there seems to >> be some sort of blacklist meltdown in progress at the moment. >> >> See the current lead story on Slashdot. >> > > > set querytype=TXT > > > 1.2.3.4.relays.osirusoft.com > Server: x.x.x.x > Address: x.x.x.x > > Non-authoritative answer: > 1.2.3.4.relays.osirusoft.com text = "Please stop using > relays.osirusoft.com" > > Authoritative answers can be found from: > osirusoft.com nameserver = ns4.osirusoft. etc... > > > > I think this answers it. They quit. their idea of passing the word is > shutting down everyone that depended on them to make them notice. God > knows how much collateral damage this is causing, but hell, who expected > anything better from Spews? > From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Tue Aug 26 21:37:01 2003 Received: from planet.fef.com (planet.fef.com [157.22.35.7]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 654F350761 for ; Tue, 26 Aug 2003 21:36:59 -0700 (PDT) Received: from planet.fef.com (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by planet.fef.com (8.12.9/8.12.9/check_local-5) with ESMTP id h7R4aVH3014131; Tue, 26 Aug 2003 21:36:31 -0700 Received: (from alvin@localhost) by planet.fef.com (8.12.9/8.12.4/Submit) id h7R4aVns014130; Tue, 26 Aug 2003 21:36:31 -0700 From: Alvin Oga Message-Id: <200308270436.h7R4aVns014130@planet.fef.com> Subject: Re: What's up with SPEWS? - dl To: angel@wolf.com (Angel Rivera) Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2003 21:36:31 -0700 (PDT) Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com In-Reply-To: <20030827040330.21277.qmail@houston.wolf.com> from "Angel Rivera" at Aug 27, 2003 04:03:30 AM X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL1] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archive-Number: 200308/126 X-Sequence-Number: 1679 hi ya > Angel Rivera wrote: > > good thing I downloaded both their level1 and level2 lists. now i have a > nice project for tomorrow nite. are you gonna make it available for download ?? i think i'd like a copy of it and now probably will look into setting up a local rbl instead c ya alvin From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 27 04:00:11 2003 Received: from firehouse.net (shazam.wetworks.org [192.160.237.254]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with SMTP id B014A51421 for ; Wed, 27 Aug 2003 04:00:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 14021 invoked from network); 27 Aug 2003 11:00:08 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO shazam.wetworks.org) (127.0.0.1) by shell.wetworks.org with SMTP; 27 Aug 2003 11:00:08 -0000 Received: by shazam.wetworks.org (tmda-sendmail, from uid 1000); Wed, 27 Aug 2003 07:00:08 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2003 07:00:07 -0400 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: AOL blocking --- lawsuit filed Message-ID: <20030827110007.GE33818@shazam.wetworks.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="ILuaRSyQpoVaJ1HG" Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i From: "Alan B. Clegg" X-Delivery-Agent: TMDA/0.80 (Determine) X-TMDA-Fingerprint: pf94/wQyjaJcJHIOSoGglPqElyg X-Archive-Number: 200308/127 X-Sequence-Number: 1680 --ILuaRSyQpoVaJ1HG Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable For those that are interested, it seems that someone has finally gotten up the nerve (or whatever it takes) to sue AOL for their blocking practices. http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/local/6597267.htm AlanC --=20 I must study politics and war that my sons | may have liberty to study mathematics and | alan@clegg.com philosophy. -- John Adams | --ILuaRSyQpoVaJ1HG Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (FreeBSD) iD8DBQE/TI83yJP8xSfQVdsRAkEUAJ9hZOLSISGk5OC94+2Av8W9QZZPvACeKnAP UK+z+U/Hn0HNAHKI0FpIQlg= =NcKg -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --ILuaRSyQpoVaJ1HG-- From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 27 05:31:11 2003 Received: from houston.wolf.com (houston.wolf.com [216.40.226.30]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 46BD951152 for ; Wed, 27 Aug 2003 05:31:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 21044 invoked by uid 511); 27 Aug 2003 12:31:09 -0000 Message-ID: <20030827123109.21043.qmail@houston.wolf.com> References: <200308270436.h7R4aVns014130@planet.fef.com> In-Reply-To: <200308270436.h7R4aVns014130@planet.fef.com> From: "Angel Rivera" To: Alvin Oga Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: What's up with SPEWS? - dl Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2003 12:31:09 GMT Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archive-Number: 200308/128 X-Sequence-Number: 1681 That is my thinking. I see the vermin are coming out of the woodwork. Are the mirrors all dead? I have the raw level1 and level2 now and hope to get named files up today or tomorrow depending on how long I have to do real work. :) So drop me a line. Alvin Oga writes: > > hi ya > >> Angel Rivera wrote: >> >> good thing I downloaded both their level1 and level2 lists. now i have a >> nice project for tomorrow nite. > > are you gonna make it available for download ?? > > i think i'd like a copy of it and now probably will look into > setting up a local rbl instead > > c ya > alvin > From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 27 05:34:43 2003 Received: from houston.wolf.com (houston.wolf.com [216.40.226.30]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id A4153504F1 for ; Wed, 27 Aug 2003 05:34:42 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 21322 invoked by uid 511); 27 Aug 2003 12:34:41 -0000 Message-ID: <20030827123441.21321.qmail@houston.wolf.com> References: <20030827110007.GE33818@shazam.wetworks.org> In-Reply-To: <20030827110007.GE33818@shazam.wetworks.org> From: "Angel Rivera" To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: AOL blocking --- lawsuit filed Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2003 12:34:41 GMT Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archive-Number: 200308/129 X-Sequence-Number: 1682 Alan B. Clegg writes: > For those that are interested, it seems that someone has finally gotten > up the nerve (or whatever it takes) to sue AOL for their blocking practices. > > http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/local/6597267.htm > Let's hope AOL manages a big win! From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 27 09:03:27 2003 Received: from above.proper.com (above.proper.com [208.184.76.39]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2E51050550 for ; Wed, 27 Aug 2003 09:03:26 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [165.227.249.150] (adsl-63-202-92-152.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net [63.202.92.152]) (authenticated bits=0) by above.proper.com (8.12.9/8.12.8) with ESMTP id h7RG3Jgf073260 for ; Wed, 27 Aug 2003 09:03:20 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from phoffman@imc.org) Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: phoffman@mail.imc.org Message-Id: X-Habeas-SWE-1: winter into spring X-Habeas-SWE-2: brightly anticipated X-Habeas-SWE-3: like Habeas SWE (tm) X-Habeas-SWE-4: Copyright 2002 Habeas (tm) X-Habeas-SWE-5: Sender Warranted Email (SWE) (tm). The sender of this X-Habeas-SWE-6: email in exchange for a license for this Habeas X-Habeas-SWE-7: warrant mark warrants that this is a Habeas Compliant X-Habeas-SWE-8: Message (HCM) and not spam. Please report use of this X-Habeas-SWE-9: mark in spam to . Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2003 09:04:41 -0700 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com From: Paul Hoffman / IMC Subject: Un-blocking AOL through the courts Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" X-Archive-Number: 200308/130 X-Sequence-Number: 1683 Of interest to this list: C I Host Awarded Temporary Restraining Order Against America Online (AOL) for Blocking C I Host's IP Addresses --Paul Hoffman, Director --Internet Mail Consortium From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 27 20:03:12 2003 Received: from pageplanet.com (england.pageplanet.com [4.38.75.30]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id CBE59506AA for ; Wed, 27 Aug 2003 20:03:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [68.36.55.163] (68.36.55.163) by pageplanet.com with ESMTP (Eudora Internet Mail Server 3.1.4) for ; Wed, 27 Aug 2003 23:03:14 -0400 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: tcora1@mail.ibmwr.org Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <20030827110007.GE33818@shazam.wetworks.org> References: <20030827110007.GE33818@shazam.wetworks.org> Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2003 23:02:59 -0400 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com From: Tom Coradeschi Subject: Re: AOL blocking --- lawsuit filed Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" X-Archive-Number: 200308/131 X-Sequence-Number: 1684 At 07:00 AM -0400 08/27/2003, Alan B. Clegg wrote: >For those that are interested, it seems that someone has finally gotten >up the nerve (or whatever it takes) to sue AOL for their blocking practices. > >http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/local/6597267.htm By all accounts CI is a spam haven. Let's hope AOL cleans their clocks (gawd, I can't believe I wrote that). tom coradeschi <+> tcora@skylands.ibmwr.org Skylands (NJ) BMW Riders <+> From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Aug 27 21:27:03 2003 Received: from smtp1.mail.ctc.net (smtp1.mail.ctc.net [166.82.29.1]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id B043050736 for ; Wed, 27 Aug 2003 21:26:55 -0700 (PDT) Received: from katie.vnet.net (katie.vnet.net [166.82.1.7]) by smtp1.mail.ctc.net (Switch-3.0.4/Switch-3.0.0) with ESMTP id h7S4Qi7e018935 for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 00:26:45 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (murr@localhost) by katie.vnet.net (8.11.7+Sun/8.11.7) with ESMTP id h7S4QiM25933 for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 00:26:44 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: katie.vnet.net: murr owned process doing -bs Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 00:26:43 -0400 (EDT) From: murr rhame To: Subject: Re: AOL blocking --- lawsuit filed In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Sig: c615dee404a4044ed9814e087ecdb8cf X-Archive-Number: 200308/132 X-Sequence-Number: 1685 On Wed, 27 Aug 2003, Tom Coradeschi wrote: > At 07:00 AM -0400 08/27/2003, Alan B. Clegg wrote: > > >For those that are interested, it seems that someone has > >finally gotten up the nerve (or whatever it takes) to sue AOL > >for their blocking practices. > > > >http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/local/6597267.htm > > By all accounts CI is a spam haven. Let's hope AOL cleans their > clocks (gawd, I can't believe I wrote that). Spam haven or not, I don't like the precedent of a court forcing an ISP to accept email from another ISP. One of the few inalienable rights you have on the net is the right to refuse to listen. - murr - From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 28 02:38:19 2003 Received: from mail-svr1.cs.utah.edu (brahma.cs.utah.edu [155.99.198.200]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4246E506C1 for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 02:38:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from vitesse.cs.utah.edu (vitesse.cs.utah.edu [155.99.197.71]) by mail-svr1.cs.utah.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 71497346F0 for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 03:38:15 -0600 (MDT) Received: by vitesse.cs.utah.edu (Postfix, from userid 124) id 5941B1182AE; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 03:38:15 -0600 (MDT) From: "Mark J. Bradakis" To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: AOL blocking --- lawsuit filed Message-Id: <20030828093815.5941B1182AE@vitesse.cs.utah.edu> Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 03:38:15 -0600 (MDT) X-Archive-Number: 200308/133 X-Sequence-Number: 1686 I hardly believe it. Given the trouble and grief over the last 15 years or so I've dealt with AOL and the vast herds of Clueless Mouse Pilots it has thrust upon the net it seems really strange to be on their side. At one point the lists I manage had 4% of the subscribers on AOL, but that measely 4% generated something like 22% of the error and admin messages I had to process. That could be a drop in the bit bucket if some scumbag thievin' spammer gets a decision in their favor. Yikes. mjb. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 28 04:46:37 2003 Received: from smtp4.mail (smtp4.mail.ctc.net [166.82.29.11]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2E0AB50918 for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 04:46:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: from katie.vnet.net (katie.vnet.net [166.82.1.7]) by smtp4.mail (Switch-3.0.4/Switch-3.0.0) with ESMTP id h7SBkVKC005648 for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 07:46:32 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (murr@localhost) by katie.vnet.net (8.11.7+Sun/8.11.7) with ESMTP id h7SBkVl29615 for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 07:46:31 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: katie.vnet.net: murr owned process doing -bs Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 07:46:31 -0400 (EDT) From: murr rhame To: Subject: Re: AOL blocking --- lawsuit filed In-Reply-To: <20030828093815.5941B1182AE@vitesse.cs.utah.edu> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Sig: e0715665a65a0734ad1254e9f91b5ba0 X-Archive-Number: 200308/134 X-Sequence-Number: 1687 On Thu, 28 Aug 2003, Mark J. Bradakis wrote: > I hardly believe it. Given the trouble and grief over the > last 15 years or so I've dealt with AOL and the vast herds of > Clueless Mouse Pilots it has thrust upon the net it seems > really strange to be on their side. At one point the lists I > manage had 4% of the subscribers on AOL, but that measely 4% > generated something like 22% of the error and admin messages > I had to process. > > That could be a drop in the bit bucket if some scumbag > thievin' spammer gets a decision in their favor. At least for now, you don't have to service AOL subscribers if you don't want to. I don't hear from AOL subscribers much because my lists don't accept HTML posts. AOL has marketed themselves as the Internet service any idiot can use. They got what they asked for... I remember when Micro$oft Net came online. They were saying "We will BE the Internet within a year." Dunno if M$ has done more damage to the net than AOL. Miro$oft Net hasn't been a major problem. The software produced by their parent company is another story. - murr - From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 28 04:48:14 2003 Received: from mail.rev.net (server02.rev.net [206.67.68.98]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7D50C5097B for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 04:48:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: from FANTASY-BERNIE (cosell.gva.net [65.164.103.253]) by mail.rev.net (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id h7SBm98A009635 for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 07:48:10 -0400 Message-Id: <200308281148.h7SBm98A009635@mail.rev.net> From: "Bernie Cosell" Organization: Fantasy Farm Fibers To: Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 07:48:15 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Re: AOL blocking --- lawsuit filed References: In-reply-to: X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Windows (v4.02a) Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-description: Mail message body X-RAVMilter-Version: 8.4.3(snapshot 20030212) (server02.rev.net) X-Archived: msg.1062071290.EnxfWw@server02.rev.net X-Archive-Number: 200308/135 X-Sequence-Number: 1688 On 28 Aug 2003 at 0:26, murr rhame wrote: > Spam haven or not, I don't like the precedent of a court forcing > an ISP to accept email from another ISP. One of the few > inalienable rights you have on the net is the right to refuse to > listen. But the question might be one of the duty of the *transport* providers. Notice that if you refuse to accept email addressed to me, then you deprive me of *MY* right to decide to 'listen' or not -- you've already made the decision for me. So one way to look at it is whether the sysadmins are actually the focal points [and we users who rely on them to receive our email] merely their minions subject to their whims [hello world.std.com]; or whether the *users* are the focal point and the sysadmins are supposed to be serving _them_. [I won't use an ISP [and will try to get others to boycott it, too] that tells me what email I can and cannot receive]. I don't mind *advice* or even handy tools to deal with certain classes of stuff automatically, but for me, at least, I want the decision on what to do with email addressed to me to reside with *ME*. /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 28 06:58:12 2003 Received: from zrtps0kn.nortelnetworks.com (zrtps0kn.nortelnetworks.com [47.140.192.55]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7DD265092C for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 06:58:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from zrtpd0jn.us.nortel.com (zrtpd0jn.us.nortel.com [47.140.202.35]) by zrtps0kn.nortelnetworks.com (Switch-2.2.6/Switch-2.2.0) with ESMTP id h7SDw1604744 for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 09:58:01 -0400 (EDT) Received: from zrtpd0nd.us.nortel.com ([47.140.202.41]) by zrtpd0jn.us.nortel.com with SMTP (Microsoft Exchange Internet Mail Service Version 5.5.2653.13) id RY3W8NKH; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 09:58:02 -0400 Received: from americasm01.nt.com (sholton-1.us.nortel.com [47.142.213.59]) by zrtpd0nd.us.nortel.com with SMTP (Microsoft Exchange Internet Mail Service Version 5.5.2653.13) id QYJJ7Z46; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 09:58:02 -0400 Message-ID: <3F4E0A67.9020600@americasm01.nt.com> Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 09:57:59 -0400 X-Sybari-Space: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 From: "Steven Holton" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030314 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: AOL blocking --- lawsuit filed References: <20030828122017.67372509B3@mycroft.greatcircle.com> In-Reply-To: <20030828122017.67372509B3@mycroft.greatcircle.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archive-Number: 200308/136 X-Sequence-Number: 1689 "Bernie Cosell" writes: > I don't mind *advice* or even handy tools to deal with certain > classes of stuff automatically, but for me, at least, I want > the decision on what to do with email addressed to me to reside > with *ME*. My sentiments as well, but I hope that doesn't make me sound like a SPAM advocate. If AOL can decide it's not in my interest to receive the latest Nigerian scam, they can just as easily decide it's not in my interest to receive the latest [list-managers] postings. Perhaps more to the point, if AOL can demand pre-approval (and perhaps a registration/use fee) for legitimate lists like [list-managers] it's only a matter of time before we see "legitimate" SPAMers gaining the pre-approval and paying the registration/use fee. Then were right back where we are today, expect the SPAMers (who can afford to pay the registration fee) will be in a much stronger position than [list-managers] and kin who won't want to foot such a bill. We (collectively) lost this game back in Auguat 93, when we (collectively) first allowed commercial use of the Internet. -- Steve Holton From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 28 07:58:45 2003 Received: from mscan2.ucar.edu (mscan2.ucar.edu [192.43.244.124]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id A337850858 for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 07:58:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mscan2.ucar.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7E1C7124082 for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 08:58:43 -0600 (MDT) Received: from infohigh.infohigh.com (portal.ipsec.ucar.edu [128.117.64.105]) by mscan2.ucar.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6CDDB12401B for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 08:58:34 -0600 (MDT) Subject: Re: AOL blocking --- lawsuit filed From: Greg Woods To: list-managers@greatcircle.com In-Reply-To: <200308281148.h7SBm98A009635@mail.rev.net> References: <200308281148.h7SBm98A009635@mail.rev.net> Content-Type: text/plain Organization: NCAR/SCD Message-Id: <1062082623.2207.78.camel@infohigh> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Ximian Evolution 1.4.3 (1.4.3-3) Date: 28 Aug 2003 08:57:04 -0600 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-7.6 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_01,EMAIL_ATTRIBUTION,IN_REP_TO,QUOTED_EMAIL_TEXT, REFERENCES,REPLY_WITH_QUOTES,USER_AGENT_XIMIAN autolearn=ham version=2.55 X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.55 (1.174.2.19-2003-05-19-exp) X-Archive-Number: 200308/137 X-Sequence-Number: 1690 On Thu, 2003-08-28 at 05:48, Bernie Cosell wrote: > But the question might be one of the duty of the *transport* providers. > Notice that if you refuse to accept email addressed to me, then you > deprive me of *MY* right to decide to 'listen' or not -- you've already > made the decision for me. Understandable. But in that case, don't sign up with an ISP that filters mail. I'm sure there are lots of AOL users who appreciate the anti-spam efforts on their behalf. Now, if the ISP's initial terms of service don't TELL you that they are filtering mail, and then they do, then you'd have a legitimate complaint. --Greg From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 28 08:40:16 2003 Received: from ntcorp.com (ntcorp.com [198.65.128.165]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1BE6750950 for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 08:40:15 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (fidelman@localhost) by ntcorp.com (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id h7SFcuk09471 for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 11:39:09 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 11:38:56 -0400 (EDT) From: X-X-Sender: To: Subject: Re: AOL blocking --- lawsuit filed In-Reply-To: <1062082623.2207.78.camel@infohigh> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Archive-Number: 200308/138 X-Sequence-Number: 1691 On 28 Aug 2003, Greg Woods wrote: > On Thu, 2003-08-28 at 05:48, Bernie Cosell wrote: > > But the question might be one of the duty of the *transport* providers. > > Notice that if you refuse to accept email addressed to me, then you > > deprive me of *MY* right to decide to 'listen' or not -- you've already > > made the decision for me. > > Now, if the ISP's initial terms of service don't TELL you that they are > filtering mail, and then they do, then you'd have a legitimate > complaint. If an ISP drops filters email, without reserving the right to do so in their terms of service, I wonder if that's a violation of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. Just a thought Miles From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 28 09:01:31 2003 Received: from bolt.sonic.net (bolt.sonic.net [208.201.242.18]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2A5085044B for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 09:01:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from satellite.vo.cnchost.com (IDENT:root@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by bolt.sonic.net (8.12.9/8.12.1) with ESMTP id h7SG1SCV010069 for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 09:01:28 -0700 Message-Id: <6.0.0.10.0.20030828085208.04fd63e0@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: inet-list%vo.cnchost.com@127.0.0.1 (Unverified) X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 6.0.0.10 (Beta) Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 08:59:00 -0700 To: From: JC Dill Subject: Re: AOL blocking --- lawsuit filed In-Reply-To: <200308281148.h7SBm98A009635@mail.rev.net> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed X-Archive-Number: 200308/139 X-Sequence-Number: 1692 At 04:48 AM 8/28/2003, Bernie Cosell wrote: >On 28 Aug 2003 at 0:26, murr rhame wrote: > > > Spam haven or not, I don't like the precedent of a court forcing > > an ISP to accept email from another ISP. One of the few > > inalienable rights you have on the net is the right to refuse to > > listen. > >But the question might be one of the duty of the *transport* providers. IMHO, the transport "provider" (ISP) has just as much right to decide what networks they will let connect to and transit their system as the destination ISP. What part of "my network, my rules" means it only applies to destination networks? If the destination network doesn't want a filtered line, go buy connectivity from someone else. If the ISP's end user doesn't want filtered email, go buy from someone else. It's a free market. >Notice that if you refuse to accept email addressed to me, then you >deprive me of *MY* right to decide to 'listen' or not -- you've already >made the decision for me. If you had chosen to purchase connectivity from someone who utilizes "my network, my rules" in a fashion that was not consistent with your needs, then you need to find another provider. >So one way to look at it is whether the sysadmins are actually the focal >points [and we users who rely on them to receive our email] merely their >minions subject to their whims [hello world.std.com]; or whether the >*users* are the focal point and the sysadmins are supposed to be serving >_them_. [I won't use an ISP [and will try to get others to boycott it, >too] that tells me what email I can and cannot receive]. As is your right. But the great unwashed masses on the Internet don't know how to make decisions about what to accept and what to reject and THEY want their ISP to make that decision for them. Some ISPs (mainly the smaller ones) want their upstream to similarly make the decision for them as well on some of these matters. In a free market everyone can select to purchase from a vendor who meets their needs. >I don't mind *advice* or even handy tools to deal with certain classes of >stuff automatically, but for me, at least, I want the decision on what to >do with email addressed to me to reside with *ME*. Certainly you can admit that you are not a typical user. jc From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 28 09:20:04 2003 Received: from mail.rev.net (server02.rev.net [206.67.68.98]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4C5FD506C0 for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 09:20:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: from FANTASY-BERNIE (cosell.gva.net [65.164.103.253]) by mail.rev.net (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id h7SGJr5r026837 for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 12:19:54 -0400 Message-Id: <200308281619.h7SGJr5r026837@mail.rev.net> From: "Bernie Cosell" Organization: Fantasy Farm Fibers To: Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 12:19:58 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Re: AOL blocking --- lawsuit filed In-reply-to: <6.0.0.10.0.20030828085208.04fd63e0@127.0.0.1> References: <200308281148.h7SBm98A009635@mail.rev.net> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Windows (v4.02a) Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-description: Mail message body X-RAVMilter-Version: 8.4.3(snapshot 20030212) (server02.rev.net) X-Archived: msg.1062087594.b2NLkk@server02.rev.net X-Archive-Number: 200308/140 X-Sequence-Number: 1693 On 28 Aug 2003 at 8:59, JC Dill wrote: > ... What part of "my network, my rules" means ... Where did this precept come from? Here I thought we were all part of the "internet" and had more-or-less agreed to abide by its 'rules' [the RFCs at the least]. This seems like a recipe for chaos. Can't wait to sign up for an ISP and see a list of protocols that they choose to ignore, protocols that they intentionally mishandle, etc, and have EVERY ISP posting a *different* 200 page list... and the sentiment being not "Hey, there are standards, let's play together" but "their networks, their rules, screw you". Maybe I've just been brainwashed, but I'm a conformance and cooperation and standards kind of guy, not an "everybody rolls his own" one... /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 28 09:24:57 2003 Received: from smtp3.Stanford.EDU (smtp3.Stanford.EDU [171.64.14.172]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 30B8650973 for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 09:24:56 -0700 (PDT) Received: from windlord.stanford.edu (windlord.Stanford.EDU [171.64.19.147]) by smtp3.Stanford.EDU (8.12.9/8.12.9) with SMTP id h7SGOpbU021753 for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 09:24:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 21539 invoked by uid 1000); 28 Aug 2003 16:24:51 -0000 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: AOL blocking --- lawsuit filed In-Reply-To: <3F4E0A67.9020600@americasm01.nt.com> (Steven Holton's message of "Thu, 28 Aug 2003 09:57:59 -0400") References: <20030828122017.67372509B3@mycroft.greatcircle.com> <3F4E0A67.9020600@americasm01.nt.com> From: Russ Allbery Organization: The Eyrie Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 09:24:51 -0700 Message-ID: <871xv5bvho.fsf@windlord.stanford.edu> User-Agent: Gnus/5.1002 (Gnus v5.10.2) XEmacs/21.4 (Common Lisp, linux) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Archive-Number: 200308/141 X-Sequence-Number: 1694 Steven Holton writes: > If AOL can decide it's not in my interest to receive the latest Nigerian > scam, they can just as easily decide it's not in my interest to receive > the latest [list-managers] postings. If this bothers you, you should be very careful about the contract that you sign with your ISP. But it's their hardware, their equipment, and their network, and if their contract says they filter mail and you agree to that, I really don't have any sympathy and I certainly don't think you have a right to complain that they live up to what they say that they do. Given that currently AOL's entire TV advertising campaign here at the moment is to shout from the rooftops that they *aggressively* filter, I really don't think this argument holds much water. -- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 28 09:26:32 2003 Received: from smtp6.Stanford.EDU (smtp6.Stanford.EDU [171.67.16.33]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 24E2A4FD92 for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 09:26:31 -0700 (PDT) Received: from windlord.stanford.edu (windlord.Stanford.EDU [171.64.19.147]) by smtp6.Stanford.EDU (8.12.9/8.12.9) with SMTP id h7SGQQhx012789 for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 09:26:26 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 21559 invoked by uid 1000); 28 Aug 2003 16:26:26 -0000 To: Subject: Re: AOL blocking --- lawsuit filed In-Reply-To: <200308281619.h7SGJr5r026837@mail.rev.net> (Bernie Cosell's message of "Thu, 28 Aug 2003 12:19:58 -0400") References: <200308281148.h7SBm98A009635@mail.rev.net> <200308281619.h7SGJr5r026837@mail.rev.net> From: Russ Allbery Organization: The Eyrie Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 09:26:26 -0700 Message-ID: <87wucxagul.fsf@windlord.stanford.edu> User-Agent: Gnus/5.1002 (Gnus v5.10.2) XEmacs/21.4 (Common Lisp, linux) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Archive-Number: 200308/142 X-Sequence-Number: 1695 Bernie Cosell writes: > On 28 Aug 2003 at 8:59, JC Dill wrote: >> ... What part of "my network, my rules" means ... > Where did this precept come from? English common law, in the case of the US legal system. > Here I thought we were all part of the "internet" and had more-or-less > agreed to abide by its 'rules' [the RFCs at the least]. Filtering mail doesn't violate any RFCs. The RFCs are actually pretty explicit about how local handling and delivery of mail are entirely out of scope for the standard. -- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 28 10:03:35 2003 Received: from smtp2.mail.ctc.net (smtp2.mail.ctc.net [166.82.29.2]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id CDDE350A42 for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 10:03:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from katie.vnet.net (katie.vnet.net [166.82.1.7]) by smtp2.mail.ctc.net (Switch-3.0.4/Switch-3.0.0) with ESMTP id h7SH3Qru007447 for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 13:03:26 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (murr@localhost) by katie.vnet.net (8.11.7+Sun/8.11.7) with ESMTP id h7SH3Pf03645 for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 13:03:25 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: katie.vnet.net: murr owned process doing -bs Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 13:03:25 -0400 (EDT) From: murr rhame To: Subject: Re: AOL blocking --- lawsuit filed In-Reply-To: <3F4E0A67.9020600@americasm01.nt.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Sig: 361698ecbca3c5e9c1caf0107132ee0e X-Archive-Number: 200308/143 X-Sequence-Number: 1696 On Thu, 28 Aug 2003, Steven Holton wrote: > If AOL can decide it's not in my interest to receive the > latest Nigerian scam, they can just as easily decide it's not > in my interest to receive the latest [list-managers] > postings. From what others report, AOL already does block many mailing lists that are presumably asked for and are otherwise legitimate. Is this another very good reason not to use AOL? Yes of course. > Perhaps more to the point, if AOL can demand pre-approval > (and perhaps a registration/use fee) for legitimate lists > like [list-managers] it's only a matter of time before we see > "legitimate" SPAMers gaining the pre-approval and paying the > registration/use fee. Spammers would be far more willing and able to pay for access to AOL's mailboxes than no-fee discussion lists like list-managers. We can only hope that AOL will institute a pay-to-enter policy and zealously enforce it to the grave. Their spam ratio would be far worse than it is now. > We (collectively) lost this game back in Auguat 93, when we > (collectively) first allowed commercial use of the Internet. Yup. The Net was so much better when it was only available to well healed college kids and government employees. Shoulda kept the unwashed masses out. - murr - From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 28 10:47:05 2003 Received: from kanga.nu (kanga.nu [157.22.12.214]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 31983505FD for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 10:47:04 -0700 (PDT) Delivery-date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 10:47:04 -0700 Received: from pcp03381044pcs.groton01.ct.comcast.net ([68.54.123.49]:60032 helo=yabbie) by kanga.nu with asmtp (Exim 4.20 #1 (Debian)) id 19sQrO-0007iq-Nw; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 10:47:03 -0700 Received: from yabbie ([127.0.0.1] helo=kanga.nu) by yabbie with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 19sQrN-0003vO-00; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 13:47:01 -0400 To: "Bernie Cosell" Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: AOL blocking --- lawsuit filed In-Reply-To: Message from "Bernie Cosell" of "Thu, 28 Aug 2003 12:19:58 EDT." <200308281619.h7SGJr5r026837@mail.rev.net> References: <200308281148.h7SBm98A009635@mail.rev.net> <200308281619.h7SGJr5r026837@mail.rev.net> X-face: ?^_yw@fA`CEX&}--=*&XqXbF-oePvxaT4(kyt\nwM9]{]N!>b^K}-Mb9 YH%saz^>nq5usBlD"s{(.h'_w|U^3ldUq7wVZz$`u>MB(-4$f\a6Eu8.e=Pf\ X-image-url: http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/kanga.face.tiff X-url: http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 13:47:01 -0400 Message-ID: <15089.1062092821@kanga.nu> From: J C Lawrence X-Archive-Number: 200308/144 X-Sequence-Number: 1697 On Thu, 28 Aug 2003 12:19:58 -0400 Bernie Cosell wrote: > On 28 Aug 2003 at 8:59, JC Dill wrote: >> ... What part of "my network, my rules" means ... > Where did this precept come from? Here I thought we were all part of > the "internet" and had more-or-less agreed to abide by its 'rules' > [the RFCs at the least]. Quite. Your network your rules inside your network, your external agreements and obligations where your network intersects and connectos to other's networks. > This seems like a recipe for chaos. Absolutely, this is a primary feature and strength. > Can't wait to sign up for an ISP and see a list of protocols that they > choose to ignore, protocols that they intentionally mishandle, etc, > and have EVERY ISP posting a *different* 200 page list... and the > sentiment being not "Hey, there are standards, let's play together" > but "their networks, their rules, screw you". Already exists and is already happening. Look at the blurbs for many ISPs which contain things like, "No outbound port 25 connections", "All port 80 web browsing must go through our proxy", "DHCP only with addresses forcibly rotated every N hours", "No user-run servers", etc. > Maybe I've just been brainwashed, but I'm a conformance and > cooperation and standards kind of guy, not an "everybody rolls his > own" one... Cooperation defined activities across borders, not within borders. -- J C Lawrence ---------(*) Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. claw@kanga.nu He lived as a devil, eh? http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 28 11:08:37 2003 Received: from mail.rev.net (server02.rev.net [206.67.68.98]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id BA4A7509CE for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 11:08:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: from FANTASY-BERNIE (cosell.gva.net [65.164.103.253]) by mail.rev.net (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id h7SI8SSw002941 for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 14:08:30 -0400 Message-Id: <200308281808.h7SI8SSw002941@mail.rev.net> From: "Bernie Cosell" Organization: Fantasy Farm Fibers To: Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 14:08:34 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Re: AOL blocking --- lawsuit filed References: <3F4E0A67.9020600@americasm01.nt.com> In-reply-to: X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Windows (v4.02a) Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-description: Mail message body X-RAVMilter-Version: 8.4.3(snapshot 20030212) (server02.rev.net) X-Archived: msg.1062094109.JRzLeB@server02.rev.net X-Archive-Number: 200308/145 X-Sequence-Number: 1698 On 28 Aug 2003 at 13:03, murr rhame wrote: > ... The Net was so much better when it was only available to > well healed college kids and government employees. Shoulda kept > the unwashed masses out. Actually, by allowing government employees onto the net [rather than restricting it to researchers], we were already well and truly down the slippery slope to perdition.. But what's fun is to observe, over the decades, how each succeeding wave of newcomers to the net decries the _next_ wave and tries to pull the ladder up after themselves...:o) /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 28 11:26:47 2003 Received: from mail-out2.apple.com (mail-out2.apple.com [17.254.0.51]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 644DE50A67 for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 11:26:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mailgate1.apple.com (A17-128-100-225.apple.com [17.128.100.225]) by mail-out2.apple.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h7SIQfiZ027047 for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 11:26:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from scv2.apple.com (scv2.apple.com) by mailgate1.apple.com (Content Technologies SMTPRS 4.2.1) with ESMTP id ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 11:26:15 -0700 Received: from plaidworks.com (vg0602e-dhcp175.apple.com [17.216.21.175]) by scv2.apple.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h7SIQUWI001455; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 11:26:31 -0700 (PDT) Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 11:26:39 -0700 Subject: Re: AOL blocking --- lawsuit filed Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v552) Cc: Chuq Von Rospach , To: "Bernie Cosell" From: Chuq Von Rospach In-Reply-To: <200308281808.h7SI8SSw002941@mail.rev.net> Message-Id: <2A2E3845-D985-11D7-A916-0003934516A8@plaidworks.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.552) X-Archive-Number: 200308/146 X-Sequence-Number: 1699 On Thursday, August 28, 2003, at 11:08 AM, Bernie Cosell wrote: > But what's fun is to observe, over the decades, how each succeeding > wave > of newcomers to the net decries the _next_ wave and tries to pull the > ladder up after themselves...:o) > the net has always been a gated community. People are now upset either because they have to pay for the gate, or because the community they want to be in won't let them.... (in the old days, the gate was around the internet, making it safe for us college educated techie types. And slowly but surely, we've let in all those (shudder) other people, and it's never been the same. thank god.) From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 28 12:06:34 2003 Received: from bolt.sonic.net (bolt.sonic.net [208.201.242.18]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id B0211508B2 for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 12:06:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from satellite.vo.cnchost.com (IDENT:root@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by bolt.sonic.net (8.12.9/8.12.1) with ESMTP id h7SJ6QCV002846 for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 12:06:26 -0700 Message-Id: <6.0.0.10.0.20030828110532.04876500@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: inet-list%vo.cnchost.com@127.0.0.1 (Unverified) X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 6.0.0.10 (Beta) Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 11:59:18 -0700 To: From: JC Dill Subject: Re: AOL blocking --- lawsuit filed In-Reply-To: <200308281619.h7SGJr5r026837@mail.rev.net> References: <6.0.0.10.0.20030828085208.04fd63e0@127.0.0.1> <200308281148.h7SBm98A009635@mail.rev.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed X-Archive-Number: 200308/147 X-Sequence-Number: 1700 At 09:19 AM 8/28/2003, Bernie Cosell wrote: >On 28 Aug 2003 at 8:59, JC Dill wrote: > > > ... What part of "my network, my rules" means ... > >Where did this precept come from? Here I thought we were all part of the >"internet" and had more-or-less agreed to abide by its 'rules' [the RFCs >at the least]. This seems like a recipe for chaos. "My network, my rules" IS how the Internet works, and creates the controlled chaos that is the Internet. There is no government body that controls "the Internet". The Internet is a connected system of autonomous networks who agree to transfer and exchange data packets between them via methods outlined in the RFCs. What each network does with the data once they have received it is up to the individual network. They can accept it, pass it on, drop it on the floor, filter, reject, as they like. The "control" within this chaos is caused by networks who play by the rules rejecting data from networks who don't play by the rules. The rules are always changing because the needs of the Internet as a whole and of individual networks are always changing, because end user behavior is always changing. Many years ago it was normal to have an open relay SMTP server - today you will find that most of the networks on the Internet will not accept packets via port 25 from your open relay server once they know it's an open relay. In a similar fashion the rules are again changing to disallow packets via port 25 from IPs that are generally considered "residential" or "dynamically allocated" as far-too-often these computers are also open relays, and it's easier for the recipient network to just block a whole batch of IPs than to determine if an individual computer is properly secure, because *most* of the time, email from residential and/or dynamically allocated IPs is spam. It is also easier to tell those who have "residential" or "dynamically allocated" IPs that they should use their ISPs smarthost to relay their non-spam email, and if they have a real need to run their own mail server they should get a connection type that properly indicates that they have the need and expertise to correctly run a mail server on today's Internet. Each network gets to choose for itself which of these new rules to apply to their connections and their policy, and then to accept the consequences of having their packets accepted or rejected at other networks accordingly. Back to the CI Host vs AOL case. CI Host *is* a known spam haven: Those are sightings just from 2003, and nanas is not even close to being a comprehensive list of spam sightings. Here are the discussions in nanae from 2003: Here are web links, many discuss the same CI Host spam problems as the nanae discussion above: AOL, as an autonomous network, has the right to block email connections (packets via port 25) from any other autonomous network for *any* reason, and especially from another network that is known to harbor spam. CI Host can not demand that AOL accept email from their network when many of AOL's customers are requesting that AOL block those who send spam. AOL's first obligation WRT filtering incoming email is to their customers. If blocking CI Host pleases more customers than it displeases, then AOL can decide to block. If AOL gets enough complaints from their own customers about "false positive" blocked email due to the wholesale blocking of email from CI Host, then AOL can *choose* to change how they block. Their network, their rules. They will address the problem in a way that works for them and their customers. CI Host doesn't have any say in this matter! Did you know that the US Post Office can refuse to deliver mail to your residence if they feel that it endangers the postal worker to be on foot in your neighborhood (as when a dangerous dog is running loose)? Payeur, the U.S. Postal Service spokeswoman, said she understood Congdon's dog had run free in the past. Many dogs feel threatened by people in uniform and act differently around them, she said. "If a neighboring property is impacted by that unsafe situation, he (the carrier) is not obligated to deliver to those delivery addresses," she said. This situation happens all the time. You don't own or control the dangerous dog, but you no longer get your mail delivered! If it happens to you, you have to deal with your neighbors and get your neighborhood cleaned up (restrain dangerous dogs or whatever) to get mail delivery resumed. Or you have to get your mail at the post office, at a different address, or move. CI Host's customers are faced with this same dilemma, they are in a hosting neighborhood with spammers and a spam friendly landlord. Either they get their landlord to change the policy about harboring spammers and get the spammers evicted, or they move, or they learn to live in an IP neighborhood which many other ISPs refuse to exchange email with. jc - who finds it very uncomfortable defending AOL against "a little guy", but in this case AOL is in the right. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 28 16:49:33 2003 Received: from ntcorp.com (ntcorp.com [198.65.128.165]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id BBC63509A6 for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 16:49:31 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (fidelman@localhost) by ntcorp.com (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id h7SNnNT15230 for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 19:49:24 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 19:49:23 -0400 (EDT) From: X-X-Sender: To: Subject: Re: AOL blocking --- lawsuit filed Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Archive-Number: 200308/148 X-Sequence-Number: 1701 On Thu, 28 Aug 2003, JC Dill wrote: > Did you know that the US Post Office can refuse to deliver mail to your > residence if they feel that it endangers the postal worker to be on foot in > your neighborhood (as when a dangerous dog is running loose)? A year ago, we had a mailman who couldn't/wouldn't deliver the mail because a wild turkey kept attacking him. :-) From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Aug 28 18:23:59 2003 Received: from pageplanet.com (england.pageplanet.com [4.38.75.30]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4071250811 for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 18:23:58 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [68.36.55.163] (68.36.55.163) by pageplanet.com with ESMTP (Eudora Internet Mail Server 3.1.4) for ; Thu, 28 Aug 2003 21:24:11 -0400 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: tcora1@mail.ibmwr.org Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 21:23:52 -0400 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com From: Tom Coradeschi Subject: Re: AOL blocking --- lawsuit filed Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" X-Archive-Number: 200308/149 X-Sequence-Number: 1702 At 12:26 AM -0400 08/28/2003, murr rhame wrote: >On Wed, 27 Aug 2003, Tom Coradeschi wrote: > >> At 07:00 AM -0400 08/27/2003, Alan B. Clegg wrote: >> >> >For those that are interested, it seems that someone has >> >finally gotten up the nerve (or whatever it takes) to sue AOL >> >for their blocking practices. >> > >> >http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/local/6597267.htm >> > > By all accounts CI is a spam haven. Let's hope AOL cleans their >> clocks (gawd, I can't believe I wrote that). > >Spam haven or not, I don't like the precedent of a court forcing >an ISP to accept email from another ISP. One of the few >inalienable rights you have on the net is the right to refuse to >listen. I agree wholeheartedly, hence my comment "Let's hope AOL cleans their clocks". tom coradeschi <+> tcora@skylands.ibmwr.org Skylands (NJ) BMW Riders <+> From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Fri Aug 29 10:33:56 2003 Received: from xuxa.iecc.com (xuxa.iecc.com [208.31.42.42]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 18993504F5 for ; Fri, 29 Aug 2003 10:33:55 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 13929 invoked by uid 100); 29 Aug 2003 17:33:47 -0000 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Path: xuxa.iecc.com!not-for-mail From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Newsgroups: iecc.lists.list-managers Subject: Re: spam filtering is legal, was AOL blocking --- lawsuit filed Date: 29 Aug 2003 13:33:47 -0400 Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA Lines: 29 Message-ID: References: X-Archive-Number: 200308/150 X-Sequence-Number: 1703 > If an ISP drops filters email, without reserving the right to do so > in their terms of service, I wonder if that's a violation of the > Electronic Communications Privacy Act. Just a thought No, it's not. The ECPA has language about intercepting mail, but if you read the definitions, "intercept" has its wiretap meaning, i.e., snoop on a message, not block or discard it. This is a common misunderstanding of the ECPA by people who haven't read the whole thing. On the other hand 47 USC 230 (part of the CDA, but not the part that was overturned) gives ISPs broad immunity from liability for good-faith efforts to block offensive material. It was written to reverse the Stratton-Oakmont vs. Prodigy case, and with porn blocking as the immediate issue, but it's deliberately written broadly enough that it clearly applies to spam filtering. Considering how huge both AOL's clueless customer base and their incoming spam volume is, they do a remarkably good job of telling real mail from spam. I can report from experience that they're responsive when you point out a problem, e.g., last week they quickly adjusted their virus filters to stop sending bounces when we pointed out that they were all going to innocent third parties, some of whom were getting quite a lot of them. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner "More Wiener schnitzel, please", said Tom, revealingly. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Sat Aug 30 20:51:53 2003 Received: from parrot.squawk.com (parrot.squawk.com [64.244.111.110]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8D07B5114A for ; Sat, 30 Aug 2003 20:51:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from toshiba.scifi.squawk.com (toshiba.squawk.com [199.74.151.118]) by parrot.squawk.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4E72525B182 for ; Sat, 30 Aug 2003 23:51:48 -0400 (EDT) X-America-Has-Resolve: yes X-Message-Flag: Microsoft Outlook is insecure. Upgrade your Mail Program Now! Message-Id: <5.2.1.1.0.20030830233021.3c41b008@199.74.151.1> X-Sender: njs@199.74.151.1 (Unverified) X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.2.1 Date: Sat, 30 Aug 2003 23:37:42 -0400 To: From: Nick Simicich Subject: Re: AOL blocking --- lawsuit filed In-Reply-To: <200308281148.h7SBm98A009635@mail.rev.net> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; x-avg-checked=avg-ok-D54E37; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Archive-Number: 200308/151 X-Sequence-Number: 1704 At 07:48 AM 2003-08-28 -0400, Bernie Cosell wrote: >On 28 Aug 2003 at 0:26, murr rhame wrote: > > > Spam haven or not, I don't like the precedent of a court forcing > > an ISP to accept email from another ISP. One of the few > > inalienable rights you have on the net is the right to refuse to > > listen. > >But the question might be one of the duty of the *transport* providers. >Notice that if you refuse to accept email addressed to me, then you >deprive me of *MY* right to decide to 'listen' or not -- you've already >made the decision for me. No, you can always find an ISP who agrees with your views. The point is that AOL is doing the right thing for most of their users. Seriously: I have users who have AOL only addresses who believe that (for example) unsubscribing at all unsubscribe links has lessened their spam, precisely because AOL is blocking it. >So one way to look at it is whether the sysadmins are actually the focal >points [and we users who rely on them to receive our email] merely their >minions subject to their whims [hello world.std.com]; or whether the >*users* are the focal point and the sysadmins are supposed to be serving >_them_. [I won't use an ISP [and will try to get others to boycott it, >too] that tells me what email I can and cannot receive]. Find an ISP that does what you want (there are some, I'm sure). I had a friend who demonstrated on her three year old the futility of offering infinite choice: "What do you want for dinner?" invoked a blank stare, as the kid was lost in the endless realms of possibility --- but, "Do you want hamburgers or hot dogs for dinner?" got an answer in a couple of seconds. Most users are at about that level: They want a small array of choices that are mostly already correct so that there is no wrong choice. AOL provides this. No, I would not use their service either, but I am not most users. >I don't mind *advice* or even handy tools to deal with certain classes of >stuff automatically, but for me, at least, I want the decision on what to >do with email addressed to me to reside with *ME*. Of course you want this, you are an expert. I wrote demime because I could not figure out how else to allow experts (who frequently despise HTML mail) to co-exist with newbies (who can't figure out how to turn off html mail). -- He said: "There are people from Baath here reporting everything that goes on. There are cameras here recording our faces. If the Americans were to withdraw and everything were to return to the way it was before, we want to make sure that we survive the massacre that would follow as Baath go house to house killing anyone who voiced opposition to Saddam. In public, we always pledge our allegiance to Saddam, but in our hearts we feel something else." Nick Simicich - njs@scifi.squawk.com