From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Tue Nov 4 17:15:28 2003 Received: from bolt.sonic.net (bolt.sonic.net [208.201.242.18]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id A3E4153591 for ; Tue, 4 Nov 2003 17:15:20 -0800 (PST) Received: from satellite.vo.cnchost.com (IDENT:root@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by bolt.sonic.net (8.12.10/8.12.1) with ESMTP id hA51FJWb023920 for ; Tue, 4 Nov 2003 17:15:20 -0800 Message-Id: <6.0.0.10.0.20031104170001.059e1268@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, 04 Nov 2003 17:07:25 -0800 To: listmanagers From: JC Dill Subject: welcome/confirmation message subject line Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed X-Archive-Number: 200311/1 X-Sequence-Number: 1722 I recently started working for a website, members join and receive a welcome message that they have to reply to before they have full access to the site. We are finding a high percentage of "less sophisticated Internet users" (e.g. AOL users, hotmail users) are re-requesting that we send the verification message again, and again, because the message that they receive they then mark as spam instead of opening and replying to it. (This was verified by AOL, who looked at several user email boxes for us and found the missing messages in the user's spam boxes, put there by user action. If anyone has a contact at Hotmail who could help check on Hotmail user behavior, we would love to talk to them too.) For those of you who run lists that have a high percentage of unsophisticated subscribers, are you seeing similar problems with address verification by AOL and/or Hotmail users? Have you reworded your welcome message subject line to improve the odds that the recipient recognizes the email as requested and one that requires action before they can join your list? If so, what changes have you made that have helped with this problem? Thanks! jc From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Tue Nov 4 17:27:01 2003 Received: from mailbox.onlinepolicy.net (mailbox.onlinepolicy.net [64.62.161.194]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 38AB052B7A for ; Tue, 4 Nov 2003 17:26:58 -0800 (PST) Received: from roger (dsl081-190-082.sea1.dsl.speakeasy.net [64.81.190.82]) by mailbox.onlinepolicy.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 845FD16801D; Tue, 4 Nov 2003 16:57:26 -0800 (PST) From: "Roger B.A. Klorese" To: "'JC Dill'" , "'listmanagers'" Subject: Re: welcome/confirmation message subject line Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 17:26:57 -0800 Message-ID: <7CEFA9CA4D5BE74586551915EC9C9C33527592@consera1.corpnet.consera.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook, Build 10.0.4510 In-Reply-To: <6.0.0.10.0.20031104170001.059e1268@127.0.0.1> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1165 Importance: Normal X-Archive-Number: 200311/2 X-Sequence-Number: 1723 > For those of you who run lists that have a high percentage of=20 > unsophisticated subscribers, are you seeing similar problems=20 > with address=20 > verification by AOL and/or Hotmail users? Have you reworded=20 > your welcome=20 > message subject line to improve the odds that the recipient=20 > recognizes the=20 > email as requested and one that requires action before they=20 > can join your=20 > list? If so, what changes have you made that have helped=20 > with this problem? Considering that we have users who have been on lists for over two years who are now reporting the posts -- with subject prefixes -- as spam, I doubt you could put anything in the confirmation message that would help... From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Tue Nov 4 17:49:14 2003 Received: from one.elistx.com (one.elistx.com [209.116.252.130]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 74CF150A08 for ; Tue, 4 Nov 2003 17:49:11 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (one.elistx.com [209.116.252.130]) by eListX.com (PMDF V6.0-025 #44856) with ESMTP id <0HNU00HEXVR8M4@eListX.com> for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Tue, 04 Nov 2003 20:49:56 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2003 20:48:07 -0500 (EST) From: James M Galvin Subject: Re: welcome/confirmation message subject line In-reply-to: <6.0.0.10.0.20031104170001.059e1268@127.0.0.1> X-X-Sender: galvin@three.elistx.com To: JC Dill Cc: listmanagers Message-id: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Archive-Number: 200311/3 X-Sequence-Number: 1724 On Tue, 4 Nov 2003, JC Dill wrote: For those of you who run lists that have a high percentage of unsophisticated subscribers, are you seeing similar problems with address verification by AOL and/or Hotmail users? Have you reworded your welcome message subject line to improve the odds that the recipient recognizes the email as requested and one that requires action before they can join your list? If so, what changes have you made that have helped with this problem? In general, I don't think there is anything you can do that will guarantee anything. Most people are too quick to "find spam" if they don't immediately recognize you. AOL, Hotmail, and others make it too easy for users to select that choice. However, there are three things that we have found to help. 1. Everywhere there are instructions make sure they all describe a 3 step process. Request a subscription, reply to the confirmation request, and finally receive the welcome message. The actual level of detail varies with the space available but whenever possible we tell people exactly what the subject line will look like and the email address the message will be from when they get it. And a minor nit with your words above. The "welcome message" is the final message from the server to the subscriber. It's not a welcome message if the prospective subscriber must reply to it. 2. We put the prefix "ACTION REQUESTED" on the subject line of the confirmation request, immediately followed by the name of the list, for example: Subject: ACTION REQUESTED: list-managers .... 3. Make sure your server does everything in real-time. This seems obvious but there's nothing more annoying than requesting a subscription and having to wait hours (or even a day) for the confirmation request. If it doesn't get sent and received with 5 minutes people forget. So you have to do it immediately because you have no control over AOL and Hotmail, which may or may not deliver anything in any particular amount of time. Hope this helps, Jim From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Tue Nov 4 19:39:19 2003 Received: from bolt.sonic.net (bolt.sonic.net [208.201.242.18]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id B430752EDA for ; Tue, 4 Nov 2003 19:39:05 -0800 (PST) Received: from satellite.vo.cnchost.com (IDENT:root@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by bolt.sonic.net (8.12.10/8.12.1) with ESMTP id hA53d5Wb003374 for ; Tue, 4 Nov 2003 19:39:05 -0800 Message-Id: <6.0.0.10.0.20031104193454.0529f800@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, 04 Nov 2003 19:35:51 -0800 To: listmanagers From: JC Dill Subject: Re: welcome/confirmation message subject line In-Reply-To: References: <6.0.0.10.0.20031104170001.059e1268@127.0.0.1> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed X-Archive-Number: 200311/4 X-Sequence-Number: 1725 At 05:48 PM 11/4/2003, James M Galvin wrote: > And a minor nit with your words above. The "welcome message" is the > final message from the server to the subscriber. It's not a welcome > message if the prospective subscriber must reply to it. For our website, it IS a welcome message, because they have partial access to the site after they have registered and before they have confirmed. jc From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Nov 5 05:37:34 2003 Received: from one.elistx.com (one.elistx.com [209.116.252.130]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id CB736523A9 for ; Wed, 5 Nov 2003 05:37:29 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (one.elistx.com [209.116.252.130]) by eListX.com (PMDF V6.0-025 #44856) with ESMTP id <0HNV00FD5SJQ4U@eListX.com> for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 05 Nov 2003 08:38:14 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2003 08:36:24 -0500 (EST) From: James M Galvin Subject: Re: welcome/confirmation message subject line In-reply-to: <6.0.0.10.0.20031104193454.0529f800@127.0.0.1> X-X-Sender: galvin@three.elistx.com To: listmanagers Message-id: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Archive-Number: 200311/5 X-Sequence-Number: 1726 On Tue, 4 Nov 2003, JC Dill wrote: At 05:48 PM 11/4/2003, James M Galvin wrote: > And a minor nit with your words above. The "welcome message" > is the final message from the server to the subscriber. It's > not a welcome message if the prospective subscriber must reply > to it. For our website, it IS a welcome message, because they have partial access to the site after they have registered and before they have confirmed. Well, that's probably the real issue. Even if you split the message into two messages then you'll get complaints about overfilling the mailbox. We tried that for a while in another context. In some ways it's more tolerable because even though you get a complaint the right thing has happened and most people seemed to move on, i.e., they complain and they're done. You still might try it, though. Different user communities have different ideas about what is reasonable. Jim From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Nov 5 07:51:51 2003 Received: from yertle.kcilink.com (yertle.kcilink.com [216.194.193.105]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8BB1D53377 for ; Wed, 5 Nov 2003 07:51:48 -0800 (PST) Received: by yertle.kcilink.com (Postfix, from userid 100) id CB1D82178A; Wed, 5 Nov 2003 10:51:47 -0500 (EST) From: Vivek Khera MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <16297.7315.709453.588491@yertle.int.kciLink.com> Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 10:51:47 -0500 To: listmanagers Subject: Re: welcome/confirmation message subject line In-Reply-To: <6.0.0.10.0.20031104170001.059e1268@127.0.0.1> References: <6.0.0.10.0.20031104170001.059e1268@127.0.0.1> X-Mailer: VM 7.14 under 21.4 (patch 14) "Reasonable Discussion" XEmacs Lucid X-Archive-Number: 200311/6 X-Sequence-Number: 1727 >>>>> "JD" == JC Dill writes: JD> For those of you who run lists that have a high percentage of JD> unsophisticated subscribers, are you seeing similar problems with address JD> verification by AOL and/or Hotmail users? Have you reworded your welcome We went through many iterations of our subject line. We settled on one that included a brief description of the list followed by an "action" phrase such as "please confirm your subscription". However, there's just no way to deal with everyone... even though the web form says they will get this message and need to reply to it, they often ignore it. -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Vivek Khera, Ph.D. Khera Communications, Inc. Internet: khera@kciLink.com Rockville, MD +1-240-453-8497 AIM: vivekkhera Y!: vivek_khera http://www.khera.org/~vivek/ From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Fri Nov 7 12:06:40 2003 Received: from yertle.kcilink.com (yertle.kcilink.com [216.194.193.105]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1AABE52033 for ; Fri, 7 Nov 2003 12:06:38 -0800 (PST) Received: by yertle.kcilink.com (Postfix, from userid 100) id 266542178C; Fri, 7 Nov 2003 15:06:32 -0500 (EST) From: Vivek Khera MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <16299.64328.40826.134286@yertle.int.kciLink.com> Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 15:06:32 -0500 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: aol backlog? X-Mailer: VM 7.14 under 21.4 (patch 14) "Reasonable Discussion" XEmacs Lucid X-Archive-Number: 200311/7 X-Sequence-Number: 1728 Anyone else seeing a large backlog/slowdown to AOL since last night? -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Vivek Khera, Ph.D. Khera Communications, Inc. Internet: khera@kciLink.com Rockville, MD +1-240-453-8497 AIM: vivekkhera Y!: vivek_khera http://www.khera.org/~vivek/ From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Sat Nov 8 23:21:31 2003 Received: from web60205.mail.yahoo.com (web60205.mail.yahoo.com [216.109.118.100]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 9C49D504EA for ; Sat, 8 Nov 2003 23:21:20 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <20031109072119.38006.qmail@web60205.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [81.129.78.12] by web60205.mail.yahoo.com via HTTP; Sun, 09 Nov 2003 07:21:19 GMT Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2003 07:21:19 +0000 (GMT) From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Lee?= Subject: How to associate a list with a group To: list-managers@greatcircle.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Archive-Number: 200311/8 X-Sequence-Number: 1729 Hello, I'm also sending this to the majordomo-users list, but just wondering if anyone here can help - I'm the 'owner' of a majordomo list and have made efforts to provide a better digest version of it, due to all the html and code which comes through ... yes, I've tried to get subscribers to send just plain text ... We've just put the html stripper patch on, which may sort things sufficiently, but this still puzzles and interests me: - What I've done is set up a Yahoo group into which I manually forward all the individual list mails. I get these from a standard majordomo subscription. I then subscribe interested members to the Yahoo group with their individual setting set to 'daily digest'. Fine, but you can imagine I'd like to automate this process - but how? I've tried all manner of ways including automatic fowarding from one of my mail accounts, or subscribing the Yahoo group email posting address to the original majordomo list, but the messages simply don't come through. I've been very careful to address issues of access privileges and can only conclude that the Yahoo group is somehow 'unwilling' to accept the messages. Why?! I set 'mungedomain = yes' in the original list config because the group address is a 'xx@xx.co.uk' type, but that hasn't helped either - is it because the mungedomain feature only works with '.com' suffixes? I've a feeling i need to cheat the 'to' address in some way so the majordomo messages still go to 'the list' (subscribers' apparent addresses) as well as a direct mail-to address. Any help or experience here would be great! Thanks a lot, Lee ________________________________________________________________________ Want to chat instantly with your online friends? Get the FREE Yahoo! Messenger http://mail.messenger.yahoo.co.uk From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Nov 13 12:56:52 2003 Received: from befriend2.dnsservers.us (befriend2.dnsservers.us [64.246.20.65]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id BA8F250ACF for ; Thu, 13 Nov 2003 12:56:49 -0800 (PST) X-ClientAddr: 209.158.212.36 Received: from befoffice1 (pool-209-158-212-36.rich.east.verizon.net [209.158.212.36]) (authenticated (0 bits)) by befriend2.dnsservers.us (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id hADKuKc30189 for ; Thu, 13 Nov 2003 15:56:20 -0500 Message-ID: <052101c3aa28$a1dc29c0$6501a8c0@befoffice1> From: "Steve Werby" To: Subject: Status code from Yahoo, new? Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 15:56:24 -0500 Organization: Befriend Internet Services LLC 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 6.00.2720.3000 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2727.1300 X-MailScanner-Information: Please contact the ISP for more information X-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-MailScanner-SpamCheck: not spam, SpamAssassin (score=0, required 5) X-Archive-Number: 200311/9 X-Sequence-Number: 1730 I started noticing the following on a mail server I administer. relay=mx2.mail.yahoo.com. [64.156.215.6], dsn=4.0.0, stat=Deferred: 421 VS14-PR Mailbox bounce arrival rate exceeds system limit (#4.2.2) In this particular case a user's email is forwarded to her Yahoo email account. Nearly all of it is spam and is being tagged as such by Spamassassin, but she wants it forwarded to her Yahoo account. The mail is just queuing and building up. I analyzed attempts to deliver to her Yahoo account for a single hour from this afternoon. 491 attempts - dsn=5.0.0, stat=Service unavailable 158 attempts - dsn=4.0.0, stat=Deferred: 421 VS14-PR Mailbox bounce arrival rate exceeds system li mit (#4.2.2) 209 attempts - dsn=4.0.0, stat=Deferred: Connection reset by mx4.mail.yahoo.com I've successfully sent mail from the server to other yahoo.com accounts. It appears that Yahoo has implemented a mechanism which limits the rate at which email from a host can be delivered to a specific yahoo.com user. Have any of you seen this on your mail servers? And do any of you know what the max arrival rate is or how I can find out? I'm also interested if this has affected your mailing lists. I haven't run into it on any of the lists I manage (I checked logs a few hours ago), but since Yahoo users make up b/w 5% and 15% of the subscriptions on most of my lists I'd like to be prepared. -- Steve Werby President, Befriend Internet Services LLC http://www.befriend.com/