From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Thu Feb 3 05:53:16 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA29129; Thu, 3 Feb 94 05:53:16 GMT Received: from mail.netcom.com (netcom.netcom.com) by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA29122; Wed, 2 Feb 94 21:53:05 PST Received: from localhost by mail.netcom.com (8.6.4/SMI-4.1/Netcom) id VAA13386; Wed, 2 Feb 1994 21:55:54 -0800 From: dilcher@netcom.com (Jeff Dilcher) Message-Id: <199402030555.VAA13386@mail.netcom.com> Subject: digest? To: list-managers-digest@greatcircle.com Date: Wed, 2 Feb 1994 21:55:53 -0800 (PST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 152 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk could someone tell me how I would make my list into a digested list? I am running a list with the majordomo software. Thanks, Jeff Dilcher@netcom.com From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Thu Feb 3 16:51:38 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA02109; Thu, 3 Feb 94 16:51:38 GMT Received: from snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA02102; Thu, 3 Feb 94 08:51:27 PST Received: by snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca (5.64/1.35) id AA18529; Thu, 3 Feb 94 11:51:55 -0500 From: stevep@snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca (Steve Portigal) Message-Id: <9402031651.AA18529@snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca> Subject: unsub scripts? To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Thu, 3 Feb 94 11:51:53 EST In-Reply-To: <9402030910.AA00333@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM>; from "List-Managers-Digest-Owner@GreatCircle.COM" at Feb 3, 94 1:10 am Organization: Your Company Name Here X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11] Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Does anyone have any unix scripts that can be used to add or delete people from a list, based on email messages? I can't implement majordomoo or anything like that, but this might be a help to me rather tha doing it manually... Steve, illiterate today -- +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Steve Portigal ** User-Interface Dude ** stevep@snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca | | Voice/Fax: (905) 632 6647 Stop The Insanity! | +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Thu Feb 3 17:57:56 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA02379; Thu, 3 Feb 94 17:57:56 GMT Received: from khijol.yggdrasil.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA02372; Thu, 3 Feb 94 09:57:47 PST Received: by khijol.yggdrasil.com (Linux Smail3.1.28.1 #7) id m0pS8Jl-000HZnC; Thu, 3 Feb 94 09:58 PST Message-Id: From: erc@khijol.yggdrasil.com (Ed Carp) Subject: Re: unsub scripts? To: stevep@snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca (Steve Portigal) Date: Thu, 3 Feb 1994 09:58:06 -0800 (PST) Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <9402031651.AA18529@snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca> from "Steve Portigal" at Feb 3, 94 11:51:53 am Reply-To: ecarp@netcom.com X-Comment: PGP 2.3 public key available - finger erc@saturn.upl.com. X-Mn-Key: NORMAL X-Organization: Temple In The Forest - Fremont, CA X-Operating-System: Linux 0.99.14u X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Content-Type: text Content-Length: 802 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > Does anyone have any unix scripts that can be used to add or delete > people from a list, based on email messages? I can't implement majordomoo > or anything like that, but this might be a help to me rather tha > doing it manually... How about... in body of email: "{add | del} user@site.domain" Add script: grep ^add|cut -d' ' -f2 >> user.list Del script: grep -v ^`grep ^add|cut -d' ' -f2` < user.list > user.list.new mv user.list.new user.list Not very secure - just a quick hack...you could also parse the address from the headers, but that's a little more difficult... -- Ed Carp, N7EKG erc@wetware.com 510/659-9560 "What's the sense of trying hard to find your dreams without someone to share it with, tell me, what does it mean?" -- Whitney Houston, "Run To You" From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Thu Feb 3 10:32:50 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA02528; Thu, 3 Feb 94 18:24:32 GMT Received: from tta.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA02513; Thu, 3 Feb 94 10:24:18 PST Received: by tta.com (5.67/TTA-1.00) id AA03968; Thu, 3 Feb 94 12:04:26 -0600 Date: Thu, 3 Feb 94 12:04:26 -0600 From: stan@tta.com (Stan Hanks) Message-Id: <9402031804.AA03968@tta.com> To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Big lists and heavy DNS loads Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I thought this was discussed in the past, but if so I can't find it in the various articles I've saved. Anyway, I'm running a list with 600+ subscribers, sending messages to 450+ different hosts (all of which have A or MX records). At 30-50 messages a day, plus various rejected mail being returned to sender, etc. I'm spending one HELL of a lot of time resolving names into IP numbers, including a significant amount of time waiting on other people's name servers to tell me that yes, foo.com is *still* at 123.456.78.90... Is there any convenient fix for this? Stan From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Fri Feb 4 19:08:05 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA07417; Fri, 4 Feb 94 19:08:05 GMT Received: from nico.aarnet.edu.au ([139.130.204.16]) by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA07396; Fri, 4 Feb 94 11:07:48 PST Received: from cruskit.aarnet.edu.au (cruskit.aarnet.edu.au [139.130.204.2]) by nico.aarnet.edu.au (8.6.5.Beta11/8.6.4) with SMTP id LAA13085; Fri, 4 Feb 1994 11:27:20 +1100 Received: from localhost (asjl@localhost) by cruskit.aarnet.edu.au (8.6.4/1.2) id LAA02259; Fri, 4 Feb 1994 11:27:54 +1100 Date: Fri, 4 Feb 1994 11:27:53 +1100 (EST) From: Andy Linton Subject: Re: Big lists and heavy DNS loads To: Stan Hanks Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <9402031804.AA03968@tta.com> Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, 3 Feb 1994, Stan Hanks wrote: > Date: Thu, 3 Feb 94 12:04:26 -0600 > From: Stan Hanks > To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM > Subject: Big lists and heavy DNS loads > > I thought this was discussed in the past, but if so I can't find it > in the various articles I've saved. Anyway, I'm running a list with > 600+ subscribers, sending messages to 450+ different hosts (all of > which have A or MX records). At 30-50 messages a day, plus various > rejected mail being returned to sender, etc. I'm spending one HELL > of a lot of time resolving names into IP numbers, including a significant > amount of time waiting on other people's name servers to tell me that > yes, foo.com is *still* at 123.456.78.90... > Stan, You don't mention if you're running a caching only nameserver on the mail host. I've found this to be a positive step. My mail host has now been up for 7 days, runs a number of lists where the biggest list has 400+ users with about remote 340 hosts and currently the cache is around 400 Kbytes. I suspect this should be close to a steady state. I also run with Sendmail V8 which will piggyback messages where the MX records point to the same site. With a mix of 600 -> 450 as you describe there may be some savings there in processing too. (I see you run Sendmail 5.67) andy -- Andy Linton A.Linton@aarnet.edu.au Network Engineer phone: +61 6 249 2874 AARNet fax: +61 6 249 1369 -- From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Sat Feb 5 00:53:45 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA09094; Sat, 5 Feb 94 00:53:45 GMT Received: from xmission.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA09050; Fri, 4 Feb 94 16:48:48 PST Received: by xmission.com (4.1/Xmission/SMI-4.1) id AA27865; Fri, 4 Feb 94 17:50:09 MST From: pashdown@xmission.com (Pete Ashdown) Message-Id: <9402050050.AA27865@xmission.com> Subject: Swamped with error messages To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Date: Fri, 4 Feb 1994 17:50:08 -0700 (MST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL22] Content-Type: text Content-Length: 274 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Because I am now running several mailing lists off of XMission, I am being swamped with "Machine Down" type errors and usually three copies of each. Are there any programs that I can forward the mail to and it will digest them into a daily report indicating problem sites? From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Tue Feb 8 19:48:50 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA00345; Tue, 8 Feb 94 19:48:50 GMT Received: from pooh.ucsf.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA00338; Tue, 8 Feb 94 11:48:41 PST Received: from localhost by pooh.ucsf.edu (8.6.4/GSC4.24) id LAA26186; Tue, 8 Feb 1994 11:50:52 -0800 Message-Id: <199402081950.LAA26186@pooh.ucsf.edu> Subject: Re: "Grouping" of mail from mailing lists ... To: majordomo-users@greatcircle.com Date: Tue, 8 Feb 1994 11:50:51 -0800 (PST) Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com From: troyer@cgl.ucsf.edu (John M. Troyer) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL22] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1978 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk (This thread started on the Majordomo-Users list. I've Cc:'d the List-Managers list, and I suggest that all further discussion take place there, since it isn't really germane to Majordomo anymore.) The topic is From: line munging to put the name of your list there instead of the author. This is in direct violation of (my reading of) rfc822. 4.4.1. FROM / RESENT-FROM This field contains the identity of the person(s) who wished this message to be sent. The message-creation process should default this field to be a single, authenticated machine address, indicating the AGENT (person, system or process) entering the message. In a perfect world, you could say: "Learn how to use a mail filter." In an imperfect world, you realize that new users barely know how to log in, let alone set up a mail filter. And most mail reading programs (user agents, whatever) present you with something like 1 joe@blow.com Thu Feb 3 10:24 745/31903 Re: Here's the file All the X-Mailing-List:'s and Sender:'s and Resent-From:'s and trailers in the body and even To:'s and Cc:'s won't help you figure out if this letter came from a list until you look at it. So, in order not to be confusing (and I consider changing the From: line to be VERY confusing), the only solution I've seen (as has been mentioned here) is to add a short tag in the subject line. 1 joe@blow.com Thu Feb 3 10:24 745/31903 [foobar]Re: Here's the file I don't think it's particularly aesthetic, but I can live with it. The only problem I can think of is _if_ you were gating the mailing list into a local newsgroup, and _if_ some sort of threading were done by looking at "Re:"'s at the beginning of Subject lines, you'd break that. But I really, really don't think changing the From: field is the answer. john troyer@cgl.ucsf.edu ps and don't get me started on broken gateways and mailers that ignore From: and Reply-To:. grrrrr. From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Wed Feb 9 18:42:32 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA07828; Wed, 9 Feb 94 18:42:32 GMT Received: from pooh.ucsf.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA07821; Wed, 9 Feb 94 10:42:25 PST Received: from localhost by pooh.ucsf.edu (8.6.4/GSC4.24) id KAA07939; Wed, 9 Feb 1994 10:44:39 -0800 Message-Id: <199402091844.KAA07939@pooh.ucsf.edu> Subject: [list-man] putting listname in the subject To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 10:44:38 -0800 (PST) From: troyer@cgl.ucsf.edu (John M. Troyer) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL22] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 563 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk One more comment on 'marking' mail with the list name to facilitate grouping/filtering/deleting/etc.: If you do put the list name into the subject, please be clever about it. Otherwise you can get lines like this (in my box today from the CCL = Computer Chemistry List). > Subject: CCL:Re: CCL:CCL:Re: High Cost of Comp. Chem. john troyer@cgl.ucsf.edu ps the CCL is one of the most professional I'm on. Comes from having a proactive administrator AND an outlet (an ftp site) for otherwise inappropriate posts (CVs, job openings, commercial announcements). From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Thu Feb 10 07:50:53 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA10473; Thu, 10 Feb 94 07:50:53 GMT Received: from net.bio.net by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA10466; Wed, 9 Feb 94 23:50:45 PST Received: from localhost by net.bio.net (8.6.5/IG-2.0) id XAA09737; Wed, 9 Feb 1994 23:52:30 -0800 Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 23:52:30 -0800 From: mcb@net.bio.net (Michael C. Berch) Message-Id: <199402100752.XAA09737@net.bio.net> To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: [list-man] putting listname in the subject Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk troyer@cgl.ucsf.edu (John M. Troyer) writes: > One more comment on 'marking' mail with the list name to facilitate > grouping/filtering/deleting/etc.: > > If you do put the list name into the subject, please be clever about it. > Otherwise you can get lines like this (in my box today from the CCL = > Computer Chemistry List). > > > Subject: CCL:Re: CCL:CCL:Re: High Cost of Comp. Chem. I think putting the list name in the Subject line is a terrible idea, for a couple of reasons besides the one shown by John Troyer above. First, a mail user agent that can parse the subject line for a list name for filtering can presumably read other headers. In a properly constructed list, this information will already be in a recipient header (To: or Cc:). A list processing program could easily add an explicit header like X-List-Name: (I think some LISTSERVs do this or something like it already.) Second, and perhaps more importantly, prefixes to a message subject for classification purposes are *already* in use in a number of lists and newsgroups, where they are applied by the sender or a moderator, e.g., Subject: [ADMIN] List will be off the air this weekend Subject: [Question] How can I initialize a framistator? Subject: [Anthony] How many !@#$%^& Xanth books are there, anyway? Putting the list name there would defeat this purpose, or at least clutter it unacceptably. -- Michael C. Berch mcb@net.bio.net / mcb@postmodern.com From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Thu Feb 10 18:50:08 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA13170; Thu, 10 Feb 94 18:50:08 GMT Received: from cs.umb.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA13160; Thu, 10 Feb 94 10:49:54 PST Received: from terminus.cs.umb.edu by cs.umb.edu with SMTP id AA11548 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for ); Thu, 10 Feb 1994 13:51:54 -0500 Message-Id: <199402101851.AA11548@cs.umb.edu> To: mcb@net.bio.net (Michael C. Berch) Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: [list-man] putting listname in the subject In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 09 Feb 1994 23:52:30 PST." <199402100752.XAA09737@net.bio.net> Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 13:51:53 -0500 From: "John P. Rouillard" Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message <199402100752.XAA09737@net.bio.net>, Michael C. Berch writes: > troyer@cgl.ucsf.edu (John M. Troyer) writes: > > One more comment on 'marking' mail with the list name to facilitate > > grouping/filtering/deleting/etc.: > > > > If you do put the list name into the subject, please be clever about it. > > Otherwise you can get lines like this (in my box today from the CCL = > > Computer Chemistry List). > > > > > Subject: CCL:Re: CCL:CCL:Re: High Cost of Comp. Chem. > > I think putting the list name in the Subject line is a terrible idea, > for a couple of reasons besides the one shown by John Troyer above. Well if the program that adds the tag is a bit brighter, only one tag may be added. > First, a mail user agent that can parse the subject line for a list > name for filtering can presumably read other headers. Nope, not everybody uses a real mailer like mh 8-). Some mailers don't even know any other headers except From, To, and Subject. Yes, they haven't got a clue about Reply-To 8-(. Some of them are so dumb as to think that Sender is for the MUA 8-). > In a properly constructed list, this information will already be in > a recipient header (To: or Cc:). A list processing program could > easily add an explicit header like X-List-Name: (I think some > LISTSERVs do this or something like it already.) Yes, everybody should use mh and deliver, but if all the recipient has available is elm or pine, then they are out of luck. These two mailers are easy to use, and seem to be catching on and both can sort by subject. Neither supports the X-List-Name header, nor arguably should they since its an X header and is liable to go away tomorrow. > Second, and perhaps more importantly, prefixes to a message subject > for classification purposes are *already* in use in anumber of lists > and newsgroups, where they are applied by the sender or a moderator, e.g., > > Subject: [ADMIN] List will be off the air this weekend > Subject: [Question] How can I initialize a framistator? > Subject: [Anthony] How many !@#$%^& Xanth books are there, anyway? > > Putting the list name there would defeat this purpose, or at least > clutter it unacceptably. Hmm, I can read: Subject: [bulb] [ADMIN] List will be off the air this weekend Subject: [bulb] [Question] How can I initialize a framistator? Subject: [bulb] [Anthony] How many !@#$%^& Xanth books are there, anyway? Subject: [bulb] How many !@#$%^& Xanth books are there, anyway? just fine. It doesn't look really pretty, but it work nicely I think. If the program that adds the tag is smart, then this isn't a problem. For example: subject_tag = [bulb] # show that its from the bright ideas list subject_tab_inhibit << EOE # if a regexp matches, don't add a subject tag /\[[A-z]*\]/ # if there are items of the form [ADMIN] ... don't add [bulb] /^\sRe:.*[bulb]/ # if its a reply, that has a tag already, # don't add a tag /[bulb]/ # if the tag is alrady there don't add another one /^\sRe:/ # don;t add a tag on replies at all EOE I could inhibit tags on all of your examples above. If I was a nice person, I would set up the tags so they read: Subject: [bulb-ADMIN] List will be off the air this weekend Subject: [bulb-Question] How can I initialize a framistator? Subject: [bulb-Anthony] How many !@#$%^& Xanth books are there, anyway? to allow subject sorts to work correctly, and I would only need: /^\s\[bulb/ to inhibit the tags on untagged list submissions. -- John John Rouillard Special Projects Volunteer University of Massachusetts at Boston rouilj@cs.umb.edu (preferred) Boston, MA, (617) 287-6480 =============================================================================== My employers don't acknowledge my existence much less my opinions. From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Fri Feb 11 17:58:39 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA18512; Fri, 11 Feb 94 17:58:39 GMT Received: from eros.Britain.EU.net by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AB18497; Fri, 11 Feb 94 09:58:25 PST Received: from andersen.co.uk by eros.britain.eu.net with UUCP id ; Fri, 11 Feb 1994 09:32:25 +0000 Received: by andersen.co.uk (4.1/sp-0.1) id AA23355; Fri, 11 Feb 94 09:21:06 GMT Newsgroups: mail.list-managers-digest Path: sdpage From: sdpage@andersen.co.uk (Stephen Page) Subject: A flood from com.aol Message-Id: <1994Feb11.092103.23309@andersen.co.uk> Organization: Andersen Consulting (UK Practice) Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 09:21:03 GMT Lines: 17 Apparently-To: list-managers@GreatCircle.com Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I moderate the Music-Research Digest. Over the last couple of months we have had a torrent of requests from users at com.aol, which I understand is a service called America On Line. I'm not sure why there has been such a sudden flood. I'd like to find out where they are hearing about our Digest, because I think the information they are seeing may be incomplete (I think they are interpreting it as including MIDI and synthesizers in its scope; these are explicitly excluded and therefore it is unusual to see a lot of interest in a fairly minority field). I've tried mailing the postmaster, twice, but had no reply. Has anyone else experienced a similar flood, and managed to trace it back to its source? Thanks Stephen Page sdpage@andersen.co.uk From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Fri Feb 11 12:33:09 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA19829; Fri, 11 Feb 94 20:08:21 GMT Received: from UUCP-GW.CC.UH.EDU by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA19822; Fri, 11 Feb 94 12:08:09 PST Received: from Taronga.COM by UUCP-GW.CC.UH.EDU with UUCP id AA22087 (5.67a/IDA-1.5 for greatcircle.com!list-managers); Fri, 11 Feb 1994 14:07:32 -0600 Received: by taronga.taronga.com (smail2.5) id AA24989; 11 Feb 94 13:19:44 CST (Fri) Subject: A flood from America OnLine To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Date: Fri, 11 Feb 94 13:19:43 CST X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.2 PL16] Message-Id: <9402111319.AA24989@taronga.taronga.com> From: arielle@taronga.com (Stephanie da Silva) Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk sdpage@andersen.co.uk (Stephen Page) complains: > I moderate the Music-Research Digest. Over the last couple of months we > have had a torrent of requests from users at com.aol, which I understand > is a service called America On Line. > I'm not sure why there has been such a sudden flood. > I've tried mailing the postmaster, twice, but had no reply. Has anyone else > experienced a similar flood, and managed to trace it back to its source? I think I can answer this. You see, I believe it's my fault. Couple months ago, I got contacted by someone from AOL wanting to post the Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists there. I told them what I told everyone -- Sure, as long as you leave all the attributions intact. Turned out to be a huge mistake. I got buried in the most clueless mail I think I have ever seen. I fired off a letter to postmaster@aol.com, asking them to remove the PAML from their system (it has a copyright on it, after all). In the response I got back, I was told things like, "The Internet is not the playground for the computer elite anymore," and "America Online is on the Interet, you better get used to it." But they also grudgingly agreed to remove the PAML. A week later, someone told me it was still there. I got Peter to send a second letter cause I was pretty pissed, and he's a lot more diplomatic than I am. There was no response to this one. In the meantime, I drew up a form letter to deal with all the clueless mail, and dropped all AOL users off my two mailing lists (the membership of one of my lists jumped by 15%, just from the influx of AOL users). Then about 2 weeks ago, I got contacted by someone from AOL, someone different from the ones before. Apparantly an AOL user complained to him when I refused them access to one of my lists, and he demanded an explanation for my exclusionist position. So I gave it to him. I haven't heard back from him, but the clueless mail also seems to have stopped. Then again, I'm not on AOL, so I can't check to see if they actually did remove my document from their system. I'm not the only one. I had at least one list owner ask me to remove their list from the PAML in direct response to this, and I've heard other complaints about actions of AOL users on mailing lists. Moral of the story? Don't have anything to do with America Online. Ever. -- Stephanie da Silva PO Box 720711 arielle@taronga.com Houston, TX 77272 Moderator, rec.food.recipes 713 568 0381 "One problem with the Information Superhighway: more bad drivers." -- KD Leka From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Fri Feb 11 21:24:16 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA20160; Fri, 11 Feb 94 21:24:16 GMT Received: from emory.mathcs.emory.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA20153; Fri, 11 Feb 94 13:24:08 PST Received: from toolz.UUCP by emory.mathcs.emory.edu (5.65/Emory_mathcs.3.4.19) via UUCP id AA16796 ; Fri, 11 Feb 94 16:26:23 -0500 Received: by toolz (5.65/1.35) id AA26883; Fri, 11 Feb 94 16:20:48 -0500 Date: Fri, 11 Feb 94 16:20:48 -0500 From: todd%toolz.UUCP@mathcs.emory.edu (Todd Merriman) Message-Id: <9402112120.AA26883@toolz> To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: A flood from America OnLine Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >You see, I believe it's my fault. > >Couple months ago, I got contacted by someone from AOL wanting to post >the Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists there. I told them what I told >everyone -- Sure, as long as you leave all the attributions intact. Turned >out to be a huge mistake. I was also buried in clueless mail for a couple of weeks on my mailing list, but I welcomed the new traffic because my list had become tired-assed. And, when the traffic jumped up by a factor of 10, many of those AOL subscribers dropped out because they have to pay for the time they spend reading mail. The traffic has now reduced to a reasonable level, and there are a lot of new topics being discussed on the list. I'm glad that AOL posted the Publicly Accessible Mailing List, and I'm glad that I am able to reach many more people who need the information on my list. | Todd Merriman - Software Toolz, Inc. +1 404 889 8264 / Maintainer of the | 8030 Pooles Mill Dr., Ball Ground, GA 30107 / Software Entrepreneur's | todd@toolz.atl.ga.us / Mailing List We are not anticipating any emergencies. From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Fri Feb 11 13:33:09 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA20017; Fri, 11 Feb 94 20:58:33 GMT Received: from apple.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA20010; Fri, 11 Feb 94 12:58:19 PST Received: by apple.com (5.61/8-Oct-1993-eef) id AA03383; Fri, 11 Feb 94 13:00:15 -0800 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Fri, 11 Feb 94 13:00:15 -0800 From: Chuq Von Rospach Message-Id: <9402112100.AA03383@apple.com> To: arielle@taronga.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: A flood from America OnLine Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >Moral of the story? Don't have anything to do with America Online. >Ever. Well, actually, I'm a member of AOL, but ignoring that, I've got lots of aol members on the three lists I run. I have zero problems with them, and some of them are serious contributors. Or maybe not zero, but as a group they seem to cause me less hassle than some chunks of the Net. Of course, when they sign up they all get an intro note telling them what they can and can't do, how to sign on and off, what is and isn't valid discussion fodder and other "set the limits of acceptable behaviour" commentary. I find that really helps minimize expecation clashes. I also treat them as individuals, not as a net-ghetto, and so there's no built-in conflict waiting to happen. If I have a problem, I deal with the individual. And until I saw these last couple of messages, I hadn't realized the 50 or so AOL folks on my three lists were such problems. I guess I'll have to go rethink my position. From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Fri Feb 11 22:52:57 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA20464; Fri, 11 Feb 94 22:52:57 GMT Received: from wilma.cs.utk.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA20457; Fri, 11 Feb 94 14:52:33 PST Received: from LOCALHOST by wilma.cs.utk.edu with SMTP (8.6.4/2.8c-UTK) id RAA00457; Fri, 11 Feb 1994 17:45:19 -0500 Message-Id: <199402112245.RAA00457@wilma.cs.utk.edu> From: Keith Moore To: "John P. Rouillard" Cc: mcb@net.bio.net (Michael C. Berch), list-managers@greatcircle.com, moore@cs.utk.edu Subject: Re: [list-man] putting listname in the subject In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 10 Feb 1994 13:51:53 EST." <199402101851.AA11548@cs.umb.edu> Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 17:45:19 -0500 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > Nope, not everybody uses a real mailer like mh 8-). Some mailers don't > even know any other headers except From, To, and Subject. Yes, they > haven't got a clue about Reply-To 8-(. Some of them are so dumb as to > think that Sender is for the MUA 8-). Actually, sender is for the MUA, as is everything else in the header. It's just that the MUA shouldn't do anything with it except display it to the human. > Yes, everybody should use mh and deliver, but if all the recipient has > available is elm or pine, then they are out of luck. These two mailers > are easy to use, and seem to be catching on and both can sort by > subject. Neither supports the X-List-Name header, nor arguably should > they since its an X header and is liable to go away tomorrow. So let's define how lists should work, and eventually the support will be there. But putting the list name in the subject line just makes a bad situation worse. What's needed is a reasonable approach to mailing list handling, not yet another wart. Keith Moore From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Sat Feb 12 02:23:49 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA21544; Sat, 12 Feb 94 02:23:49 GMT Received: from emory.mathcs.emory.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA21537; Fri, 11 Feb 94 18:23:39 PST Received: from uumind.UUCP by emory.mathcs.emory.edu (5.65/Emory_mathcs.3.4.19) via UUCP id AA07747 ; Fri, 11 Feb 94 21:25:20 -0500 Received: by mind.org (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Fri, 11 Feb 94 20:23:18 -0500 for list-managers@GreatCircle.com Received: by knex.via.mind.org (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Fri, 11 Feb 94 20:07:53 EST for list-managers@GreatCircle.com To: list-managers@GreatCircle.com Subject: Re: A flood from America OnLine From: Gess Shankar Reply-To: gess@knex.via.mind.org (Gess Shankar) Message-Id: Date: Fri, 11 Feb 94 19:53:09 EST In-Reply-To: <9402112120.AA26883@toolz> Organization: |<><>| Knowledge Exchange, GA, USA |<><>| Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk emory!mathcs.emory.edu!toolz.UUCP!todd (Todd Merriman) writes: > >You see, I believe it's my fault. > > > >Couple months ago, I got contacted by someone from AOL wanting to post > >the Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists there. I told them what I told > >everyone -- Sure, as long as you leave all the attributions intact. Turned > >out to be a huge mistake. > > I was also buried in clueless mail for a couple of weeks on my > mailing list, but I welcomed the new traffic because my list > had become tired-assed. And, when the traffic jumped up by a factor > of 10, many of those AOL subscribers dropped out because they have > to pay for the time they spend reading mail. > Ah.. now I understand where all those aol.com subscriptions came from. :) I too noticed the surge in subs and "clueless mail". I had to go from unmoderated list to semi-moderated status due to mail coming to the server instead of the list, server commands being sent to the list and a whole bunch of off-topic stuff. I also had to make "mailing list basics" help texts aimed at the newbies, mostly aol users. Though some aol subscribers make good contributions, most seem to be fishing aimlessly. I have taken to posting the help text periodically to avoid the constant "how do I get off this stinking list? I am drowning in email" email. I am waiting for the Information Super Highway with some excitement and a lot of trepediation.. :) GeSS -- Gess Shankar |<><>| Internet: gess@knex.via.mind.ORG |<><>| CDPub List Admin. |<><>| {rutgers,ogicse,gatech}!emory!uumind!knex!gess |<><>| From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Sat Feb 12 04:23:36 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA21832; Sat, 12 Feb 94 04:23:36 GMT Received: from CS.UWindsor.Ca (csgate.lamf.uwindsor.ca) by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA21825; Fri, 11 Feb 94 20:23:28 PST Received: by CS.UWindsor.Ca (4.1/SMI-DDN) id AA00958; Fri, 11 Feb 94 23:23:49 EST Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 21:47:58 -0500 From: "F. Scott Ophof" Organization: REXX Language Association (RexxLA) Subject: Re: [list-man] putting listname in the subject Message-Id: <940211.214758-0500@MReXX-0.23> To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: Your message of Fri, 11 Feb 1994 17:45:19 -0500 X-Mua: MReXX-0.23a... Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Fri, 11 Feb 1994 17:45:19 -0500 Keith Moore said: >> Nope, not everybody uses a real mailer like mh 8-). Some mailers don't >> even know any other headers except From, To, and Subject. Yes, they >> haven't got a clue about Reply-To 8-(. Some of them are so dumb as to >> think that Sender is for the MUA 8-). >Actually, sender is for the MUA, as is everything else in the header. It's >just that the MUA shouldn't do anything with it except display it to the >human. As to the "Sender:" header, rereading of the various RFCs (like 822) seems to be in order. The "Sender:" header plays an important role in the choice of which header's data should be used for replies. For example, the "From:" need not contain a repliable address. But in that case, the "Sender:" must be present, and must contain a repliable address. >But putting the list name in the subject line just makes a bad situation >worse. What's needed is a reasonable approach to mailing list handling, >not yet another wart. Yes please. Preferably something that will not break current useage in the various networks, but something which can be gradually migrated towards. In 10 years or so it might be possible to start phasing out current kludges. Regards. $$/ F. Scott Ophof [Member of RexxLA] From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Sat Feb 12 05:32:48 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA22022; Sat, 12 Feb 94 05:32:48 GMT Received: from wilma.cs.utk.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA22015; Fri, 11 Feb 94 21:32:39 PST Received: from LOCALHOST by wilma.cs.utk.edu with SMTP (8.6.4/2.8c-UTK) id AAA00676; Sat, 12 Feb 1994 00:25:32 -0500 Message-Id: <199402120525.AAA00676@wilma.cs.utk.edu> From: Keith Moore To: "F. Scott Ophof" Cc: List-Managers@greatcircle.com, moore@cs.utk.edu Subject: Re: [list-man] putting listname in the subject In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 11 Feb 1994 21:47:58 EST." <940211.214758-0500@MReXX-0.23> Date: Sat, 12 Feb 1994 00:25:31 -0500 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > As to the "Sender:" header, rereading of the various RFCs (like 822) > seems to be in order. The "Sender:" header plays an important role > in the choice of which header's data should be used for replies. > For example, the "From:" need not contain a repliable address. > But in that case, the "Sender:" must be present, and must contain a > repliable address. Yes, re-reading of RFC 822 *is* in order, so the relevant section appears below. (Please note the second bullet.) Also, the first bullet is somewhat misleading. Despite what this paragraph says, nondelivery reports should *always* go to the envelope return address, or after a message leaves SMTP, to the address in the Return-path header. (RFC 1123, 5.3.3) (I interpret the paragraph as follows: If the envelope is derived from the message header, the envelope return address (e.g. SMTP MAIL FROM) should be taken from the Sender field if it is present, else it should be taken from the >From field.) Also, I can find nothing in RFC 822 that states that the From header field need not contain a replyable address. The From field *is* allowed to contain more than one valid addresses, in which case the Sender field is required. But there's no reason that a reply should not be sent to all of the addresses listed in the From field. -Keith Moore ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 4.4.4. AUTOMATIC USE OF FROM / SENDER / REPLY-TO For systems which automatically generate address lists for replies to messages, the following recommendations are made: o The "Sender" field mailbox should be sent notices of any problems in transport or delivery of the original messages. If there is no "Sender" field, then the "From" field mailbox should be used. o The "Sender" field mailbox should NEVER be used automatically, in a recipient's reply message. o If the "Reply-To" field exists, then the reply should go to the addresses indicated in that field and not to the address(es) indicated in the "From" field. o If there is a "From" field, but no "Reply-To" field, the reply should be sent to the address(es) indicated in the "From" field. Sometimes, a recipient may actually wish to communicate with the person that initiated the message transfer. In such cases, it is reasonable to use the "Sender" address. This recommendation is intended only for automated use of originator-fields and is not intended to suggest that replies may not also be sent to other recipients of messages. It is up to the respective mail-handling programs to decide what additional facilities will be provided. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Sat Feb 12 21:27:58 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA24570; Sat, 12 Feb 94 21:27:58 GMT Received: from ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov (ptolemy-ethernet.arc.nasa.gov) by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA24563; Sat, 12 Feb 94 13:27:50 PST Received: from zog.arc.nasa.gov by ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov (4.1/) id ; Sat, 12 Feb 94 13:29:37 PST Received: by zog.arc.nasa.gov (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA27315; Sat, 12 Feb 94 13:29:37 PST Date: Sat, 12 Feb 94 13:29:37 PST Message-Id: <9402122129.AA27315@zog.arc.nasa.gov> From: k p c To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: AOL cluelessness In-Reply-To: <9402120910.AA22611@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM> References: <9402120910.AA22611@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM> Reply-To: kpc@ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov X-Disclaimer: No organization, company, or government is represented here. Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I've had a deluge of AOL users with very incorrect subscribing information also. That company does give the impression of being clueless and stubborn. I'll bet they are making money, though. However, I haven't had any real problem with AOL users, other than that they are new to the net. It's not their fault. I try to make new net users feel at home and to understand net culture, because only by assimilating them will the "information superhighway" not run roughshod over us all, retarding one of man's best inventions since agriculture. Did you know that AOL only has a tiny little (L << 80 characters) subject window that users can use, in at least some of their mailers? That wreaks havoc in some systems. Maybe AOL users mostly need to be educated about netcom/portal/delphi/local alternatives to AOL :-). -- kpc@ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov. AI, multidisciplinary neuroethology, info filtering. Death: dour monopolies, otiose video-on-demand, escrowed keys. Power Corrupts! Life: COTTAGE industry, FREE speech, ACTUAL privacy, CHOSEN community, FREEDOM! The prescription monopoly raises costs and lowers quality. Legalize medicines! From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Sat Feb 12 22:24:43 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA24706; Sat, 12 Feb 94 22:24:43 GMT Received: from snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA24699; Sat, 12 Feb 94 14:24:34 PST Received: by snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca (5.64/1.35) id AA27063; Sat, 12 Feb 94 17:20:42 -0500 From: stevep@snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca (Steve Portigal) Message-Id: <9402122220.AA27063@snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca> Subject: AOL behaviour To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Sat, 12 Feb 94 17:20:40 EST In-Reply-To: <9402120910.AA22611@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM>; from "List-Managers-Digest-Owner@GreatCircle.COM" at Feb 12, 94 1:10 am Organization: Your Company Name Here X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11] Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Thanks for that info. I never received aflood,but I did get a pile of subscriptions from AOL users, most of whom wanted to drop off after one digest. It's annoying adding and dropping users from the same domain so often, making me wonder what it is about the type of person on AOL that would cause them to do that...perhaps an unclear idea of what these lists are all about... Steve -- +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Steve Portigal ** User-Interface Dude (looking for work) | | stevep@snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca Voice/Fax: (905) 632 6647 | +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Sat Feb 12 23:34:21 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA24827; Sat, 12 Feb 94 23:34:21 GMT Received: from xmission.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA24820; Sat, 12 Feb 94 15:34:14 PST Received: by xmission.com (4.1/Xmission/SMI-4.1) id AA01463; Sat, 12 Feb 94 16:36:12 MST From: pashdown@xmission.com (Pete Ashdown) Message-Id: <9402122336.AA01463@xmission.com> Subject: AOL cluelessness To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Date: Sat, 12 Feb 1994 16:36:12 -0700 (MST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL22] Content-Type: text Content-Length: 233 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > Maybe AOL users mostly need to be > educated about netcom/portal/delphi/local alternatives to AOL :-). Delphi and Portal aren't much better. I tell every AOL/Delphi/Portal/etc user I run into to try and find a local alternative. From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Sat Feb 12 16:33:11 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA24993; Sun, 13 Feb 94 00:01:03 GMT Received: from intercon.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA24976; Sat, 12 Feb 94 16:00:51 PST Received: from localhost by intercon.com (Sendmail 8.6.5/940209.RS) id TAA06078; Sat, 12 Feb 1994 19:03:08 -0500 Date: Sat, 12 Feb 1994 19:03:08 -0500 From: jailbait@intercon.com (Jailbait) Message-Id: <199402130003.TAA06078@intercon.com> To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: AOL behaviour Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk People should be sure to remember that there are a large number of books suddenly appearing all over the place listing Piles and Heaps and Gobs of various net resources - news, mail, web, gopher, etc, etc. These books are probably selling most to people on the various commercial services with some sort of "Internet Access" advertised...AOL/Compu$pend/ GEnie/Delphi, etc...and it's these people who are suddenly trying to figure out what's out there and thus deluging us. I have long thought that there is a serious need for /good/, /accesable/, /readable/, and widely distributed nettiquite postings - going to each and every new fidonet node, compu$pend user, etc... Might this be a reasonable project to start? JB From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Sat Feb 12 16:36:50 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA25007; Sun, 13 Feb 94 00:02:11 GMT Received: from net.bio.net by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA24999; Sat, 12 Feb 94 16:01:56 PST Received: from localhost by net.bio.net (8.6.5/IG-2.0) id QAA01625; Sat, 12 Feb 1994 16:03:44 -0800 Date: Sat, 12 Feb 1994 16:03:44 -0800 From: mcb@net.bio.net (Michael C. Berch) Message-Id: <199402130003.QAA01625@net.bio.net> To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: A flood from America OnLine Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Stephanie da Silva writes: > Moral of the story? Don't have anything to do with America Online. > Ever. I am beginning to agree with this. AOL users have caused the most problems for me. Prodigy users are possibly even more clueless, but they seem to be slower about discovering the Internet, probably because on Prodigy you have to pay *per message* to *receive* Internet mail. (Tee, hee.) Users from CompuServe, Delphi, and GEnie seem like masters of the universe by comparison. The latest is a message from cuf@aol.com, which showed up on my two lists and a third that I am on. It is some inexplicable twaddle about VDT safety; interesting perhaps, but totally irrelevant to the lists. (The user is not a subscriber, and the lists are not moderated.) I sent a request to the user not to post stuff like that. Then, upon seeing the message the third time, I sent a "please educate your user" type message to postmaster@aol.com. Then, this morning, I noticed that the first message to cuf@aol.com bounced with "no such user". Sigh. I bundled this off to postmaster@aol.com, with an implied threat about cutting them off, and promised to cc the message to list-managers. (It is appended.) -- Michael C. Berch mcb@net.bio.net / mcb@postmodern.com ----- From mcb Sat Feb 12 15:50:44 1994 To: Postmaster@aol.com Subject: Re: Returned Mail: Member unknown: cuf Please explain the following bounced message. Is someone spoofing your mail, or has the account "cuf" been terminated? Please also be aware that I forwarded to this address a complaint about inappropriate e-mail sent to a number of Internet mailing lists, but that message has not (so far) been responded to. This message will be shared with the Internet list-managers mailing list. You should be aware that a number of Internet mailing list managers are upset at the number of inappropriate mailings and other messages from AOL customers, and a number of them (including myself) are considering barring AOL users from their lists because of similar problems, and responding to subscription requests with an explanation that it is not possible for AOL users to subscribe because of generally poor education by AOL about the culture and etiquette of the Internet. Thank you for your prompt attention to this. -- Michael C. Berch mcb@net.bio.net / mcb@postmodern.com Moderator, jump-in-the-river (Sinead O'Connor mailing list) and simpsons mailing list (simpsons-request@net.bio.net) ---------- > From Postmaster@aol.com Sat Feb 12 21:26:42 1994 > Received: from mailgate.prod.aol.net by net.bio.net (8.6.5/IG-2.0) with SMTP > id NAA25192; Sat, 12 Feb 1994 13:26:39 -0800 > From: Postmaster@aol.com > Received: by mailgate.prod.aol.net > (1.37.109.4/16.2) id AA27671; Sat, 12 Feb 94 16:31:59 -0500 > X-Mailer: America Online Mailer > Sender: "Postmaster" > Message-Id: <9402121631.tn120945@aol.com> > To: mcb > Date: Sat, 12 Feb 94 16:31:55 EST > Subject: Returned Mail: Member unknown: cuf > Status: R > > > The mail you sent could not be delivered; > it was addressed to an unknown AOL user (cuf). > The text you sent follows... > > Please DO NOT send messages like this to this mailing list. The > list "jump-in-the-river@presto.ig.com" is devoted to the music and > work of Sinead O'Connor. It has nothing to do with VDTs or computer > use. > > Further inappropriate messages will result in a complaint to your > service's management for misuse of Internet mailing privileges. > > Thank you. > -- > Michael C. Berch > Jump-in-the-River Moderator > jitr-request@presto.ig.com > > > ----------------------- Headers ------------------------ > >From mcb@net.bio.net Sat Feb 12 16:31:28 1994 > Received: from net.bio.net by mailgate.prod.aol.net with SMTP > (1.37.109.4/16.2) id AA27481; Sat, 12 Feb 94 16:31:28 -0500 > Return-Path: > Received: from localhost by net.bio.net (8.6.5/IG-2.0) > id UAA15914; Thu, 10 Feb 1994 20:44:06 -0800 > Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 20:44:06 -0800 > From: mcb@net.bio.net (Michael C. Berch) > Message-Id: <199402110444.UAA15914@net.bio.net> > To: cuf@aol.com > Subject: Re: Computer & health > AOL-Member: cuf From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Sun Feb 13 02:37:59 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA25313; Sun, 13 Feb 94 02:37:59 GMT Received: from apple.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA25306; Sat, 12 Feb 94 18:37:52 PST Received: by apple.com (5.61/8-Oct-1993-eef) id AA00361; Sat, 12 Feb 94 18:38:09 -0800 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Sat, 12 Feb 94 18:38:09 -0800 From: Chuq Von Rospach Message-Id: <9402130238.AA00361@apple.com> To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, mcb@net.bio.net Subject: Re: A flood from America OnLine Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >The latest is a message from cuf@aol.com, which showed up on my two >lists and a third that I am on. It is some inexplicable twaddle about >VDT safety; interesting perhaps, but totally irrelevant to the lists. Like AOL has a patent on inexplicable twaddle on mailing lists? Like this kind of posting has never happened before? (heh heh.) Now I'm not trying to minimize the problems. Just pointing out that it's not unique to AOL. In fact, almost every gripe I've heard happens EVERY september when school comes in session, from bunches of newbies stomping lists to admins who don't respond to mail to inexplicable twaddle. The only significant different I see is that, because AOL is big and one address, it's a more noticable target. If we were to compare aol.com and *.edu, I'd bet that aol.com is larger, and *.edu causes more problems (that are harder to solve because of a more complex admin group). So if we cut aol off, I guess we should cut off *.edu, too. From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Sun Feb 13 05:01:05 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA25594; Sun, 13 Feb 94 05:01:05 GMT Received: from nextsun.INS.CWRU.Edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA25587; Sat, 12 Feb 94 21:00:57 PST Received: by nextsun.INS.CWRU.Edu (5.65b+ida+/CWRU-1.6-freenet) id AA13894; Sun, 13 Feb 94 00:03:12 -0500 (from cf603 for list-managers@greatcircle.com) Message-Id: <9402130503.AA13894@nextsun.INS.CWRU.Edu> Date: Sun, 13 Feb 94 00:03:12 -0500 From: cf603@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Dave Sill) To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: list needs a home Reply-To: cf603@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Dave Sill) Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I run a small (50 recipients) list manually out of my Cleveland Freenet account. The list is usually pretty quiet, but when it's busy (10 messages/day) it takes a good chunk of my time. I'm looking for a site running Majordomo or List Processor that would be willing to host this list with me as the list manager. Majordomo would be ideal since that's what I use a work. -- Dave Sill Ask me about the JudyBats mailing list. cf603@cleveland.freenet.edu From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Sun Feb 13 07:53:30 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA25969; Sun, 13 Feb 94 07:53:30 GMT Received: from sun4nl.NL.net by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA25962; Sat, 12 Feb 94 23:53:21 PST Received: from solair1.inter.NL.net by sun4nl.NL.net with SMTP id AA29996 (5.65b/CWI-3.3); Sun, 13 Feb 1994 08:55:38 +0100 Received: by solair1.inter.NL.net (5.65b/NLnet1.1) id AA14914; Sun, 13 Feb 1994 08:55:37 +0100 Date: Sun, 13 Feb 1994 08:55:36 +0100 (MET) From: BATRN Subject: Re: AOL behaviour To: Jailbait Cc: List-Managers@greatcircle.com In-Reply-To: <199402130003.TAA06078@intercon.com> Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Sat, 12 Feb 1994, Jailbait wrote: > People should be sure to remember that there are a large number of > books suddenly appearing all over the place listing Piles and Heaps > and Gobs of various net resources - news, mail, web, gopher, etc, etc. > These books are probably selling most to people on the various commercial > services with some sort of "Internet Access" advertised...AOL/Compu$pend/ > GEnie/Delphi, etc...and it's these people who are suddenly trying to > figure out what's out there and thus deluging us. > > I have long thought that there is a serious need for /good/, /accesable/, > /readable/, and widely distributed nettiquite postings - going to each > and every new fidonet node, compu$pend user, etc... > Might this be a reasonable project to start? I am a commercial user, and have bought a library of books about the Net in order to get a feel for the do's and dont's. Mostly I have found that only a handful give the reader *some* idea of Net_Culture. All rather confusing. However, unlike users@ ... AOL//Compu$pend//GReenie or the like, I'm not pre-conditioned to be a reckless netter by the NLnet since it doesn't have the same .com internal forums like the aforementioned. Years ago I had a Compu$pend acct. I reckon that most users get used to being in their own microscopic virtual world, and can't handle (or appreciate) the privilege of having access to all the resources to be found on the net. Quite frankly, I still don't fully understand the ways, whys and wherefors of the Net and thus would welcome any such postings as suggested above, from one or more of the veterans. I believe the time spent, would ultimately be saved by not having to bother yourselves with this type of hassle anymore. Rgds, Paul Lange AKA BATRN ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ BATRN using the NLnet Internet Services E-mail: batrn@inter.NL.net or BATRN@inter.NL.net ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ P.S. I subscribe to this list since the Co. I work for is also interested in expanding its Net_Knowledge, and is currently considering running a list directed at commercial users. The info I have read here has been informative,............,confusing at times, but informative. Thanx!! From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Sun Feb 13 15:06:00 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA26865; Sun, 13 Feb 94 15:06:00 GMT Received: from emory.mathcs.emory.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA26858; Sun, 13 Feb 94 07:05:50 PST Received: from uumind.UUCP by emory.mathcs.emory.edu (5.65/Emory_mathcs.3.4.19) via UUCP id AA14544 ; Sun, 13 Feb 94 10:08:05 -0500 Received: by mind.org (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Sun, 13 Feb 94 09:58:48 -0500 for List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Received: by knex.via.mind.org (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Sun, 13 Feb 94 09:29:34 EST for List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: AOL behaviour From: Gess Shankar Reply-To: gess@knex.via.mind.org (Gess Shankar) Message-Id: <5kwoHc1w165w@knex.via.mind.org> Date: Sun, 13 Feb 94 09:25:28 EST In-Reply-To: <199402130003.TAA06078@intercon.com> Organization: |<><>| Knowledge Exchange, GA, USA |<><>| Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk emory!intercon.com!jailbait (Jailbait) writes: > People should be sure to remember that there are a large number of > books suddenly appearing all over the place listing Piles and Heaps > and Gobs of various net resources - news, mail, web, gopher, etc, etc. > These books are probably selling most to people on the various commercial > services with some sort of "Internet Access" advertised...AOL/Compu$pend/ > GEnie/Delphi, etc...and it's these people who are suddenly trying to > figure out what's out there and thus deluging us. > Yes. I agree. Not only is there a plethora of books and magazine articles about nets in general and internet in particular, of late I have been seeing even TV coverage all giving a somewhat glamorous view of the net. I am sure more and more people are going to access the lists via commercial services like AOL. Though it is going to increase the workload of hapless volunteer list managers and owners, it may be necessary to offer help, advice and education. Extreme measures like cutting people off should be a last resort. I myself have taken one of my lists to a semi-moderated one, returning off-topic mail and making several help files aimed at such users. > I have long thought that there is a serious need for /good/, /accesable/, > /readable/, and widely distributed nettiquite postings - going to each > and every new fidonet node, compu$pend user, etc... > Might this be a reasonable project to start? > I made an attempt some time ago to gather a complete list of commands from various list manager software [majordomo, LISTSERV, listproc and other popular packages] with a view to make a generic "Mailing List how-to" including explanation of headers, what to send to list and what to send to original poster, getting on or off lists, setting options and so on. Request to this list to send me the help file from various list manager software produced 'zero' response. So the project sort of floundered. I think such a document will go a long way towards alleviating the upcoming onslaught. People who publish lists can also publish such a help. There will still be clue less mail, but at least some people who can actually read will find it useful to help them navigate lists. Unless there is a standardized subset of commands for all lists, such a document widely distributed will be very useful - users and list owners alike. GeSS -- Gess Shankar |<><>| Internet: gess@knex.via.mind.ORG |<><>| CDPub List Admin. |<><>| {rutgers,ogicse,gatech}!emory!uumind!knex!gess |<><>| From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Sun Feb 13 19:44:37 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA27594; Sun, 13 Feb 94 19:44:37 GMT Received: from well.sf.ca.us by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA27587; Sun, 13 Feb 94 11:44:28 PST Received: from localhost (mle@localhost) by well.sf.ca.us (8.6.5/8.6.5) id LAA02359; Sun, 13 Feb 1994 11:46:15 -0800 Date: Sun, 13 Feb 1994 11:46:15 -0800 From: "Marcus L. Endicott" Message-Id: <199402131946.LAA02359@well.sf.ca.us> To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Green.Travel Needs New Home Cc: mle@well.sf.ca.us Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hi! I'm the founder and moderator of the Green.Travel list, dedicated to sharing information about environmentally and culturally responsible, or sustainable, tourism. Green.Travel is currently a manual alias/reflector at IGC (Institute for Global Communications), home of EcoNet and PeaceNet. The list is now 200 addresses, a good number of which are other reflectors, with both constant fluctuation and steady growth. There are several additions and deletions every day. The rate of message traffic presently consists of just a few messages each day. Three years of archives, about one megabyte, are available via ftp from igc.org . Gopher access is via the EcoGopher at ecosys.drdr.virginia.edu . Since IGC does not support any automated subscription software, this list needs a new home, one that is flexible and reliable. Any suggestions or advice would be most welcome. Thanks, - Marcus Endicott P.O.Box 20837, St. Simons, GA 31522-0437 USA Voice: (912) 265-6273 BBS: (912) 265-0784 7pm-7am EST Telex: (023) 400240522 UI Email: mendicott@igc.apc.org mle@well.sf.ca.us From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Sun Feb 13 22:03:49 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA27840; Sun, 13 Feb 94 22:03:49 GMT Received: from relay2.geis.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA27833; Sun, 13 Feb 94 14:03:39 PST Received: by relay2.geis.com (1.37.109.4/15.6) id AA24222; Sun, 13 Feb 94 20:48:46 GMT From: andy@genie.geis.com Message-Id: <9402132048.AA24222@relay2.geis.com> Date: Sun, 13 Feb 94 18:39:00 BST To: classm-l@brownvm.brown.edu, info-labview@pica.army.mil, list-managers@greatcircle.com X-Genie-Id: 0269173 X-Genie-From: ANDY Subject: Re: GENIE PROBLEMS Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hi. My name is Andy Finkenstadt. I am the GEnie Postmaster. Perhaps it would have been more appropriate if my name was Inigo Montoya. :-) First off - I apologize for each of the problems being caused directly or indirectly through the genie.geis.com domain. There were several factors contributing to the problems, and having them happen each in quick succession did not help matters at all. item 1: the "Original Msg Id not found" error message, followed by a "delivered to all recipients with NO exceptions" tag, cropped up when our parent domain (geis.com) turned on some new (and I presume debugging) code and the originating message did not contain a "Message-ID" header at the beginning of an article. Typically this occurs with many IBM VM-type systems, and none with Unix. I have recommended to the administrators of our domain that they omit that message back to the originator of the item, or that they turn on the "generate message ID" flag in sendmail. item 2: slow or non-existent answers to postmaster mail. This was caused by two things: one, the gateway was either incommunicado or overloaded and therefore mail to postmaster@genie.geis.com (aka genie-postmaster@geis.com) was blocked or very slow in getting here; two, I just happened to be moving from Florida to New York, and didn't arrange for postmaster mail to be dealt with. Mea culpa. item 3: gateway being slow or incommunicado. The leased lines between our parent domain and the Internet at large were upgraded. This created an outage situation in the first place. In the second place the upgrade didn't go quite as planned, so service was actually slower than we would have wished. This has been corrected to the best of my knowledge, and mail from the Internet to GEnie is being given higher priority than older mail. item 4: mail from gateway to GEnie slowed. This was exacerbated by the backlog created by item 3, and we are making steps to unleash a few additional servers coming into GEnie. Unfortunately this requires an upgrade to the GEnie PC Aladdin software used by a good portion of GEnie subscribers, and it is currently being tested. When it is released to the public, the new servers will be unfettered and able to deliver mail to GEnie much more quickly. Again, I apologize, and welcome any comments you have. Please direct them to either 'andy@genie.geis.com' or an alternative address 'genie@panix.com' which is my personal account here in new york city. Best regards, Andy Finkenstadt GEnie Postmaster 212-807-0165 cc: genie persons From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Sun Feb 13 23:13:12 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA27980; Sun, 13 Feb 94 23:13:12 GMT Received: from ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov (ptolemy-ethernet.arc.nasa.gov) by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA27973; Sun, 13 Feb 94 15:13:01 PST Received: from kepler.arc.nasa.gov by ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov (4.1/) id ; Sun, 13 Feb 94 15:14:15 PST Received: by kepler.arc.nasa.gov (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA11555; Sun, 13 Feb 94 15:14:15 PST Date: Sun, 13 Feb 94 15:14:15 PST Message-Id: <9402132314.AA11555@kepler.arc.nasa.gov> From: k p c To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: AOL cluelessness and net culture In-Reply-To: <9402130910.AA26093@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM> References: <9402130910.AA26093@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM> Reply-To: kpc@ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov X-Disclaimer: No organization, company, or government is represented here. Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Excellent idea about distributing nettiquette to subscribers. What I do currently (due to problems I've had with list-of-list administrators and internet book publishers not confirming nth-generation copy entries) is to try to get list-of-list administrators to ONLY include a verbatim list description and how to get more information (otherwise it gets WAY TOO corrupted each time it changes hands, just like in the Telephone Game). Then, when I get the query for information, I send out the latest announcement that describes the subject, subscriptions, archives, guidelines, basic nettiquette etc. in excruciating detail. If the potential subscriber had received incorrect information previously from an nth-generation copy, this helps correct it. I think I'd be happy to append general nettiquette to this second announcement if I can find a good summary that's small, not insulting, useful for AOL/Compuserve/Prodigy users, etc. I have just added a recommendation, inspired by this discussion, that A/C/P users seek the pdial list to find local direct net access alternatives. P.S. I never got any replies to my query a week or so ago about what list software to use. Any comments? From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Mon Feb 14 04:45:11 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA28720; Mon, 14 Feb 94 04:45:11 GMT Received: from cs.utexas.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA28711; Sun, 13 Feb 94 20:45:02 PST Received: from im4u.cs.utexas.edu by cs.utexas.edu (5.64/1.22/mx-relay) with SMTP id AA29220; Sun, 13 Feb 94 22:47:06 -0600 Received: from chinaca by im4u.cs.utexas.edu (5.64/1.37/uucp) with UUCP id AA21424; Sun, 13 Feb 94 22:47:07 -0600 Received: from localhost by chinacat.unicom.com (smail3.1.28.1) id m0pVvB6-00028jC; Sun, 13 Feb 94 22:45 CST Message-Id: From: chip@chinacat.unicom.com (Chip Rosenthal) Subject: Re: A flood from America OnLine To: chuq@apple.com (Chuq Von Rospach) Date: Sun, 13 Feb 1994 22:45:00 -0600 (CST) Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, mcb@net.bio.net In-Reply-To: <9402130238.AA00361@apple.com> from "Chuq Von Rospach" at Feb 12, 94 06:38:09 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1596 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Chuq Von Rospach writes: > Now I'm not trying to minimize the problems. Just pointing out that it's not > unique to AOL. Please don't. What is unique about this onslaught is that it destroyed one of the mailing lists I run. Last week I threw in the towel and decomissioned Pubnet, a mailing list for the administration of public access Unix systems. I finally got tired of the load, and I realize after the fact (i.e. after seeing this thread) that it is direcly correlated to the AOL.COM tsunami. To put this into perspective, this is NOT the first time I've become overwhelmed by the Pubnet list. A little over a year ago, a national magazine (Online Access) told everybody to write to pubnet-request to learn how to get *free* access to the Internet. (Anybody interested in that debacle, send email to archive-server@chinacat.unicom.com with a "Subject: send pubnet-faq" header. There is a pretty good letter to the editor in the FAQ that Brendan Kehoe helped me write.) I survived all the others, but the AOL.COM denizens just proved to be too much for me. There is some sort of horrible twisted irony in losing a mailing list dedicated to public access systems due to the abuse of the community it is intended to serve. So, in closing, I'd like to give a big ``thank you, and eat shit'' to the management of AOL.COM. I'm starting to put more credence in those analogies between the Internet and CB radio. -- Chip Rosenthal 512-447-0577 | I figure the odds be fifty-fifty Unicom Systems Development | I just might have some thing to say. | -FZ From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Mon Feb 14 12:45:04 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA00627; Mon, 14 Feb 94 12:45:04 GMT Received: from z.nsf.gov by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA00618; Mon, 14 Feb 94 04:44:56 PST Received: from localhost (mmorse@localhost) by z.nsf.gov (8.6.4/8.6.4) id HAA18064 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 14 Feb 1994 07:52:53 -0500 Message-Id: <199402141252.HAA18064@z.nsf.gov> From: mmorse@nsf.gov (Michael H. Morse) Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 07:52:52 EST In-Reply-To: Gess Shankar "Re: A flood from America OnLine" (Feb 11, 7:53pm) X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.1.1 5/02/90) To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: A flood from America OnLine Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > I also had to make "mailing list basics" help texts aimed at the > newbies, mostly aol users. Though some aol subscribers make good > contributions, most seem to be fishing aimlessly. I find this curious. AOL subscribers *pay* for their service, unlike most Internet and BITNET users. You'd think that would make them *more* likely to be serious users. --Mike From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Mon Feb 14 13:19:47 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA00735; Mon, 14 Feb 94 13:19:47 GMT Received: from dunx1.ocs.drexel.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA00728; Mon, 14 Feb 94 05:19:39 PST Received: from DialupEudora (ts1.noc.drexel.edu [129.25.12.13]) by dunx1.ocs.drexel.edu (8.6.4/8.6.4) with SMTP id IAA23674 for ; Mon, 14 Feb 1994 08:21:25 -0500 Message-Id: <199402141321.IAA23674@dunx1.ocs.drexel.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 08:22:15 -0500 To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM From: snyderra@dunx1.ocs.drexel.edu (Bob Snyder) Subject: Re: List Managers Digest V3 #20 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >From: chip@chinacat.unicom.com (Chip Rosenthal) >Date: Sun, 13 Feb 1994 22:45:00 -0600 (CST) >Subject: Re: A flood from America OnLine > >Chuq Von Rospach writes: >> Now I'm not trying to minimize the problems. Just pointing out that it's not >> unique to AOL. > >Please don't. What is unique about this onslaught is that it destroyed >one of the mailing lists I run. Last week I threw in the towel and >decomissioned Pubnet, a mailing list for the administration of public >access Unix systems. So? That's not unique to AOL. The same flood could have easily come from Delphi, GEnie, CompuServe, or any of the other various commercial online services that provide Internet mail services. As you stated later, you got tired of the load. That's understandable, but I don't see how it connects to AOL. [As a aside, from my memory of my time on AOL, the rules concerning the mail service stated that members weren't to subscribe to mailing lists. But that was back in the days they were connected to the net via UUCP.....] Bob -- Bob Snyder N2KGO MIME, RIPEM mail accepted snyderra@dunx1.ocs.drexel.edu finger for RIPEM public key From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Mon Feb 14 13:53:14 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA00888; Mon, 14 Feb 94 13:53:14 GMT Received: from slopoke.mlb.semi.harris.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA00881; Mon, 14 Feb 94 05:53:02 PST Received: from ace.mlb.semi.harris.com by slopoke.mlb.semi.harris.com (4.0/SMI-4.0) id AA24739; Mon, 14 Feb 94 08:55:12 EST Received: from rtfm.UUCP by ace.mlb.semi.harris.com (4.1/SMI-4.1-jmb+uucp) id AA11537; Mon, 14 Feb 94 08:55:11 EST Received: by rtfm.mlb.fl.us (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA25710; Mon, 14 Feb 94 08:53:21 EST Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 08:43:28 -0500 (EST) From: Grayson Walker Subject: Lester Maddox Ax Handle Of Prejudice Award OR Shame On You! To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <199402141252.HAA18064@z.nsf.gov> Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I am shocked and dismayed at the bigotry, prejudice and elitism displayed by some of those complaining about Users from AOL and/or Prodigy. Keeping with the original intent of Lester Maddox, who would hand out autographed ax handles at the doorway to his infamous resturant, the Pick-Rick, I am presenting this award to those who expressed the highest levels of intolerance, prejudice, and elitism about the People on AOL and/or Prodigy. You should be ashamed! GWALKER@RTFM.MLB.FL.US "Big brown river. . ." Tuli Kupferberg, 1963 From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Mon Feb 14 15:03:36 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA01081; Mon, 14 Feb 94 15:03:36 GMT Received: from UUCP-GW.CC.UH.EDU by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA01074; Mon, 14 Feb 94 07:03:19 PST Received: from Taronga.COM by UUCP-GW.CC.UH.EDU with UUCP id AA09969 (5.67a/IDA-1.5 for greatcircle.com!list-managers); Mon, 14 Feb 1994 08:53:48 -0600 Received: by taronga.taronga.com (smail2.5) id AA09310; 14 Feb 94 08:51:28 CST (Mon) Subject: Re: A flood from America OnLine To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Date: Mon, 14 Feb 94 8:51:27 CST X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.2 PL16] Message-Id: <9402140851.AA09310@taronga.taronga.com> From: arielle@taronga.com (Stephanie da Silva) Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk First of all, a clarification. I have not had any trouble personally with AOL users on my mailing lists. This may be because of the nature of my lists, or maybe because I dropped them all off, I don't know. All the problems I've had was from mail generated by the presence of the PAML on America Online. And yes, there's a direct correlation between the two. When it was posted, I had an onslaught of mail from AOL. That slowed to about half of what it was initially (after about two weeks), but never did stop. Until about 2 weeks ago, when I assume they removed the document from their system. I haven't heard a peep since then. I really don't see how you can compare aol.com with a *.edu site. The big difference is in the administration. At a *.edu site, you're most likely going to have knowledgeable people running those systems. People interested in computers to begin with. Your average *.edu site is going to be *on* the Internet! Your average *.edu user is going to have access to all this neat stuff (like ftp and telnet) and files and information. I have never received anything like this from any *.edu site, singly or collectively. Sure after each semester starts, there is a slight increase in activity on my lists, on my newsgroup, a slight increase in clueless mail, but nothing of the magnitude of what I received from aol.com. Am I being elitist? I dunno. Then again, those who accuse me of that probably didn't have to deal with the mail I received. After the 80th or 90th letter going, "I'm interested in such-n-such topic, would you please add it to the AOL Master List?" or "I'm thinking of creating a list on this topic, is that okay with you?" I was about ready to tear my hair out. -- Stephanie da Silva PO Box 720711 arielle@taronga.com Houston, TX 77272 Moderator, rec.food.recipes 713 568 0381 "One problem with the Information Superhighway: more bad drivers." -- KD Leka From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Mon Feb 14 16:31:59 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA01426; Mon, 14 Feb 94 16:31:59 GMT Received: from intercon.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA01414; Mon, 14 Feb 94 08:30:55 PST Received: from localhost by intercon.com (Sendmail 8.6.5/940209.RS) id LAA01958; Mon, 14 Feb 1994 11:31:46 -0500 Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 11:31:46 -0500 From: jailbait@intercon.com (Jailbait) Message-Id: <199402141631.LAA01958@intercon.com> To: arielle@taronga.com (Stephanie da Silva), list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: A flood from America OnLine Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Instead of tearing your hair out, you should've sent them the news.newusers.[announcements|questions] posts, or similar... (Actually, some of these regular posts do cover much of the same ground as the things I was thinking of in my previous post...Chuq: At least a couple of those are yours, no? (They're all currently expired locally...)) So...since we've identified a need...who wants to write the first draft of Ettiquite for Mailing Lists (in E-Sharp Minor)? (Actually, someplace around I have the flame (but a very polite one, I seem to remember) I once sent out saying that a list address is NOT an admin address, and that this list in particular is run by humans, not a machine and this is how to ask to get admin things done.) And once we write these, how do we want to distribute them? JB From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Mon Feb 14 16:42:11 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA01479; Mon, 14 Feb 94 16:42:11 GMT Received: from apple.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA01472; Mon, 14 Feb 94 08:42:02 PST Received: by apple.com (5.61/8-Oct-1993-eef) id AA19331; Mon, 14 Feb 94 08:44:12 -0800 for List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Mon, 14 Feb 94 08:44:12 -0800 From: Chuq Von Rospach Message-Id: <9402141644.AA19331@apple.com> To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM, snyderra@dunx1.ocs.drexel.edu Subject: Re: List Managers Digest V3 #20 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >As you stated later, you got tired of the load. That's understandable, but >I don't see how it connects to AOL. It doesn't. And this has been my point all along. It's not AOL. AOL might just be the latest instance of a continuing problem, but stomping on AOL won't solve it. I haven't heard of ANYTHING that was specific to AOL, except that it's one of those heathen commercial services (and therefore evil). clueless users, moderator burnout, weird, irrelelvant messages -- that stuff's all been around for years. I went through moderator burnout long before any of these services popped up. I killed mailing lists because of the nastiness they generated long before AOL arrived on the scene. Now, we can use AOL as a scapegoat, or we can realize that what's really happening is that they're just the latest group of new users to run into the same old problems and push the same old buttons, and maybe see if there's something that can be done to minimize it. But we don't solve anything by making AOL a ghetto or refusing it access or anything like that. That's the moderator ego speaking, and not a solution. (and it begs the question: why are some mailing lists not seeing this? What are they doing right that others can adopt? that's a more useful discussion than how evil AOL is and how clueless their users are. Clueless users are endemic on internet, and always will be. The trick is figuring out how to mainstream them and get them educated). From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Mon Feb 14 09:33:20 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA01791; Mon, 14 Feb 94 17:15:58 GMT Received: from walt.disney.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA01780; Mon, 14 Feb 94 09:15:37 PST Received: from dalsdb by walt.disney.com with SMTP id AA16038 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.3 for List-Managers@greatcircle.com); Mon, 14 Feb 1994 09:17:35 -0800 Received: from joanna.wdp_animation by dalsdb with smtp (Smail3.1.28.1 #53) id m0pW6ub-000FaKC; Mon, 14 Feb 94 09:16 PST Message-Id: Date: Mon, 14 Feb 94 09:16 PST To: List-Managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: A flood from America OnLIne From: sullivan@fa.disney.com Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > I also had to make "mailing list basics" help texts aimed at the > newbies, mostly aol users. Though some aol subscribers make good > contributions, most seem to be fishing aimlessly. I have taken to > posting the help text periodically to avoid the constant "how do I get > off this stinking list? I am drowning in email" email. I, too, have received a lot of new subscription requests from aol users. Haven't had any problems, though. What I do when a new subscription starts is send out the lists' FAQ and the last two issues (the lists I run are both digest-only) so the new folks know what they're getting into. Works out really well. Michael Sullivan sullivan@fa.disney.com Walt Disney Feature Animation +1 818 544 2683 (voice) Glendale, CA +1 818 544 4579 (fax) From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Mon Feb 14 09:33:51 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA01763; Mon, 14 Feb 94 17:14:49 GMT Received: from midway.uchicago.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA01756; Mon, 14 Feb 94 09:14:21 PST Received: from kimbark.uchicago.edu by midway.uchicago.edu for List-Managers@greatcircle.com Mon, 14 Feb 94 11:16:30 CST Received: from localhost.uchicago.edu by kimbark.uchicago.edu (4.1/UCCO-1.0A) id AA20035; Mon, 14 Feb 94 11:15:27 CST Message-Id: <9402141715.AA20035@kimbark.uchicago.edu> To: List-Managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Netiquette project In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 13 Feb 94 01:10:06 PST." <9402130910.AA26093@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM> Date: Mon, 14 Feb 94 11:15:25 -0600 From: ckoenig@midway.uchicago.edu Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Cast my vote in favor of: > I have long thought that there is a serious need for /good/, /accesable/, > /readable/, and widely distributed nettiquite postings - going to each > and every new fidonet node, compu$pend user, etc... > Might this be a reasonable project to start? Allow me to point out that the combined total weight of "newbies", on both newly-Internetted commercial sites (AOL Prodigy etc.) and new students getting on to *.edu for the first time, is only going to increase, probably geometrically or exponentially, while the weight of us old "guru" types, knowledgeable old-timers (ARPAnet, pre Internet), and "good net citizens" is going to grow at a much slower pace. We can only hope to help stimulate the development of new future good net citizens out of today's "clueless newbies".... So developing a pro-active, prophylactic strategy, establishing a pattern of supplying massive doses of "netiquette education" continually and repeatedly to every outlet where a newbie is going to be "jacking in", is going to be a necessity rather than a luxury for us who have to administer any portion of the Net. And you have to hit them more than once, because they probably won't get it the first time (that's also the theory in Advertising, repetition hammers the point home into our subconscious :-). Merely banning AOL.com users from your mailing list might be a temporary stopgap to help you and your list subscribers today; replying to the postmaster of every MAKE.MONEY.FAST article might be a partial stopgap on netnews; but it's going to be a "Whack-A-Mole" game that will never end. So definitely, reaching out to the people and enlisting their help, turning them on to how they can use the Net without polluting it, BEFORE they become Net.Problems, is really the only choice for the long run. Chris Koenigsberg ckk@uchicago.edu, ckoenig@midway.uchicago.edu Academic Information Technologies 1-312-702-8189 (campus extension 2-8189) FAX 1-312-702-3219 GCS/MU d p--@ -p+ c++@ l u++@ e++ m* s+/+ n++ h--- f? g+- w++ t++ r- y* From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Mon Feb 14 17:56:10 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA02161; Mon, 14 Feb 94 17:56:10 GMT Received: from walt.disney.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA02153; Mon, 14 Feb 94 09:55:41 PST Received: from dalsdb by walt.disney.com with SMTP id AA16804 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.3 for List-Managers@greatcircle.com); Mon, 14 Feb 1994 09:57:50 -0800 Received: from joanna.wdp_animation by dalsdb with smtp (Smail3.1.28.1 #53) id m0pW7XZ-000FaKC; Mon, 14 Feb 94 09:57 PST Message-Id: Date: Mon, 14 Feb 94 09:57 PST To: List-Managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Future Tsunamis From: sullivan@fa.disney.com Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > Please don't. What is unique about this onslaught is that it destroyed > one of the mailing lists I run. Last week I threw in the towel and > decomissioned Pubnet, a mailing list for the administration of public > access Unix systems. > > I finally got tired of the load, and I realize after the fact (i.e. after > seeing this thread) that it is direcly correlated to the AOL.COM tsunami. This is interesting. If you think the load is high because of AOL, what is it going to be like when the so-called information superhighway starts becoming a reality? One of my lists is at 1200 subscribers, currently. What can I expect in the next few years? What can we all expect in the next few years? Michael Sullivan sullivan@fa.disney.com Walt Disney Feature Animation +1 818 544 2683 (voice) Glendale, CA +1 818 544 4579 (fax) From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Mon Feb 14 10:06:19 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA02281; Mon, 14 Feb 94 18:00:57 GMT Received: from acad3.alaska.edu (aurora.alaska.edu) by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA02265; Mon, 14 Feb 94 10:00:45 PST Received: from mr.alaska.edu by acad3.alaska.edu (PMDF V4.2-11 #3250) id <01H8VC5VEPA88WYG53@acad3.alaska.edu>; Mon, 14 Feb 1994 09:02:19 -900 Received: with PMDF-MR; Mon, 14 Feb 1994 09:02:03 -900 Mr-Received: by mta ACAD3A; Relayed; Mon, 14 Feb 1994 09:02:03 -0900 Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 09:02:04 -0900 From: "John W. Redelfs" Subject: GEnie To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Message-Id: <01H8VC5WCGK68WYG53@mr.alaska.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT X400-Mts-Identifier: [;30209041204991/2790708@ACAD3A] Hop-Count: 0 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Dear Fellow List Members, Now that I've listened to a flood of mail ragging on AOL, may I ask if any of you have been getting massive bounce messages from GEnie? Many of the members of both my lists are relatively new users with email access to the Internet from GEnie. Apparently, GEnie has had some serious difficulties this past week or two with one of their servers down. It has caused an enormous amount of mischief on my lists because my subscribers have blamed me for problems caused by GEnie. We ought to remember that all these newbies aren't just a problem for us. The online services aren't used to dealing with such numbers of new users either, at least not on the Internet. They run promotions, but how are they supposed to know in advance when a critical mass is reached in the greater culture leading to all these inexperienced users wanting Internet access? I actually saw a new magazine at the local supermarket this month aimed at Internet users. And I'm in a remote roadless area of southeast Alaska. Has anyone had GEnie problems lately? I think the problems I've had were caused by the computer people at GEnie and _not_ the newbies. -------- All my opinions are tentative pending further data. ------- ------------- John W. Redelfs, tsjwr@aurora.alaska.edu ------------- From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Mon Feb 14 10:33:16 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA02315; Mon, 14 Feb 94 18:06:39 GMT Received: from localhost by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA02303; Mon, 14 Feb 94 10:06:21 PST Message-Id: <9402141806.AA02303@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM> To: sullivan@fa.disney.com Cc: List-Managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Future Tsunamis In-Reply-To: Your message of Mon, 14 Feb 94 09:57 PST Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 10:06:18 -0800 From: Brent Chapman Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk # > I finally got tired of the load, and I realize after the fact (i.e. after # > seeing this thread) that it is direcly correlated to the AOL.COM tsunami. # # This is interesting. If you think the load is high because of AOL, what # is it going to be like when the so-called information superhighway starts # becoming a reality? One of my lists is at 1200 subscribers, currently. # What can I expect in the next few years? What can we all expect in the # next few years? Here's a rule of thumb that's held more-or-less true for most numeric metrics concerning the Internet for a long time (at least the last 10 years): once something reaches a steady growth state (i.e., after an initial burst when it's introduced), it doubles every 12-18 months. Obviously, this is a hell of a generalization, but it applies amazingly well to just about any metric you can think of: number of users, number of sites, number of domains, number of messages processed by gateway, number of packets passed, ... So, ask yourself: can I deal with double the number of users and double the volume in 12 months? If not, should I invest some time _now_ in automating things, _before_ a crisis comes? -Brent -- Brent Chapman Great Circle Associates Brent@GreatCircle.COM 1057 West Dana Street +1 415 962 0841 Mountain View, CA 94041 From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Mon Feb 14 19:30:22 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA02972; Mon, 14 Feb 94 19:30:22 GMT Received: from spsgate.sps.mot.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA02956; Mon, 14 Feb 94 11:29:59 PST Received: from mogate.sps.mot.com by spsgate.sps.mot.com (4.1/SMI-4.1/Email 2.1 10/25/93) id AA15773; Mon, 14 Feb 94 12:32:05 MST Received: from motsps.sps.mot.com (sps.mot.com) by mogate.sps.mot.com (4.1/SMI-4.1/Email-2.0) id AA18398; Mon, 14 Feb 94 12:32:03 MST Received: from risc.sps.mot.com by motsps.sps.mot.com (4.1/SMI-4.1/Email-2.1) id AA28292; Mon, 14 Feb 94 12:32:01 MST Received: from akamai.sps.mot.com by risc.sps.mot.com (4.1/SMI-3.0DEV3) id AA11177; Mon, 14 Feb 94 13:31:59 CST Received: by akamai.sps.mot.com (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA28330; Mon, 14 Feb 94 13:31:58 CST From: jjoy@akamai.sps.mot.com (Jennifer Joy) Message-Id: <9402141931.AA28330@akamai.sps.mot.com> Subject: waves of the future? To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Mon, 14 Feb 94 13:31:57 CST In-Reply-To: ; from "GreatCircle.COM!List-Managers-Owner" at Feb 14, 94 9:57 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11b] Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > > > Please don't. What is unique about this onslaught is that it destroyed > > one of the mailing lists I run. Last week I threw in the towel and > > decomissioned Pubnet, a mailing list for the administration of public > > access Unix systems. > > > > I finally got tired of the load, and I realize after the fact (i.e. after > > seeing this thread) that it is direcly correlated to the AOL.COM tsunami. > > This is interesting. If you think the load is high because of AOL, what > is it going to be like when the so-called information superhighway starts > becoming a reality? One of my lists is at 1200 subscribers, currently. > What can I expect in the next few years? What can we all expect in the > next few years? Do you all remember when Eugene Spafford threw in his towel? He wrote a pretty good letter about how the net (Usenet news) had grown, and how people weren't paying attention to Emily Postnews anymore, and why he just didn't think it was worth his time to maintain his postings since it didn't seem like people bothered to read them (someone else did pick them up). (What, read a group for a few weeks/days before I ask my question?) (What, be polite? think first, flame later?) (What, find the FAQ?) It is hard, I think, not to become jaded, or wish for they way things were. It's only going to get worse. As I was in a mall yesterday seeing all sorts of rudeness (don't people even *think* about others anymore) I couldn't help but wonder when the masses decend all thinking about ME where it all will lead. We just moved to a 2GB spool for news, and we don't carry pictures or a long expire -- the 1GB was floundering. I'm on way too many mailing lists, and I run into people from all over who don't know what to do. The quality of the lists have not declined like the quality of the news groups, but this may just be a matter of time. The main noise is misdirected administrative requests. Maybe part of our hope is software that can help manage the load. [dreaming time..] Perhaps some sort of universal list interface that would let people (through a GUI of some sort) look though back issues, let them hit the subscribe, post, or unsubscribe button (and do the right thing for that list), or find out vital statistics (how many members, messages per day, etc.). Hmm, but I have to admit thinking of making it easier to join a list scares me. Maybe it is time to consider trying to get more standard verbal interfaces? I will not be surprised if "private" Usenets pop up, as well as select lists. Not any time soon, perhaps, but stratification seems to happen when you begin to reach such a large group things become unmanageable. Some solutions i have seen include sending new people some guidelines, and an FAQ. One list I tend to disagree with (on its philosophy of subscriptions) makes people "agree" to the conditions he sends out, before he will sign them up. That is a bit extreme, but I imagine the two-step process helps get the more serious people. Just some rambling thoughts, jennifer -- Jennifer Joy sys/net admin Motorola/RISC HW Austin,TX jjoy@risc.sps.mot.com 512.891.8561 pgr:928.7447 #9561 From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Mon Feb 14 20:04:07 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA03078; Mon, 14 Feb 94 20:04:07 GMT Received: from fender.pica.army.mil by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA03071; Mon, 14 Feb 94 12:03:54 PST Date: Mon, 14 Feb 94 15:07:13 EST From: Info-LabVIEW List Maintainer To: List-Managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: waves of the future? Organization: Electric Armts Div, US Army ARDEC, Picatinny Arsenal, NJ Message-Id: <9402141507.aa03460@fender.Pica.Army.Mil> Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Jennifer Joy wrote: >I'm on way too many mailing lists, and I run into people from all over >who don't know what to do. The quality of the lists have not declined >like the quality of the news groups, but this may just be a matter of >time. The main noise is misdirected administrative requests. I agree wrt the misdirected admin requests. It's not so bad when they're new subscribers, but when people don't bother to save the newuser banner specifically asking them to use the -request address... My latest thriller is to see mailing list traffic exceed 10 msg/day and have folks asking you to make it into a newsgroup:-{ By way of intro, I'm Tom Coradeschi. I manage the Info-LabVIEW and Igor mailing lists. LabVIEW is a data acquisition, analysis and control package, runs on Macs, Sparcs and Windows machines. We've got 369 subscribed to the basic list, with 189 subscribed to the digest version. Traffic runs 10-20 msgs/day. Igor is a data analysis/plotting package for the Mac. 184 subscribed - traffic is 2-3 msgs/week (talk about apples and oranges). Tom Coradeschi, Info-LabVIEW List Maintainer From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Mon Feb 14 21:24:30 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA03382; Mon, 14 Feb 94 21:24:30 GMT Received: from apple.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA03375; Mon, 14 Feb 94 13:24:23 PST Received: by apple.com (5.61/8-Oct-1993-eef) id AA27678; Mon, 14 Feb 94 13:26:36 -0800 for List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Mon, 14 Feb 94 13:26:36 -0800 From: Chuq Von Rospach Message-Id: <9402142126.AA27678@apple.com> To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM, info-labview-request@Pica.Army.Mil Subject: Re: waves of the future? Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >My latest thriller is to see mailing list traffic exceed 10 msg/day and >have folks asking you to make it into a newsgroup:-{ That's one reason why I put digest versions available. But as a matter of fact, both my lists DO have alt.* groups avaialble, and as far as I can tell, everyone still uses the lists. And I tell folks that if they want a newsgroup, they're welcome to go get it started, but that I won't do it for them. (and no, I won't gateway if it's created. I find that tends to create the worst of both worlds, not the best). From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Mon Feb 14 22:16:34 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA03608; Mon, 14 Feb 94 22:16:34 GMT Received: from pooh.ucsf.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA03601; Mon, 14 Feb 94 14:16:09 PST Received: from localhost by pooh.ucsf.edu (8.6.4/GSC4.24) id OAA29522; Mon, 14 Feb 1994 14:18:23 -0800 Message-Id: <199402142218.OAA29522@pooh.ucsf.edu> Subject: Re: waves of the future? To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 14:18:22 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <9402141931.AA28330@akamai.sps.mot.com> from "Jennifer Joy" at Feb 14, 94 01:31:57 pm From: troyer@cgl.ucsf.edu (John M. Troyer) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL22] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 2020 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Not much to do with mailing lists. I suppose followups should go to news.future or alt.culture.internet or wherever the Imminent Death of the Net thread is going on now? > From: ckoenig@midway.uchicago.edu > So definitely, reaching out to the people and enlisting their help, > turning them on to how they can use the Net without polluting it, > BEFORE they become Net.Problems, is really the only choice for the > long run. This sounds like the responsibility of the commercial providers to warn their users that there is a rest of the world out there (e.g., that the Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists is not the AOL PAML). It is also their responsibility to educate their users before unleashing them on us. They should not only make available news.announce.newusers-like hand-holding FAQs for their users, they should push them heavily. This would presumably be part of the 'value-added' service they offer, and net-savviness training would then be a selling point for the commercial services. Instead, their users are like people who have just been let out of the closet they've been locked in all their lives. > From: jjoy@akamai.sps.mot.com (Jennifer Joy) > Maybe part of our hope is software that can help manage the load. > [dreaming time..] > Perhaps some sort of universal list interface that would let people > (through a GUI of some sort) look though back issues, let them hit > the subscribe, post, or unsubscribe button (and do the right thing > for that list), Sounds like a description of Usenet. Although I see why mailing lists are still necessary (and their numbers seem to be growing), they seem like a giant step backwards from netnews, at least in terms of user-interface. Perhaps in the future the distinction between types of resources will disappear? You won't care if you're reading newsgroups (cached on the local system), mailing lists (cached in my mailbox), or currently-unsubscribed mailing lists (cached on some foreign machine)? Hope so. john troyer@cgl.ucsf.edu From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Mon Feb 14 22:22:42 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA03661; Mon, 14 Feb 94 22:22:42 GMT Received: from emory.mathcs.emory.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA03654; Mon, 14 Feb 94 14:22:27 PST Received: from uumind.UUCP by emory.mathcs.emory.edu (5.65/Emory_mathcs.3.4.19) via UUCP id AB20468 ; Mon, 14 Feb 94 17:24:44 -0500 Received: by mind.org (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Mon, 14 Feb 94 15:04:39 -0500 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Received: by knex.via.mind.org (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Mon, 14 Feb 94 13:21:01 EST for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: A flood from America OnLine From: Gess Shankar Reply-To: gess@knex.via.mind.org (Gess Shankar) Message-Id: Date: Mon, 14 Feb 94 13:08:20 EST In-Reply-To: <199402141252.HAA18064@z.nsf.gov> Organization: |<><>| Knowledge Exchange, GA, USA |<><>| Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk emory!nsf.gov!mmorse (Michael H. Morse) writes: > > I also had to make "mailing list basics" help texts aimed at the > > newbies, mostly aol users. Though some aol subscribers make good > > contributions, most seem to be fishing aimlessly. > > I find this curious. AOL subscribers *pay* for their service, unlike > most Internet and BITNET users. You'd think that would make them > *more* likely to be serious users. > May be so. But some users seem to want to subscribe to lists, don't pay any attention to responses describing the charter of the list, instructions and so forth and then find the traffic too much or irrelevant. While this is not restricted only to AOL users, these are the most frequent in one of the lists I run. I think list-owners may have an enormous education job, unless the services themselves do their part. As the net gets more and more commercial and cheaper, this phenomenon will increase. List owners with subject matters of general interest will have to put up or close shop. Price of progress. :) GeSS -- Gess Shankar |<><>| Internet: gess@knex.via.mind.ORG |<><>| CDPub List Admin. |<><>| {rutgers,ogicse,gatech}!emory!uumind!knex!gess |<><>| From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Mon Feb 14 22:41:38 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA03906; Mon, 14 Feb 94 22:41:38 GMT Received: from spiff.ccs.carleton.ca by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA03867; Mon, 14 Feb 94 14:39:50 PST Received: by spiff.ccs.carleton.ca (4.1/SMI-4.0-mcr) id AA19498; Mon, 14 Feb 94 17:42:32 EST Date: Mon, 14 Feb 94 17:42:32 EST From: mcr@ccs.carleton.ca (Michael Richardson) Message-Id: <9402142242.AA19498@spiff.ccs.carleton.ca> Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM To: jjoy@akamai.sps.mot.com In-Reply-To: Jennifer Joy's message of Mon, 14 Feb 94 13:31:57 CST <9402141931.AA28330@akamai.sps.mot.com> Subject: waves of the future? Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >>>>> "Jennifer" == Jennifer Joy writes: Jennifer> the lists have not declined like the quality of the news Jennifer> groups, but this may just be a matter of time. The main Jennifer> noise is misdirected administrative requests. Things like smart redistribution programs (like resend, distribute, etc..), and automated answering machines (request-answer) go a long way, I'd say. (Okay, I have a majordomo bias) A former ocunix.on.ca host was on a Linux mailing list. When they quit the domain (and became resudox.net actually) the Linux mail started bouncing. We are supposed to establish a no-incremental cost connection (UUCP), but that hasn't been established. The bounces were going to the -request address. No change after several weeks. I contacted the -request address. A week passes. No answer. I tried again, cc postmaster. No answer. I cc'ed the postmaster again, suggesting that their list moderator was either asleep or -request was going to /dev/null, or... I said "I would take appropriate action" [this was a daily 10k digest, and was costing us money, we are just a small co-op]. That got a response from the postmaster, suggesting that I was rude and he'd take "appropriate" action. I then thanked him for responding, because then I knew who to complain about. That evening, my machine bounced a message that ack'ed the addresses removal. This list has these "channel" things. I don't know what software provides it, nor do I really care to find out. However, getting dead users off mailing lists is hard. Very hard. The bit.listserv, info.* are very useful in that respect. We have 'culist' groups at Carleton, and ocunix has 'ocunix.mail' groups for really esoteric things we can't get as one of the above groups. This, potentially, is one of the very useful things about the listproc IP interface: the ability for a user to get off all lists with one fell swoop. The admin interface to it is too complicated for my liking though, and I don't like code that doesn't have a 'make install' stage. Jennifer> I will not be surprised if "private" Usenets pop up, as Jennifer> well as select lists. Not any time soon, perhaps, but Jennifer> stratification seems to happen when you begin to reach Jennifer> such a large group things become unmanageable. "Best-of" usenet has been talked about for a long time, but will probably require widespread use of PGP/RIPEM. Orson Scott Card paints an interesting picture in "Ender's Game" --- a very useful model even if his story was written in the late seventies, and without knowledge of the developing thing called "usenet" Jennifer> Just some rambling thoughts, jennifer Ditto. Jennifer> -- Jennifer Joy sys/net admin Motorola/RISC HW Austin,TX Jennifer> jjoy@risc.sps.mot.com 512.891.8561 pgr:928.7447 #9561 Two GIGs of news? Hmm. -- :!mcr!: HOME: mcr@sandelman.ocunix.on.ca +1 613 788 2600 3853 Michael Richardson WORK: mcr@ccs.carleton.ca (Conservation Ecology) Here is an HTML reference to my bio. foreach $X ("E-Journal","NetBSD","Perl","Physics") { print "MCR hacks $X\n"; }; From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Mon Feb 14 22:44:09 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA03927; Mon, 14 Feb 94 22:44:09 GMT Received: from apple.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA03918; Mon, 14 Feb 94 14:43:57 PST Received: by apple.com (5.61/8-Oct-1993-eef) id AA08814; Mon, 14 Feb 94 14:46:07 -0800 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Mon, 14 Feb 94 14:46:07 -0800 From: Chuq Von Rospach Message-Id: <9402142246.AA08814@apple.com> To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, troyer@cgl.ucsf.edu Subject: Re: waves of the future? Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >It is also their responsibility to educate their users before unleashing >them on us. They should not only make available news.announce.newusers-like >hand-holding FAQs for their users, they should push them heavily. Let us remember for a second that AOL, our current lackey running dog, has seen growth from 300,000 to 600,000 members in the space of a few months, much higher than expected. As anyone who's spent time on usenet knows (or who's lived through a mailing list that explodes in size for some reason), best intentions sometimes go out the window for a while until you can drain the swamp and kill the alligators. So lets not pillory them for not being pro-active in a situation where they're lucky to be keeping the nostrils above water, because I doubt sincerely ANY set of admins would be able to handle the situation any better. let's wait until they get things under control and then pillory them when they screw up.. (hehe)., Again, not to beat on .edu too much, but every september, the net is flooded with a wave of newbies, and every september, it takes a while for the net to get them under control and their admins (except for the ones that refuse to deal with the situation completely) to calm them down adn get them to read the FAQs. When foobar.edu finds himself with 200 new accounts in a week, it's hard for him to sit down with each and walk them through the ropes, too. The same thing is happening on the bigger services, but on a bigger scale. And one fact of life is that the Internet IS rapidly going mainstream. We're not a quiet little secret between ourselves and 2,000,000 of our close friends any more, and we're crazy if we keep pretending that if we ignore them, they'll go away. What they'll do is drown us and shove us out the side door as irrelevant. We need to know how to be ready for them, to mainstream them into OUR internet, and to figure out ways of handling an Internet that's going to be 10,000,000 people and making regular news items in Time and the New York Times (which, frankly, means that sooner or later, someone's going to have to deal with some of the shadier aspects of the net, because we can't hide it from visibility too much longer. So far, the kiddie porn, the feethly pictures and the copyirght and piracy stuff has all been played to smaller papers and regional markets. Wait until it makes it into Newsweek or the NBC nightly news...) >Instead, their users are like people who have just been let out >of the closet they've been locked in all their lives. Just like almost every new Internet user I've ever met.... >Sounds like a description of Usenet. Although I see why mailing lists are >still necessary (and their numbers seem to be growing), they seem like >a giant step backwards from netnews, at least in terms of user-interface. The reason I use mailing lists is for noise control. Since it takes an active response to get on a list, and there's actually a god that can (gasp) kick the miscreants off and force them to play nice if needed, it causes people to work better together. Until usenet allows for that kind of thing, mailing lists will continue to exist. Some folks like anarchy. I prefer getting work done and having intelligent conversations. Those are had to do on usenet. (and moderation isn't the answer). >Perhaps in the future the distinction between types of resources will >disappear? At some point, when reader technology makes it easier to filter the noise, we won't need other solutions to act as filters, be it mailing lists or moderators. Then things will start merging, I think. From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Mon Feb 14 22:46:39 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA03975; Mon, 14 Feb 94 22:46:39 GMT Received: from soda.berkeley.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA03960; Mon, 14 Feb 94 14:46:01 PST Received: from localhost.Berkeley.EDU (localhost.Berkeley.EDU [127.0.0.1]) by soda.berkeley.edu (8.6.5/PHILMAIL-1.10) with SMTP id OAA13528; Mon, 14 Feb 1994 14:48:07 -0800 Message-Id: <199402142248.OAA13528@soda.berkeley.edu> To: troyer@cgl.ucsf.edu (John M. Troyer) Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: waves of the future? In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 14 Feb 1994 14:18:22 PST." <199402142218.OAA29522@pooh.ucsf.edu> Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 14:48:05 -0800 From: "Shannon D. Appel" Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >Perhaps in the future the distinction between types of resources will >disappear? You won't care if you're reading newsgroups >(cached on the local system), mailing lists (cached in my >mailbox), or currently-unsubscribed mailing lists (cached on some foreign >machine)? > >Hope so. I think you miss at least part of the point of mailing lists. If I'm running a mailing list, it's usually because I'd like to see a smaller, more dedicated and more polite group of people discussing an issue. I _WANT_ people to have to make at least some effort to subscribe to a list (more than just hitting 'g'). I _WANT_ people to realize that anything they send is going into people's mailboxes. I consider these benefits of mailing lists, because they keep the community smaller and less anonymous. If these distinctions went away, I wouldn't see much point in running mailing lists rather than newsgroups. Shannon From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Mon Feb 14 23:56:57 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA04214; Mon, 14 Feb 94 23:56:57 GMT Received: from wilma.cs.utk.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA04207; Mon, 14 Feb 94 15:56:49 PST Received: from LOCALHOST by wilma.cs.utk.edu with SMTP (8.6.4/2.8c-UTK) id SAA05084; Mon, 14 Feb 1994 18:04:38 -0500 Message-Id: <199402142304.SAA05084@wilma.cs.utk.edu> From: Keith Moore To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Cc: moore@cs.utk.edu Subject: Re: A flood from America OnLine In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 14 Feb 1994 13:08:20 EST." Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 18:04:37 -0500 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk The net is growing so large that we need to automate list management tasks as much as possible, and we need to assume that users know essentially nothing. List management software needs to be built with such users in mind. "Essentially nothing" probably means "the mailing address of the list". We should not assume that someone who has found out about a list knows such mundane details as the difference between a list address and a -request address, what commands to use, or even what the list is for and what kind of traffic is acceptable. So I'd probably want list manager software to remember who had posted to any particular list, and for anyone who had never posted before, return a help message instead of posting. The help message would describe the purpose of the list and what kinds of traffic were acceptable, who could subscribe, how to subscribe, how to get help, etc. (This feature would have to be carefully coded to avoid bad interactions with netnews.) Other things I'd like to see: + a uniform command interface (for things like subscribe/unsubscribe etc) + greater uniformity in how list exploders do header munging + a standard format for list archiving (accessible by imap4 and maybe nntp) + education for the net.third.world (e.g. AOL) explaining the cultural, differences between an Internet list and whatever-they-are-used to. Keith From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Tue Feb 15 00:42:04 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA04378; Tue, 15 Feb 94 00:42:04 GMT Received: from apple.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA04370; Mon, 14 Feb 94 16:41:52 PST Received: by apple.com (5.61/8-Oct-1993-eef) id AA24333; Mon, 14 Feb 94 16:44:10 -0800 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Mon, 14 Feb 94 16:44:10 -0800 From: Chuq Von Rospach Message-Id: <9402150044.AA24333@apple.com> To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, moore@cs.utk.edu Subject: Re: A flood from America OnLine Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >So I'd probably want list manager software to remember who had posted to any >particular list, and for anyone who had never posted before, return a help >message instead of posting. Actually, the list manager should do this for anyone not ON the list, giving an overview and "how to sign up" message. That also deals with a pet peeve of mine, people who post to lists they're not members of. From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Tue Feb 15 00:46:10 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA04413; Tue, 15 Feb 94 00:46:10 GMT Received: from panix.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA04406; Mon, 14 Feb 94 16:46:02 PST Received: by panix.com id AA10061 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for list-managers@greatcircle.com); Mon, 14 Feb 1994 19:47:54 -0500 From: Andy Finkenstadt Message-Id: <199402150047.AA10061@panix.com> Subject: Re: GEnie To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 19:47:53 -0500 (EST) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1387 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk GEnie > From: "John W. Redelfs" > Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 09:02:04 -0900 > Subject: GEnie > Dear Fellow List Members, > Now that I've listened to a flood of mail ragging on AOL, may I ask if > any of you have been getting massive bounce messages from GEnie? Many > of the members of both my lists are relatively new users with email > access to the Internet from GEnie. Apparently, GEnie has had some > serious difficulties this past week or two with one of their servers > down. It has caused an enormous amount of mischief on my lists because > my subscribers have blamed me for problems caused by GEnie. I just posted a somewhat overview-ish explanation of each of the problems caused by, or exacerbated by, the outages and waylaid upgrades with the GEnie gateway. > Has anyone had GEnie problems lately? I think the problems I've had > were caused by the computer people at GEnie and _not_ the newbies. I don't know yet if the problem has been fixed. My mailbox on GEnie currently has over 600 items waiting for me to deal with. I tend to scan for "URGENT" in the subject heading, and then start at the beginning. Uninteresting subjected mail, such as "Returned mail: user unknown" tends to get my last priority for the night, such as at midnight when I finally complete handling GEnie subscriber mail. Andy GEnie Postmaster From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Tue Feb 15 04:05:06 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA05198; Tue, 15 Feb 94 04:05:06 GMT Received: from emory.mathcs.emory.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA05189; Mon, 14 Feb 94 20:04:56 PST Received: from uumind.UUCP by emory.mathcs.emory.edu (5.65/Emory_mathcs.3.4.19) via UUCP id AA14031 ; Mon, 14 Feb 94 23:07:07 -0500 Received: by mind.org (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Mon, 14 Feb 94 20:28:32 -0500 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Received: by knex.via.mind.org (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Mon, 14 Feb 94 19:24:26 EST for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: waves of the future? From: Gess Shankar Reply-To: gess@knex.via.mind.org (Gess Shankar) Message-Id: Date: Mon, 14 Feb 94 19:05:12 EST In-Reply-To: <9402142126.AA27678@apple.com> Organization: |<><>| Knowledge Exchange, GA, USA |<><>| Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Chuq Von Rospach writes: > That's one reason why I put digest versions available. But as a matter of > fact, both my lists DO have alt.* groups avaialble, and as far as I can > tell, everyone still uses the lists. And I tell folks that if they want a > newsgroup, they're welcome to go get it started, but that I won't do it for > them. (and no, I won't gateway if it's created. I find that tends to create > the worst of both worlds, not the best). > I agree with this policy and I follow the same. Two of the prime advantages of mailing lists are: (1) A small, but involved community of subscribers to keep the subject matter at hand focussed and topical and (2) the fact that it is mail as opposed to news tends to keep the signal-to-noise at a comfortable level. (Currently a third advantage is: ability to participate from commercial services like CI$, GEnie, AOL [here we go again] etc, as these people cannot access news [at least for now]. But ironic to bring this up in view of the recent discussion about AOL et al). I have valuable subscribers from CI$, MCIMail and yes, even AOL. Mailing lists provide a more intimate and somewhat less anonymous atmosphere, which gets totally lost when the list gets gatewayed to news. The resulting noise and higher volume of traffic tend to drive subscribers away... especially the ones the list managers want to keep. Anyway thanks to this AOL episode, this list is seeing a sudden burst of activity. Time to make it a newsgroup, eh? ;-) GeSS -- Gess Shankar |<><>| Internet: gess@knex.via.mind.ORG |<><>| CDPub List Admin. |<><>| {rutgers,ogicse,gatech}!emory!uumind!knex!gess |<><>| From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Tue Feb 15 05:10:19 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA05311; Tue, 15 Feb 94 05:10:19 GMT Received: from panix.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA05304; Mon, 14 Feb 94 21:10:07 PST Received: from DialupEudora (panix2.panix.com) by panix.com with SMTP id AA22843 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for ); Tue, 15 Feb 1994 00:11:31 -0500 Date: Tue, 15 Feb 1994 00:11:31 -0500 Message-Id: <199402150511.AA22843@panix.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: list-managers@greatcircle.com From: gbs@panix.com (Eric Braun) Subject: Re: A flood from America OnLine + Netiquette Post Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >So...since we've identified a need...who wants to write the first draft of >Ettiquite for Mailing Lists (in E-Sharp Minor)? This is all close to my heart. When I put together my book one of the things that continually knawed at my soul was all the hell I might end up causing to the readers of this list. So, if I can get permission from my publisher (and I don't think that should be too hard), I'd like to offer all of the netiquette sections of my book as a place to start (which I'd be happy to put together and post to this list). Any takers? -Eric ______________________________________________________________________ Eric Braun gbs@panix.com The Internet Directory directory@glassbead.com From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Tue Feb 15 05:24:55 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA05422; Tue, 15 Feb 94 05:24:55 GMT Received: from mindvox.phantom.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA05415; Mon, 14 Feb 94 21:24:47 PST Received: by mindvox.phantom.com (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA23666; Tue, 15 Feb 94 00:30:25 EST Date: Tue, 15 Feb 1994 00:30:23 -0500 (EST) From: Aaron Dickey Subject: Re: A flood from America OnLine + Netiquette Post To: Eric Braun Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com In-Reply-To: <199402150511.AA22843@panix.com> Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Tue, 15 Feb 1994, Eric Braun wrote: > causing to the readers of this list. So, if I can get permission from my > publisher (and I don't think that should be too hard), I'd like to offer > all of the netiquette sections of my book as a place to start (which I'd be > happy to put together and post to this list). Any takers? I'll take! We need it badly. --Aaron PS-- When's the next edition of your book coming out? I ask because: a) None of my lists are in there , and b) I spilled a bottle of Coke all over it and now it looks like a 10-year-old copy of the World Almanac. Heh.. __ Aaron Dickey kieran@phantom.com,kieran@mountain.net Manager of: ABC's World News Now Discussion List, West Virginia Discussion List, NUTWORKS:The Next Generation From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Tue Feb 15 06:13:54 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA05526; Tue, 15 Feb 94 06:13:54 GMT Received: from gw1.att.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA05519; Mon, 14 Feb 94 22:13:42 PST Message-Id: <9402150613.AA05519@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM> Date: Tue, 15 Feb 94 01:13 EST From: psrc@pegasus.att.com (Paul S R Chisholm) To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Future Tsunamis Content-Type: text X-Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories/AT&T PersonaLink(sm) Services X-Trademark: PersonaLink(sm) is a service mark of AT&T Content-Length: 3733 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Michael Sullivan (sullivan@fa.disney.com) writes: > This is interesting. If you think the load is high because of AOL, what > is it going to be like when the so-called information superhighway starts > becoming a reality? I'm a little slow; it only just now occurred to me that the project I'm on (AT&T PersonaLink Services) is going to be one of the next sources of neophytes, the new drivers on the superhighway. (We're working with General Magic, Sony, Motorola, and other companies to produce the next generation of PDAs, but putting the emphasis on communications instead of trying to make stylus-on-glass replace pen-on-paper. We're hoping to make electronic messaging far easier than programming a VCR. That's just what all you moderators want, right, people whose VCRs are still blinking midnight?-) The issue isn't keeping the list-of-lists off the commercial services. It's in the bookstores already. (I am not making this up: there is now a book in print called INTERNET FOR DUMMIES.) So, let me (an eeeeevil commercial guy) practice some active listening and summarize what I've heard so far about we, the commercial service providers, should do: o Make sure any Internet connectivity works. If we're connected, we represent a large site. If it's not well behaved, the whole 'net suffers. Decisions on when to bounce incoming messages are particularly sensitive. (I speak as a user of the stock SVR4.2 vacation program, which gives at least MajorDomo fits.)-: o Try to educate our users about general mailing list etiquette. Understand the purpose of the list you join, and the difference between the list and list-request (know how to quit before you start:-); lurk before you leap; don't flame, but if you must flame, pick a designated flamee (i.e., flame one person rather than the whole list). If there was some way to distinguish mailing list addresses (-request and otherwise) from others, we could intercept messages to them, at least enough to produce a "Do you really want to do this with your whole heart?" message, ala the caveat Netnews gives you when you post. (I have just thought of a truly elegant way to do something better than this this, maybe, but there is not enough space for it in this margin. Seriously, let me think about this, or at least get some sleep, before I broadcast it.) Having said that, let me say this. It's not AOL or PersonaLink or any single service that's going to be such a major pain in the tush. (Some of my best friends are on portal.-) It's wave after wave after wave of newbies, each thinking they've just invented new vices, some of them right. (The gentleman who gave up after the AOL invasion did so having already been gnawed on by other problems, if I remember correctly.) Some lists may close themselves off from some specific parts of the net, or from all commercial services. It's their bits and their sweat, and their decision. But the commercial postmasters (who start off with an incredibly high ratio of inexperienced users per hour of postmasterly experience) are responsible primarily to their customers, not to the lists. These folks can be worked with, but don't expect them to solve "the whole problem." To improve what we've got today will take "the old 'net" and the nuevo networked, working together. I'm willing to start. Paul S. R. Chisholm psrc@pegasus.att.com AT&T Bell Laboratories/ AT&T Mail !psrchisholm AT&T PersonaLink(sm) Services (PersonaLink is a service mark of AT&T) (formerly AT&T EasyLink Services Consumer Messaging; same folks, new name) I'm not speaking for the company or anyone else, I'm just speaking my mind From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Tue Feb 15 06:14:53 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA05549; Tue, 15 Feb 94 06:14:53 GMT Received: from merlin.resmel.bhp.com.au by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA05227; Mon, 14 Feb 94 20:15:28 PST Received: from beta.itwhy.bhp.com.au by merlin.resmel.bhp.com.au with SMTP id AA09626 (5.67b/IDA-1.5 for ); Tue, 15 Feb 1994 15:05:43 +1100 Received: from [134.18.56.252] (alpha.itwhy.bhp.com.au [134.18.56.252]) by beta.itwhy.bhp.com.au (8.6.4/8.6.4) with SMTP id NAA01654 for ; Tue, 15 Feb 1994 13:04:00 +1030 Message-Id: <199402150234.NAA01654@beta.itwhy.bhp.com.au> X-Sender: andrewp@134.18.56.253 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Tue, 15 Feb 1994 14:38:09 -0800 To: List-Managers@greatcircle.com From: andrewp@itwhy.bhp.com.au (Andrew PRUSEK) Subject: Common Syntax for Automated Mailing Lists? Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hello all: One problem that exists with mailing lists is that the proceedure to subscribe to them is very much dependant on the whims of the list-manager. Some lists are on BITNET others are human-managed others by software lifted from the net. The requirements for subscribing are very different for each of these. A "Please add me to your list" does not work for an auto-list and a "subscribe list-name" is a bit rude when sent to a human. Any ideas how to over come this? Perhaps a format such as body of message: subscribe list-name email-address realname --- Please add me to your list or a fill out this form and email it to xyz@abc Any ideas? thanks Andrew -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Andrew PRUSEK Phone +61 86 40 4590 BHP Information Technology Fax +61 86 40 4720 PO Box 21 / Port Augusta Road Email andrewp@itwhy.bhp.com.au Whyalla SA 5600 FTP alpha.itwhy.bhp.com.au Australia MSERV mail-server@itwhy.bhp.com.au ---------------------------------------- X.400 G=ANDREW;S=PRUSEK;O=BHP; Common sense is not that common! ADMD=TELEMEMO;C=AU From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Tue Feb 15 06:53:05 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA05731; Tue, 15 Feb 94 06:53:05 GMT Received: from sun4nl.NL.net by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA05724; Mon, 14 Feb 94 22:52:56 PST Received: from solair1.inter.NL.net by sun4nl.NL.net with SMTP id AA28445 (5.65b/CWI-3.3); Tue, 15 Feb 1994 07:55:15 +0100 Received: by solair1.inter.NL.net (5.65b/NLnet1.1) id AA29129; Tue, 15 Feb 1994 07:55:14 +0100 Date: Tue, 15 Feb 1994 07:55:14 +0100 (MET) From: BATRN Subject: Re: waves of the future? To: Chuq Von Rospach Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com, troyer@cgl.ucsf.edu In-Reply-To: <9402142246.AA08814@apple.com> Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Mon, 14 Feb 1994, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > And one fact of life is that the Internet IS rapidly going mainstream. We're > not a quiet little secret between ourselves and 2,000,000 of our close > friends any more, and we're crazy if we keep pretending that if we ignore > them, they'll go away. What they'll do is drown us and shove us out the side > door as irrelevant. We need to know how to be ready for them, to mainstream > them into OUR internet, and to figure out ways of handling an Internet > that's going to be 10,000,000 people and making regular news items in Time > and the New York Times (which, frankly, means that sooner or later, > someone's going to have to deal with some of the shadier aspects of the net, > because we can't hide it from visibility too much longer. So far, the kiddie > porn, the feethly pictures and the copyirght and piracy stuff has all been > played to smaller papers and regional markets. Wait until it makes it into > Newsweek or the NBC nightly news...) Seems to me that CVR has hit the nail on the head with this one. If the old guard of gurus, veterans, swamis or whatever, want to be in the driver's seat and direct net culture as the "wise old men" (sorry for the lack of PCishness), YOU are going to have to pre-evaluate the future exponential expansions and devise a means and method of giving the whole thing some form of direction. Otherwise, the estimated +30 MM users worldwide are unintendedly (some maybe even intendedly) going to make life hell . It will basically be like a professional swimmer doing his laps down at the local pool, when his routine and rythym are interrupted by a horde of newcomers diving, jumping and bombing in every which way but loose, because the never learnt to swim properly. So how about stopping the non-productive criticism and putting your heads together for a productive solution. Paul Lange AKA batrn@inter.nl.net From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Tue Feb 15 06:58:26 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA05775; Tue, 15 Feb 94 06:58:26 GMT Received: from sun4nl.NL.net by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA05768; Mon, 14 Feb 94 22:58:17 PST Received: from solair1.inter.NL.net by sun4nl.NL.net with SMTP id AA28698 (5.65b/CWI-3.3); Tue, 15 Feb 1994 08:00:38 +0100 Received: by solair1.inter.NL.net (5.65b/NLnet1.1) id AA29155; Tue, 15 Feb 1994 08:00:37 +0100 Date: Tue, 15 Feb 1994 08:00:37 +0100 (MET) From: BATRN Subject: Re: A flood from America OnLine + Netiquette Post To: Eric Braun Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com In-Reply-To: <199402150511.AA22843@panix.com> Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Tue, 15 Feb 1994, Eric Braun wrote: > >So...since we've identified a need...who wants to write the first draft of > >Ettiquite for Mailing Lists (in E-Sharp Minor)? > > This is all close to my heart. When I put together my book one of the > things that continually knawed at my soul was all the hell I might end up > causing to the readers of this list. So, if I can get permission from my > publisher (and I don't think that should be too hard), I'd like to offer > all of the netiquette sections of my book as a place to start (which I'd be > happy to put together and post to this list). Any takers? May I cast my commercial newbie vote??!!?? ;-) Paul Lange ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ BATRN using the NLnet Internet Services E-mail: batrn@inter.NL.net or BATRN@inter.NL.net ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Tue Feb 15 14:29:53 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA07345; Tue, 15 Feb 94 14:29:53 GMT Received: from castor.cc.utu.fi by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA07338; Tue, 15 Feb 94 06:29:31 PST Received: by utu.fi id <165739-8>; Tue, 15 Feb 1994 16:31:35 +0200 Subject: Re: Common Syntax for Automated Mailing Lists? From: Matti Aarnio To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Tue, 15 Feb 1994 16:31:32 +0200 In-Reply-To: <9402150910.AA06189@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM> from "List-Managers-Digest-Owner@GreatCircle.COM" at Feb 15, 94 11:10:06 am Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Content-Length: 1928 Message-Id: <94Feb15.163135eet.165739-8@utu.fi> Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I do agree that newbies are a pain, especially in large numbers, but that is how we started -- some have been faster learners, and eventually went further. That has marginal relevance on this topic too: One thing I have learned is that newbies do not know what is their email address, and if they must enter it manually. (It is bad enough when system mailer is misconfigured, and is unable to send FQDN addressed email -- or even receive it either!) (out from the digest..) > From: andrewp@itwhy.bhp.com.au (Andrew PRUSEK) > Date: Tue, 15 Feb 1994 14:38:09 -0800 > Subject: Common Syntax for Automated Mailing Lists? > > Hello all: > > One problem that exists with mailing lists is that the proceedure to subscribe > to them is very much dependant on the whims of the list-manager. ... > Any ideas how to over come this? Not a very good one, but pointing out one reason why having to tell ones email address won't work too well. > Perhaps a format such as > > body of message: > > subscribe list-name email-address realname I do like Revised Listserv's (that BITNET thing) style of: SUBScribe LISTNAME Real Name as my experience is that when users are asked to enter the address where they think they are receiving the email, they throw in all kinds of wierd things.. > - --- > Please add me to your list > > > or a fill out this form and email it to xyz@abc That approach MIGHT work on some automatically managed systems. > Any ideas? > > thanks > Andrew > - -------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Andrew PRUSEK Phone +61 86 40 4590 > BHP Information Technology Fax +61 86 40 4720 > PO Box 21 / Port Augusta Road Email andrewp@itwhy.bhp.com.au > Common sense is not that common! ADMD=TELEMEMO;C=AU True.. /Matti Aarnio Postmaster, and this & that.. From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Tue Feb 15 15:26:40 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA07723; Tue, 15 Feb 94 15:26:40 GMT Received: from ora.com (ruby.ora.com) by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA07715; Tue, 15 Feb 94 07:26:29 PST Received: from rubble.west.ora.com by ruby (8.6.5/) Received: by rubble.west.ora.com (4.1/SMI-4.1+JP-2.5) id AA19971; Tue, 15 Feb 94 07:25:49 PST From: Jerry Peek Reply-To: jerry@ora.com X-Mailer: MH 6.8 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Cc: BATRN , Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: waves of the future? In-Reply-To: Message from BATRN of "Tue, 15 Feb 1994 07:55:14 +0100." Date: Tue, 15 Feb 1994 07:25:48 -0800 Message-Id: <19970.761325948@rubble.west.ora.com> Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Paul Lange wrote: > On Mon, 14 Feb 1994, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > > And one fact of life is that the Internet IS rapidly going mainstream. > > door as irrelevant. We need to ... > > figure out ways of handling an Internet > > that's going to be 10,000,000 people... > > YOU are going to have to pre-evaluate the future > exponential expansions and devise a means and method of giving the whole > thing some form of direction. Otherwise, the estimated +30 MM users > worldwide are unintendedly (some maybe even intendedly) going to make > life hell . What's the #1 problem these newbies have? One candidate near the top of the list: figuring out how to subscribe and unsubscribe from lists. Sure, some newbies don't remember (or understand) the instructions, even if we ram the instructions down their throats over and over. But I think a lot of problems would be solved if we could decide on a standard interface to MLM (mailing list manager) software. Wait -- I know: we've gone 'round and 'round on this for years. There was an ill-fated RFC. There's the Mailbase project in the UK. Something might happen some day. But we'll still have an existing base of MLMs like LISTSERV, listproc and majordomo. The designers of those MLMs have their own good and understandable reasons for keeping incompatible interfaces. And administrators who've installed that software probably don't have the time to upgrade to a new compatible system unless we give them a *very* good reason. Finally, there are lists with "listname-request" addresses to add to the mess. I wonder if the answer is to come up with a translator program that translates a standard interface into commands that listserv, listproc and majordomo understand. (The masses of mailing lists at yggdrasil gave me this idea.) How about a central "subscription clearing house" site that accepts subscription requests, munges them into the right format for majordomo/listproc/listserv/whatever, and sends them on to the proper place? Just as you don't have to use Publishers Clearing House to order a magazine, subscribers wouldn't have to use this central subscription point; they could subscribe directly if they knew how. The beauty would be that this central site could be the one that all the book publishers, AOLs, GEnies, etc. mention to their readers and subscribers in their "list of lists". The people who administer lists would only have to register their list with the central site, optionally change their documentation to mention the central site and then forget it. Somehow this idea sounds a little too wild to me, as if I should have another cup of coffee ;-) before I send it out. So, flame me! I'd just like to see a solution for this obvious problem with newbies; maybe this can start some discussion that'll get us to a decent answer. -- Jerry Peek, O'Reilly & Associates, jerry@ora.com, +1 707-829-0515 From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Tue Feb 15 16:10:34 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA07944; Tue, 15 Feb 94 16:10:34 GMT Received: from mail.netcom.com (netcom5.netcom.com) by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA07937; Tue, 15 Feb 94 08:10:27 PST Received: from localhost by mail.netcom.com (8.6.4/SMI-4.1/Netcom) id IAA14671; Tue, 15 Feb 1994 08:12:59 -0800 From: essmjf@netcom.com (Michael Faklis) Message-Id: <199402151612.IAA14671@mail.netcom.com> Subject: List of Lists ? To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Date: Tue, 15 Feb 1994 08:12:55 -0800 (PST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 580 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk How do I get our mail list West_Coast_Live@netcom.com onto the list of Internet lists? This majordomo list is used by National Public Radio's new national radio show West Coast Live, to maintain contact with the audience. We do a weekly mailing announcing who will be appearing on the show, and a digest of messages sent to the show by the listeners. -- Michael Faklis, Computer Scientist email: essmjf@netcom.com Evolutionary Software Systems Phone: (415) 323-2222 P.O. Box 1121 FAX: (415) 323-1417 Palo Alto, California 94302-1121 From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Tue Feb 15 16:23:26 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA08005; Tue, 15 Feb 94 16:23:26 GMT Received: from z.nsf.gov by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA07998; Tue, 15 Feb 94 08:23:09 PST Received: from localhost (mmorse@localhost) by z.nsf.gov (8.6.4/8.6.4) id LAA18901; Tue, 15 Feb 1994 11:30:58 -0500 Message-Id: <199402151630.LAA18901@z.nsf.gov> From: mmorse@nsf.gov (Michael H. Morse) Date: Tue, 15 Feb 1994 11:30:58 EST In-Reply-To: Jerry Peek "Re: waves of the future?" (Feb 15, 7:25am) X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.1.1 5/02/90) To: jerry@ora.com, list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: waves of the future? Cc: BATRN , Chuq Von Rospach Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > I wonder if the answer is to come up with a translator program that > translates a standard interface into commands that listserv, listproc > and majordomo understand. (The masses of mailing lists at yggdrasil > gave me this idea.) How about a central "subscription clearing house" > site that accepts subscription requests, munges them into the right > format for majordomo/listproc/listserv/whatever, and sends them on to > the proper place? Good idea, but doesn't really solve the problem, just kind of adds to it. Lists come and go regularly, so someone (who, like most list admins, is probably also unpaid) would have an astronomic maintenance job. This would probably work for subscribe, but subscribe is really the most consistent, and least problematic, command anyway. Unsubscribe would be a killer. IMHO, Anastasios Katsikonas (author of Listproc for Unix) had the right idea with the client/server approach, that he called, I think, Interactive Listproc. It will be a long time before everyone has direct Internet access, but we could get this ready for that time. The success of the Gopher (and Mosaic nipping at its heels) demostrates the validity of the concept. Give people immediate feedback, on-line help, etc, and administrative costs go close to zero. --Mike From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Tue Feb 15 16:37:11 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA08073; Tue, 15 Feb 94 16:37:11 GMT Received: from spatula.csv.warwick.ac.uk by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA06948; Tue, 15 Feb 94 04:26:10 PST Date: Tue, 15 Feb 1994 12:28:12 GMT From: Ian Dickinson Message-Id: <1735.199402151228@spatula.csv.warwick.ac.uk> Received: from localhost by spatula.csv.warwick.ac.uk id MAA01735; Tue, 15 Feb 1994 12:28:12 GMT In-Reply-To: List-Managers-Digest-Owner@greatcircle.com "List Managers Digest V3 #22" (Feb 15, 1:10am) X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.2.4 2/2/92) To: List-Managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Common Syntax for Automated Mailing Lists? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Feb 15, andrewp@itwhy.bhp.com.au (Andrew PRUSEK) wrote: } Subject: Common Syntax for Automated Mailing Lists? > One problem that exists with mailing lists is that the proceedure to > subscribe to them is very much dependant on the whims of the list-manager. > Some lists are on BITNET others are human-managed others by software > lifted from the net. The requirements for subscribing are very different > for each of these. A "Please add me to your list" does not work for an > auto-list and a "subscribe list-name" is a bit rude when sent to a human. > Any ideas how to over come this? > Perhaps a format such as > > body of message: > > subscribe list-name email-address realname > - --- > Please add me to your list > > or a fill out this form and email it to xyz@abc > Any ideas? The 2 that spring to mind to me are: 1) A slight modification to the above, except that the message format is a registered MIME Content-Type. Retrofitting this to umpteen MUAs would be difficult though. 2) Run a form based WWW server for such services. Unfortunately, neither of them are universal and throw up another set of problems.... Cheers, -- Ian 'Vato' Dickinson [ID17] Kibo bait :-) cudep@csv.warwick.ac.uk ...!uknet!warwick!cudep vato@spuddy.uucp MIME mail welcome - don't send me no steenkin' X.400 Poke this hard. From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Tue Feb 15 16:38:25 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA08096; Tue, 15 Feb 94 16:38:25 GMT Received: from fender.pica.army.mil by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA07179; Tue, 15 Feb 94 05:41:31 PST Date: Tue, 15 Feb 94 8:44:49 EST From: Info-LabVIEW List Maintainer To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Common Syntax for Automated Mailing Lists? Organization: Electric Armts Div, US Army ARDEC, Picatinny Arsenal, NJ Message-Id: <9402150844.aa08148@fender.Pica.Army.Mil> Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Andrew PRUSEK wrote: >One problem that exists with mailing lists is that the proceedure to subscribe >to them is very much dependant on the whims of the list-manager. I agree. In my own mind, I have a set of standards which I've come to just from years of experience (whatever that means). If there's a 'listserv' (or lately) 'majordomo' in the admin address, I use 'sub listname Tom Coradeschi' as the msg body. If there's a -request, I send a polite note asking the list maintainer to 'Please subscribe me to your list "suchandsuch"'. I run my lists from a -request address and, for a while at least, was amazed by the number of 'listserv' style msgs I got. Now I'm just used to it. I still don't know what to make of the "info" "distribution" and such msgs I get. Particularly since I'm not real sure what they mean:-} >Any ideas how to over come this? Unfortunately, no. Right now, I'd be happy if people just _used_ the -request address. If we can't educate them enough to do that, getting them to use a particular syntax or format for an administrative request is going to be totally hopeless. Tom Coradeschi, Info-LabVIEW List Maintainer From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Tue Feb 15 16:58:40 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA08256; Tue, 15 Feb 94 16:58:40 GMT Received: from lokkur.dexter.mi.us (dexter-gw.dexter.msen.com) by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA08240; Tue, 15 Feb 94 08:58:22 PST Received: by lokkur.dexter.mi.us (5.65c/IDA-1.2.8) id AA23194; Tue, 15 Feb 1994 11:58:02 -0500 From: Steve Simmons Message-Id: <199402151658.AA23194@lokkur.dexter.mi.us> Subject: Re: waves of the future? To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Date: Tue, 15 Feb 1994 11:58:02 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <19970.761325948@rubble.west.ora.com> from "Jerry Peek" at Feb 15, 94 07:25:48 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 426 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Jerry Peek suggests a central sub/unsub service with universal formats. I see far more problems created long-term than solved, mostly boiling down to what happens if you don't like the way the central deals with your mailing list. If a given list opts out, we've simply recreated the problem. Better that we work on the translator package and make it available to list managers everywhere to install as they find the need. From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Tue Feb 15 17:00:16 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA08312; Tue, 15 Feb 94 17:00:16 GMT Received: from nps.navy.mil by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA08275; Tue, 15 Feb 94 09:00:03 PST Received: from sabik.cc.nps.navy.mil by nps.navy.mil (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA05599; Tue, 15 Feb 94 09:01:51 PST Date: Tue, 15 Feb 94 09:01:51 PST From: jschiv@nps.navy.mil (Jody Schivley) Message-Id: <9402151701.AA05599@nps.navy.mil> To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: change in address Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Please change the address: larry@ernie.ns.nps.navy.mil to: lary@nps.navy.mil on the mailing list List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM. Thanks, Jody ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Jody Schivley, Computer Engineer Phone: (408) 656-3662, Ingersoll-116 Naval Postgraduate School, Code 51 Fax: (408) 656-2611 Monterey, CA 93943 E-Mail: jschiv@nps.navy.mil From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Tue Feb 15 17:36:49 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA08528; Tue, 15 Feb 94 17:36:49 GMT Received: from panix.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA08461; Tue, 15 Feb 94 09:27:06 PST Received: by panix.com id AA04028 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for list-managers@greatcircle.com); Tue, 15 Feb 1994 12:29:10 -0500 From: Andy Finkenstadt Message-Id: <199402151729.AA04028@panix.com> Subject: Re: waves of the future? To: jerry@ora.com Date: Tue, 15 Feb 1994 11:49:06 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <19970.761325948@rubble.west.ora.com> from "Jerry Peek" at Feb 15, 94 07:25:48 am Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1745 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Jerry Peek writes in part: > > Just as you don't have to use Publishers Clearing House to order a > magazine, subscribers wouldn't have to use this central subscription > point; they could subscribe directly if they knew how. The beauty would > be that this central site could be the one that all the book publishers, > AOLs, GEnies, etc. mention to their readers and subscribers in their > "list of lists". The people who administer lists would only have to > register their list with the central site, optionally change their > documentation to mention the central site and then forget it. > I've been on list-managers for quite awhile now, and like this idea. Literally just last night I was dreaming about taking the PAML database, writing to Stephanie about this idea first to avoid another AOL influx, and creating some special software on GEnie (where I have some control) which would help users subscribe AND UNSUBSCRIBE from each list mentioned in her database. This would be preliminary to possibly setting up a series of "exploder" addresses to help reduce traffic over our link, AND offload the processing of subscription from the list maintainer. > Somehow this idea sounds a little too wild to me, as if I should have > another cup of coffee ;-) before I send it out. So, flame me! > I'd just like to see a solution for this obvious problem with newbies; > maybe this can start some discussion that'll get us to a decent answer. > -- > Jerry Peek, O'Reilly & Associates, jerry@ora.com, +1 707-829-0515 > -- ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Andy Finkenstadt andy@genie.geis.com | GEnie Sysop, GEnie Postmaster andy@tml.com (soon) | Systems Engineer, TML Information Services, Inc. genie@panix.com | Proud to be a Panician From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Tue Feb 15 18:06:41 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA08651; Tue, 15 Feb 94 18:06:41 GMT Received: from de5.ctd.ornl.gov by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA08644; Tue, 15 Feb 94 10:06:23 PST Received: from localhost (de5@localhost) by de5.ctd.ornl.gov (8.6.5/8.6.5) id NAA01192; Tue, 15 Feb 1994 13:08:21 -0500 Date: Tue, 15 Feb 1994 13:08:21 -0500 From: Dave Sill Message-Id: <199402151808.NAA01192@de5.ctd.ornl.gov> To: Info-LabVIEW List Maintainer Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Common Syntax for Automated Mailing Lists? In-Reply-To: <9402150844.aa08148@fender.Pica.Army.Mil> References: <9402150844.aa08148@fender.Pica.Army.Mil> Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >Andrew PRUSEK wrote: > >... Right now, I'd be happy if people just _used_ the >-request address. If we can't educate them enough to do that, getting them >to use a particular syntax or format for an administrative request is going >to be totally hopeless. The first commandment for mailing list usage should be: Thou shalt use -request to join a list, leave a list, or find out how the list works. And the first commandment for mailing list management should be: Thou shalt set up -request to receive requests and either process them (manually or automatically) or to a return detailed information on how to use the list manager software and contact the list owner. Forget about standardizing the sub/unsub/etc commands...it's a bad idea, and it'll never happen. Instead, standardize the interface at a higher level that's compatible with all list management approaches in common use today. -- Dave Sill (de5@ornl.gov) I dream of a televisionland where it will be Martin Marietta Energy Systems as hard for a network to expose us to violence Workstation Support as it is for me to tell someone they have spinach on their teeth. --Paula Poundstone URL http://gatekeeper.dec.com/archive/pub/DEC/DECinfo/html/dsill.html From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Tue Feb 15 18:09:30 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA08668; Tue, 15 Feb 94 18:09:30 GMT Received: from ncrhub1.NCR.COM (h192-127-251-3.NCR.COM) by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA08661; Tue, 15 Feb 94 10:09:11 PST Received: from dayhub by ncrhub1.NCR.COM id bd15737; 15 Feb 94 11:18 EST Received: by dayhub.DaytonOH.NCR.COM; 15 Feb 94 10:50:10 EST Received: by law7.DaytonOH.NCR.COM; 15 Feb 94 10:50:01 EST Received: from cc:Mail by ccncrtd.DaytonOh.NCR.com id AA761337370 Tue, 15 Feb 94 10:36:10 EDT Date: Tue, 15 Feb 94 10:36:10 EDT From: chenowet@ccncrtd.daytonoh.NCR.COM Message-Id: <9401157613.AA761337370@ccncrtd.DaytonOh.NCR.com> To: List-Managers-Digest@greatcircle.com, List-Managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: The future list manager Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk The recent AOL flood got lots of folks talking about netiquette and handling new, neophite users. For example, Keith Moore comments: >The net is growing so large that we need to automate list management >tasks as much as possible, and we need to assume that users know >essentially nothing. List management software needs to be built >with such users in mind. However, there's another big problem brewing. That's the proliferation of list managers like yourselves. I can't believe that system skills and knowledge of list handling can grow as fast as new lists are springing up -- most of which have new list owners. As I understand it, people usually become a list owner because of a special interest in the subject they want a list to talk about. They go get whatever list-handling software their network technologist recommends, and they stumble into the rest of the facts of list life. As a result, some may even end up "listless." So, let me be among the first to ask this question -- What happens in Phase 2, when all these neophyte list users you're dealing with now become list managers? Steve Chenoweth, Technology & Development AT&T Global Information Solutions (NCR) 1700 S. Patterson Blvd., Dayton, OH 45479 steve.chenoweth@daytonOH.ncr.com From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Tue Feb 15 18:36:49 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA08786; Tue, 15 Feb 94 18:36:49 GMT Received: from localhost by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA08772; Tue, 15 Feb 94 10:36:01 PST Message-Id: <9402151836.AA08772@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM> To: Dave Sill Cc: Info-LabVIEW List Maintainer , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Common Syntax for Automated Mailing Lists? In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 15 Feb 1994 13:08:21 -0500 Date: Tue, 15 Feb 1994 10:36:00 -0800 From: Brent Chapman Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Dave Sill writes: # >Andrew PRUSEK wrote: # > # >... Right now, I'd be happy if people just _used_ the # >-request address. If we can't educate them enough to do that, getting them # >to use a particular syntax or format for an administrative request is going # >to be totally hopeless. # # The first commandment for mailing list usage should be: # # Thou shalt use -request to join a list, leave a list, or # find out how the list works. # # And the first commandment for mailing list management should be: # # Thou shalt set up -request to receive requests and # either process them (manually or automatically) or to a return # detailed information on how to use the list manager software and # contact the list owner. # # Forget about standardizing the sub/unsub/etc commands...it's a bad # idea, and it'll never happen. Instead, standardize the interface at a # higher level that's compatible with all list management approaches in # common use today. I strongly concur with this. It's the approach I've tried to take with Majordomo. When someone sends a misdirected administrivia reqeust to one of my 30 or so lists, it usually (about 95% of the time) gets picked off by an administrivia filter in my posting code, rather than being forwarded to the list. After I review the message to make sure that it really _is_ administrivia (about 10% of what the filter catches _isn't_, particularly on lists like List-Managers and Majordomo-Users; it's just stuff that happens to mention "subscribe" or "unsubscribe" in the first few lines of the body), I send it back to the originator with a form letter explaining the "-request" convention. Note well: since I want them to _learn_ and _remember_ the "-request" convention, I do not perform the request for them, and I do not send them Majordomo instructions (even though that's what they'll eventually get from my "-request" addresses). I they use "-request" for my list, maybe they'll remember to use it in the future on somebody else's. This policy may not be appropriate for all lists (in-house lists, for instance, where "doing it for them" may be the right thing to do), but if you run a public list, I urge you to consider dealing with misdirected administrivia in a similar fashion, for the greater good of the community. -Brent -- Brent Chapman Great Circle Associates Brent@GreatCircle.COM 1057 West Dana Street +1 415 962 0841 Mountain View, CA 94041 From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Tue Feb 15 19:12:55 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA08996; Tue, 15 Feb 94 19:12:55 GMT Received: from cheviot.ncl.ac.uk by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA08889; Tue, 15 Feb 94 10:54:29 PST Received: from pow (pow.ncl.ac.uk) by cheviot.ncl.ac.uk id (5.65cVUW/NCL-CMA.1.35 for ) with SMTP; Tue, 15 Feb 1994 18:56:34 GMT From: Toby Riddell Message-Id: Subject: Re: waves of the future? (fwd) To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Tue, 15 Feb 1994 18:56:32 +0000 (GMT) Cc: T.J.Riddell@ncl.ac.uk (Toby Riddell) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 3804 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > What's the #1 problem these newbies have? One candidate near the top of > the list: figuring out how to subscribe and unsubscribe from lists. > Sure, some newbies don't remember (or understand) the instructions, > even if we ram the instructions down their throats over and over. > But I think a lot of problems would be solved if we could decide on > a standard interface to MLM (mailing list manager) software. On newbies: 1) We were all one once (gosh that sounds very philosophical, but I think you know what I mean). 2) There are exponential rises in loads of things at the moment. Some are dependent on several other things all going up exponentially - real explosions. 3) We can't stop it, so unless we lock ourselves in concrete bunkers with not outside connections we are going to have to live with it. 4) Is there a widely applicable method for dealing with all these exponential expansions? To digress for a moment: consider the C++ newsgroup. Apparently the number of C++ programmers is doubling every 9 months, as a consequence most C++ programmers have been at it less than a year. As you can imagine, or may have experienced, the noise on comp.lang.c++ deafening! Did you ever wonder what it's like to be riding an exponential wave? You're one one! > I wonder if the answer is to come up with a translator program that > translates a standard interface into commands that listserv, listproc > and majordomo understand. (The masses of mailing lists at yggdrasil > gave me this idea.) How about a central "subscription clearing house" > site that accepts subscription requests, munges them into the right > format for majordomo/listproc/listserv/whatever, and sends them on to > the proper place? Sounds like a _very_ good idea! > Just as you don't have to use Publishers Clearing House to order a > magazine, subscribers wouldn't have to use this central subscription > point; they could subscribe directly if they knew how. The beauty would > be that this central site could be the one that all the book publishers, > AOLs, GEnies, etc. mention to their readers and subscribers in their > "list of lists". The people who administer lists would only have to > register their list with the central site, optionally change their > documentation to mention the central site and then forget it. Again this sounds ok but there are all sorts of complications. The service is okay for registering but Mailbase users can send in before they are subscribed to get a list of lists. This would be awkward to gateway through one place, and put a large load on the machine doing it. I would offer an alternative, one which I have just thought of and therefore carries the standard warnings about being crazy. How about developing a unified front end to all the programs by adding a patch (or patches) to the source code. Now this wouldn't be easy but it would solve the problem. It would be useful to collect the syntax of the commands understood by all lists servers and from this point a suitable parser could be generated. Careful consideration should be given to the language used (perl springs to mind as non-perl sites can always use p2c (perl to C)). There would be no need to change the documentation and the various folks who are concerned about keeping their front end (in Mailbase's case the project leader) would not know the difference. It would require a redistribution of the source code, however, and packages which are no longer supported would be left out. But apart from that... What to you think? Toby -- ******************************************************************************** T.J.Riddell@newcastle.ac.uk ******************************************************************************** From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Tue Feb 15 21:37:32 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA09739; Tue, 15 Feb 94 21:37:32 GMT Received: from cs.utexas.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA09731; Tue, 15 Feb 94 13:37:22 PST Received: from im4u.cs.utexas.edu by cs.utexas.edu (5.64/1.22/mx-relay) with SMTP id AA00639; Tue, 15 Feb 94 15:39:33 -0600 Received: from chinaca by im4u.cs.utexas.edu (5.64/1.37/uucp) with UUCP id AA15175; Tue, 15 Feb 94 15:39:34 -0600 Received: from localhost by chinacat.unicom.com (smail3.1.28.1) id m0pWXNE-0002NPC; Tue, 15 Feb 94 15:32 CST Message-Id: From: chip@chinacat.unicom.com (Chip Rosenthal) Subject: Re: Future Tsunamis To: psrc@pegasus.att.com (Paul S R Chisholm) Date: Tue, 15 Feb 1994 15:32:04 -0600 (CST) Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <9402150613.AA05519@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM> from "Paul S R Chisholm" at Feb 15, 94 01:13:00 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1077 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Paul S R Chisholm writes: > (The gentleman who gave up after the AOL invasion did so having > already been gnawed on by other problems, if I remember correctly.) That is correct. As I pointed out, this was building up for some time, and the AOL incident was merely the straw that broke the camel's back. If not now, it probably would have happened within the year. Chuq's probably right; it's plain old moderator burnout. Part of my problem (and unique circumstance) was that the name and charter of "Pubnet" was a magnet for the uninformed. One other person wrote to me how the AOL wave was a *boom* for his list, a discussion group for a particular author. So, it cuts both ways. So, to prevent this message being just another piece of the ongoing blather (which, I admit, I had a large part in starting), I'll point out that the lesson learned is to pick your list name and charter carefully. -- Chip Rosenthal 512-447-0577 | I figure the odds be fifty-fifty Unicom Systems Development | I just might have some thing to say. | -FZ From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Wed Feb 16 06:17:10 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA11246; Wed, 16 Feb 94 06:17:10 GMT Received: from CS.UWindsor.Ca (csgate.lamf.uwindsor.ca) by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA10706; Tue, 15 Feb 94 18:17:21 PST Received: by CS.UWindsor.Ca (4.1/SMI-DDN) id AA14012; Tue, 15 Feb 94 21:17:45 EST Date: Tue, 15 Feb 1994 20:18:49 -0500 From: "F. Scott Ophof" Organization: REXX Language Association (RexxLA) Subject: Re: Common Syntax for Automated Mailing Lists? Message-Id: <940215.201849-0500@MReXX-0.23> To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 15 Feb 1994 14:38:09 -0800 X-Mua: MReXX-0.23a... Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Tue, 15 Feb 1994 14:38:09 -0800 Andrew PRUSEK said: >Some lists are on BITNET others are human-managed others by software >lifted from the net. The requirements for subscribing are very different >for each of these. A "Please add me to your list" does not work for an >auto-list and a "subscribe list-name" is a bit rude when sent to a human. Since many subscribers probably neither know (nor really care) whether the process is automated or managed by a human, imho the best solution would be to have each MLM enhanced so it accepts as many different formats as possible, including some of the more common human-type requests (where possible). In addition, human managers would do well to simply ignore the so-called "rudeness" aspect of auto-subscribe requests. Also, postings that say "PLEASE GET ME OFF THIS LIST!!!" should be forwarded to the list-owner by any and all READERS, but *NOT* done automatically by software. Regards. $$/ F. Scott Ophof [Member of RexxLA] From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Wed Feb 16 08:59:28 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA00166; Wed, 16 Feb 94 08:59:28 GMT Received: from net.bio.net by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA00159; Wed, 16 Feb 94 00:59:13 PST Received: from localhost by net.bio.net (8.6.5/IG-2.0) id BAA14379; Wed, 16 Feb 1994 01:00:32 -0800 Date: Wed, 16 Feb 1994 01:00:32 -0800 From: mcb@net.bio.net (Michael C. Berch) Message-Id: <199402160900.BAA14379@net.bio.net> To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Lester Maddox Ax Handle Of Prejudice Award OR Shame On You! Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Grayson Walker writes: > I am shocked and dismayed at the bigotry, prejudice and elitism > displayed by some of those complaining about Users from AOL and/or > Prodigy. > > Keeping with the original intent of Lester Maddox, who would hand out > autographed ax handles at the doorway to his infamous resturant, the > Pick-Rick, I am presenting this award to those who expressed the > highest levels of intolerance, prejudice, and elitism about the > People on AOL and/or Prodigy. > > You should be ashamed! [A rare flame, at least from me, follows. If you don't wanna read it, skip to the next message now. --MCB] OK. You were warned. I suggest, Mr. Walker, that you take your Lester Maddox Memorial Ax Handle and insert it where the sun don't shine. We run these lists because we care about the subject matter, because we want to increase the level of knowledge and discourse on the Net, because others are not taking up the burden, because we want to help out friends (that's how I inherited the Simpsons mailing list), and for a variety of other reasons. It's a labor of love -- I spent almost 3 hours this afternoon catching up on some list maintenance and reconfiguration (that's $600 at my short-term consulting rate... would you like the bill?) I do NOT run my lists for the hordes of clueless newbies to whom the Internet is yet another pissant PC BBS to post their semi-literate drivel on, nor for the hordes of clueless newbies who are fashion victims of the operators of vapid commercial online systems who decided there was money in letting their users get access to the Internet but never bothered to explain Internet culture and etiquette. Unlike what Chuq and some others imply, we are NOT going to have to "get used to" the cruft that flows out of these places. *We* can blow them off with impunity. If they continue to be a pain in the ass, or turn into a WORSE pain in the ass, I feel no qualms about cutting them off. People from offending services will get a polite note explaining the problem, and offering to provide them with information on real Internet providers (which will save them money on mail and news in any case). We do not depend on Prodigy or AOL for a market, are not beholden to them, and on most of the lists I am on -- quite a few -- we are perfectly happy to have our little elite group of 100 or 200 or whatever, and would rather have that than 2000 ignorant users. In other words, I freely admit that I am intolerant of and prejudiced against ... stupidity, discourtesy, inability to follow simple instructions, off-topic drivel, and lack of simple etiquette. And as for elitism, I would like to point out that the *true* elite are the people on this list -- and others like faq-maintainers, [Usenet] moderators, etc. -- who have contributed labour, time, and even money and equipment to the information resources that most Internet users enjoy for free. It is this elite that deserves the right to determine to whom it will contribute its services, and how, and under what circumstances, NOT someone whining about how people on commercial online services are victims of "bigotry". -- Michael C. Berch mcb@net.bio.net / mcb@postmodern.com From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Wed Feb 16 04:33:32 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA00814; Wed, 16 Feb 94 11:38:42 GMT Received: from slopoke.mlb.semi.harris.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA00807; Wed, 16 Feb 94 03:38:30 PST Received: from ace.mlb.semi.harris.com by slopoke.mlb.semi.harris.com (4.0/SMI-4.0) id AA03173; Wed, 16 Feb 94 06:40:43 EST Received: from rtfm.UUCP by ace.mlb.semi.harris.com (4.1/SMI-4.1-jmb+uucp) id AA19211; Wed, 16 Feb 94 06:40:42 EST Received: by rtfm.mlb.fl.us (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA18364; Wed, 16 Feb 94 06:38:49 EST Date: Wed, 16 Feb 1994 06:36:25 -0500 (EST) From: Grayson Walker Subject: Re: Lester Maddox Ax Handle Of Prejudice Award OR Shame On You! To: "Michael C. Berch" Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <199402160900.BAA14379@net.bio.net> Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Michael: Thank you for your most gracious acceptance speech. Best regards. From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Wed Feb 16 13:49:01 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA01233; Wed, 16 Feb 94 13:49:01 GMT Received: from bluejay.creighton.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA01226; Wed, 16 Feb 94 05:48:51 PST Message-Id: <9402161348.AA01226@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM> Received: by bluejay.creighton.edu (1.37.109.4/16.2) id AA18746; Wed, 16 Feb 94 07:50:45 -0600 From: Larry Sheldon Subject: Re: Lester Maddox Ax Handle Of Prejudice Award OR Shame On You! (fwd) To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Date: Wed, 16 Feb 94 7:50:43 CST Mailer: Elm [revision: 70.85] Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I believe I still qualify as a net-newbie, definitely qualify as a list-manager and as a sys admin newbie, and _I_ say; what Michael C. Berch said. -- -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- . L. F. (Larry) Sheldon, Jr. . - Unix Systems Administration - . Creighton University Computer Center - Old Gym . - 2500 California Plaza - . Omaha, Nebraska, U.S.A. 68178 . - 402 280 2254 lsheldon@creighton.edu - . . - So Many Windmills, So Little Time! - .-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-. From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Wed Feb 16 15:16:14 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA01592; Wed, 16 Feb 94 15:16:14 GMT Received: from noc4.dccs.upenn.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA01585; Wed, 16 Feb 94 07:16:05 PST Received: from GYNKO.CIRC.UPENN.EDU by noc4.dccs.upenn.edu id AA29219; Wed, 16 Feb 94 10:18:22 -0500 Received: by gynko.circ.upenn.edu id AA07178; Wed, 16 Feb 94 10:15:07 EST From: rsk@gynko.circ.upenn.edu (Rich Kulawiec) Posted-Date: Wed, 16 Feb 1994 10:15:06 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <9402161515.AA07178@gynko.circ.upenn.edu> Subject: Re: waves of the future? To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Date: Wed, 16 Feb 1994 10:15:06 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <19970.761325948@rubble.west.ora.com> from "Jerry Peek" at Feb 15, 94 07:25:48 am Organization: Ditka Policy Insitute X-Queued-Mail: 3863 pending mail messages (6634362 characters) X-Last-River: Spring Creek X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL21] Content-Type: text Content-Length: 1960 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Jerry Peek writes: >I wonder if the answer is to come up with a translator program that >translates a standard interface into commands that listserv, listproc >and majordomo understand. (The masses of mailing lists at yggdrasil >gave me this idea.) How about a central "subscription clearing house" >site that accepts subscription requests, munges them into the right >format for majordomo/listproc/listserv/whatever, and sends them on to >the proper place? I think Jerry's on the right track; and I think we already have two models for how such a mechanism might work. One of the functions of software systems such as gopher/mosaic/www is to provide a standard interface into diverse underlying services. These systems are becoming very successful because they provide a common, single entry point into a complex web; they also do not exclude direct access to a single service in that web by anyone knowledgeable enough and motivated enough to find it. Once upon a time, the entire Arpanet used a static copy of the hosts table; when workstations proliferated, the number of hosts rose dramatically, and DNS was put into service to alleviate the need for every host to know every other host's address all the time. Maybe a way to build a central "subscription clearing house" is to leave out the "central" part: make it distributed, with information propagated in much the same way DNS does. Provide a single entry point to the entire system ("mailing-lists@") that's as ubiquitous as "postmaster". Instead of using IP as the transport mechanism (as gopher et.al. do) move one step up the ladder and use mail as the transport, since it has to be configured and working correctly *anyway*. (And because this will allow the subscription clearing house to be used by those people without IP connectivity.) And at this point, I think I'll get some more coffee; I'm shooting from the hip and I've just run out of bullets. :-) ---Rsk From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Wed Feb 16 15:28:13 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA01621; Wed, 16 Feb 94 15:28:13 GMT Received: from cheviot.ncl.ac.uk by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA01613; Wed, 16 Feb 94 07:27:59 PST Received: from pow (pow.ncl.ac.uk) by cheviot.ncl.ac.uk id (5.65cVUW/NCL-CMA.1.35 for ) with SMTP; Wed, 16 Feb 1994 15:29:52 GMT From: Toby Riddell Message-Id: Subject: Re: waves of the future? To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Wed, 16 Feb 1994 15:29:50 +0000 (GMT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1161 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > Maybe a way to build a central "subscription clearing house" is to leave > out the "central" part: make it distributed, with information propagated > in much the same way DNS does. Provide a single entry point to > the entire system ("mailing-lists@") that's > as ubiquitous as "postmaster". Instead of using IP as the transport > mechanism (as gopher et.al. do) move one step up the ladder and > use mail as the transport, since it has to be configured and working > correctly *anyway*. (And because this will allow the subscription > clearing house to be used by those people without IP connectivity.) Now that sounds like a good idea than mine. The only problem is that it does not solve the problem of the complete newbie who would rather fire off mail messages in all directions than go to the trouble of finding out about gopher. Do the commercial providers have gopher available to their customers? Toby -- ******************************************************************************** T.J.Riddell@newcastle.ac.uk ******************************************************************************** From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Wed Feb 16 15:47:18 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA01730; Wed, 16 Feb 94 15:47:18 GMT Received: from fender.pica.army.mil by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA01723; Wed, 16 Feb 94 07:47:02 PST Date: Wed, 16 Feb 94 10:50:14 EST From: Info-LabVIEW List Maintainer To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: [Jody Schivley: change in address] Organization: Electric Armts Div, US Army ARDEC, Picatinny Arsenal, NJ Message-Id: <9402161050.aa18185@fender.Pica.Army.Mil> Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Weren't we just having a discussion of proper use of -request addresses? Tom Coradeschi, Info-LabVIEW List Maintainer ----- Forwarded message # 1: Date: Tue, 15 Feb 94 09:01:51 PST From: Jody Schivley To: List-Managers@greatcircle.com Subject: change in address Sender: List-Managers-Owner@greatcircle.com Precedence: bulk Please change the address: larry@ernie.ns.nps.navy.mil to: lary@nps.navy.mil on the mailing list List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM. Thanks, Jody ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Jody Schivley, Computer Engineer Phone: (408) 656-3662, Ingersoll-116 Naval Postgraduate School, Code 51 Fax: (408) 656-2611 Monterey, CA 93943 E-Mail: jschiv@nps.navy.mil ----- End of forwarded messages From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Wed Feb 16 17:12:53 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA02183; Wed, 16 Feb 94 17:12:53 GMT Received: from localhost by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA02175; Wed, 16 Feb 94 09:12:48 PST Message-Id: <9402161712.AA02175@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM> To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Lester Maddox Ax Handle Of Prejudice Award OR Shame On You! In-Reply-To: Your message of Wed, 16 Feb 1994 06:36:25 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 16 Feb 1994 09:12:46 -0800 From: Brent Chapman Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk All right, that's enough from everbody on this particular subtopic. Of all people, the folks on this list should recognize the signs of a brewing flame war, and this one shows most of them... So knock it off! -Brent -- Brent Chapman Great Circle Associates Brent@GreatCircle.COM 1057 West Dana Street +1 415 962 0841 Mountain View, CA 94041 From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Wed Feb 16 17:21:59 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA02292; Wed, 16 Feb 94 17:21:59 GMT Received: from ora.com (ruby.ora.com) by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA02284; Wed, 16 Feb 94 09:21:50 PST Received: from rubble.west.ora.com by ruby (8.6.5/) Received: by rubble.west.ora.com (4.1/SMI-4.1+JP-2.5) id AA21822; Wed, 16 Feb 94 09:23:15 PST From: Jerry Peek To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: waves of the future? X-Followup-To: My message of "Tue, 15 Feb 1994 07:25:48 -0800." <19970.761325948@rubble.west.ora.com> Date: Wed, 16 Feb 1994 09:23:14 -0800 Message-Id: <21821.761419394@rubble.west.ora.com> Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Yesterday I posted two ideas for helping newbies: 1. Work toward a standard MLM interface by writing a translator that'll convert commands to the various listserv/listproc/majordomo/etc MLMs. 2. Have a central "clearing house" for subscriptions. It would handle subscription requests from newbies, translate them into the right format for a particular list, and forward them to the right address. Overall, people seemed to like the ideas. I didn't see much negative feedback about #1. Some people pointed out how much work #2 would be. There's no question that this would take some work. The question is whether enough people are interested in the idea to explore it some more. We need to do *something* to smooth out the jumble of MLM interfaces. What we start on now may save list administrators some exponential headaches as more waves of newbies flood onto our lists. #1 seems pretty straightforward. It wouldn't have to support every function (set listname file-transfer foobar baz) of every MLM, just the basics. It should be *very* good about handling stuff it doesn't recognize, sending back detailed help info and/or mailing to a human who can help the subscriber. It would have a standard address that was the same on *every* host using it. If the service worked completely over email and didn't require an interactive connection, it'd be available to all the Compuserve/GEnie/etc users. (Of course, it could also have an interactive interface...) #2 could be a central site that either maintains the "list of lists" or is in touch with the LOL maintainer. That would make one central access point for mailing lists. We'd need a well-connected central site to donate a machine or some machine time. A group of admins (volunteers) could take turns handling problem mail, questions, etc. by rlogin... with a tracking system that makes sure someone handles each problem. One big "if" is whether enough admins would be willing to donate an hour or two a week to make the project work. I'm *not* trying to push this in a certain direction; I'd just hate to see the idea die before we've explored it completely. (Some people seemed pretty excited about it.) If you're interested in a wide-open discussion of this, what should we do next? Set up a list (we could host it on online.ora.com) to keep discussing? --Jerry, jerry@ora.com From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Wed Feb 16 09:22:34 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA02043; Wed, 16 Feb 94 16:58:07 GMT Received: from d.ecc.engr.uky.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA02030; Wed, 16 Feb 94 08:57:50 PST Received: from s.ecc.engr.uky.edu by d.ecc.engr.uky.edu (5.59/25-eef) id AA19090; Wed, 16 Feb 94 11:58:41 EST Received: by s.ecc.engr.uky.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA11908; Wed, 16 Feb 94 11:57:49 EST Date: Wed, 16 Feb 94 11:57:49 EST From: morgan@engr.uky.edu (Wes Morgan) Message-Id: <9402161657.AA11908@s.ecc.engr.uky.edu> To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: AOL update - nice guys! Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk During the AOL deluge on my list, one AOL user mentioned that the "AOL blurb" described my list as "lots of Unix tips and tricks." Since that is NOTHING like the description in the PAML document, I dropped a quick line to an AOL contact and requested a copy of the description they posted of my list. The response was prompt, polite, and to the point; the fellow sent me a copy of the online description and pledged that any changes I made would be *immediately* placed in their online database. I just fired off the changes, along with a note of appreciation. If you're still having problems with AOL subscribers, you may wish to change their online description of your list. I was quite pleased with the timeliness and tenor of their response to my request. --Wes From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Wed Feb 16 17:23:57 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA02339; Wed, 16 Feb 94 17:23:57 GMT Received: from intercon.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA01937; Wed, 16 Feb 94 08:41:39 PST Received: from localhost by intercon.com (Sendmail 8.6.5/940209.RS) id LAA09717; Wed, 16 Feb 1994 11:44:01 -0500 Date: Wed, 16 Feb 1994 11:44:01 -0500 From: jailbait@intercon.com (Jailbait) Message-Id: <199402161644.LAA09717@intercon.com> To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: [Jody Schivley: change in address] Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Yup. And motivated by the discussion here, I sent a (fairly polite, I think) flame to a list I'm on that's been deluged with unsubscribe requests (almost all from .mil, .com, and .edu - none from the commercial service providers) and yet again today someone (from a .edu host) sent an unsubscribe request to the list...even after the list owner had replied to my note agreeing and saying that he handles misdirected admin requests LAST... *sigh* I'm appending my original to this note. Comments on it are welcome, as I always try to be more helpful if possible... (Actually, the other thing that really impresses me...I (and 2 others) run a smallish social list. Everyone who's ever been added to it has gotten a personally written note saying Hi, Welcome, Say hi to the nice people. Yet, when they tell their friends about the list, they don't mention this, leaving us the recipients of far too many automated-maintainer-syntax requests. *Sigh!*) JB (And yes, I know that the Subject: line is a bit inflamitory...) ------- >From: jailbait@intercon.com (Jailbait) >Subject: FREE CLUES TO ALL! FREE CLUES! > >I do not run this list. I run my own list. 99% of the people on this list >do not run it. >1 person runs it. >The de-facto standard on the Internet for mailing list administration >requests - such as "unsubscribe scherb@mill.com", or subscription >requests or information requests about a list or similar - is to send >mail to listname-request. In the case of this list, that would be >adolph-a-carrot-request@andrew.cmu.edu >which will get to Yary, the person who /DOES/ run this list. > >This standard may not always work, say if a list is being run by a listserv, >or Majordomo, or another automatic maintainence program, but then again, you >had to figure out how to subscribe to the list in the first place, and it >shouldn't be that difficult to /REMEMBER/ how it was done. > >The one that that will be certain, no matter where you go on the net, is that >the address that you mail to to send to all readers of a list will NEVER be >the address that you mail to to deal with administrivia. > >Please remember this as you wander on the net. It will make things much more >pleasant for all involved. > >JB, who would much rather hear about the new work from The Residents (or >Renaldo And The Loaf, or various other 'classic' Ralph artists) than be >reading piles of unsubscribe requests. > >(And noone asked me to send this message. I hope you don't mind, Yary.) > From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Wed Feb 16 17:52:02 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA02512; Wed, 16 Feb 94 17:52:02 GMT Received: from hubbub.cisco.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA02505; Wed, 16 Feb 94 09:51:55 PST Received: from khoover-ss2.cisco.com by hubbub.cisco.com with SMTP id AA20101 (8.6.4/IDA-1.5 for ); Wed, 16 Feb 1994 09:54:11 -0800 Message-Id: <199402161754.AA20101@hubbub.cisco.com> To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Barbarian Hordes Sack Internet, MBONE at 11 Reply-To: shibumi@cisco.com X-Disclaimer: Unless otherwise noted below, this is not a policy statement X-Mailer: exmh version 1.2delta 1/6/94 Date: Wed, 16 Feb 1994 09:54:10 -0800 From: "Kenton A. Hoover" Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk The AOL gateway stuff is apparently being done by Pandora Systems and Cliff Figalo (of EFF and Well fame). When BIOSCI (bionet.) requested to be left out of their gopher gateway, the request was honored with few questions asked. However, since this gateway is going to provide general gopher, wais, etc. access for AOL users, to protect your sites from being inundated by tons of searches by the unclean, you'll also need to put TCP wrappers in front of your waisd, gopherd and htmld servers to block searches from the gateway site(s). I do not endorse doing this, but depending on how wide the AOL feed is, one might experience denial-of-service non-attacks while The Barbarians* (TM) look for porno GIFs on inappropriate servers. Some of us here run mailing lists on the end of slow links (like the list-managers list, for example) and need to worry about capacity issues. * The Barbarians and Barbarian Hordes are registered trademarks of The Patriarchy and may be used only with permission. From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Wed Feb 16 17:58:55 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA02550; Wed, 16 Feb 94 17:58:55 GMT Received: from ora.com (ruby.ora.com) by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA02533; Wed, 16 Feb 94 09:56:16 PST Received: from rubble.west.ora.com by ruby (8.6.5/) Received: by rubble.west.ora.com (4.1/SMI-4.1+JP-2.5) id AA22219; Wed, 16 Feb 94 09:57:29 PST From: Jerry Peek Reply-To: jerry@ora.com X-Mailer: MH 6.8 To: chenowet@ccncrtd.daytonoh.NCR.COM Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: The future list manager In-Reply-To: Message from chenowet@ccncrtd.daytonoh.NCR.COM of "Tue, 15 Feb 1994 10:36:10 -0400." <9401157613.AA761337370@ccncrtd.DaytonOh.NCR.com> Date: Wed, 16 Feb 1994 09:57:27 -0800 Message-Id: <22218.761421447@rubble.west.ora.com> Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Steve Chenoweth wrote: > What happens ... when all these neophyte list users you're > dealing with now become list managers? We (O'Reilly & Associates) are probably going to do a book about managing mailing lists and other email-based services. The idea would be the same as our other books: to help people learn all the undocumented "seat-of-the-pants" stuff about administering mailing lists. I'd be glad to get into a discussion with anybody who has ideas for the book. In fact, I'd *love* suggestions. Send email, tell me when and where I can telephone you, etc. Like always, we want to pack this book with useful practical advice. Thanks... -- Jerry Peek, O'Reilly & Associates, jerry@ora.com, +1 707-829-0515 From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Wed Feb 16 18:04:44 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA02607; Wed, 16 Feb 94 18:04:44 GMT Received: from walt.disney.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA02600; Wed, 16 Feb 94 10:04:29 PST Received: from dalsdb by walt.disney.com with SMTP id AA17723 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.3 for List-Managers@greatcircle.com); Wed, 16 Feb 1994 10:06:46 -0800 Received: from joanna.wdp_animation by dalsdb with smtp (Smail3.1.28.1 #53) id m0pWqd9-000FaKC; Wed, 16 Feb 94 10:05 PST Message-Id: Date: Wed, 16 Feb 94 10:05 PST To: List-Managers@greatcircle.com Subject: The elite respond From: sullivan@fa.disney.com Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > I do NOT run my lists for the hordes of clueless newbies to whom the > ... > off. People from offending services will get a polite note explaining > the problem, and offering to provide them with information on real > Internet providers (which will save them money on mail and news in > any case). We do not depend on Prodigy or AOL for a market, are not > ... > And as for elitism, I would like to point out that the *true* elite are > the people on this list -- and others like faq-maintainers, [Usenet] > ... > users enjoy for free. It is this elite that deserves the right to > determine to whom it will contribute its services, and how, and under > what circumstances, NOT someone whining about how people on commercial > online services are victims of "bigotry". As a list maintainer and part of the so-called elite, I would just like to say that, for me, the above is the biggest load of crap I've seen on this list. I DO run my lists for clueless newbies, among others. Offending services? How can a service be offensive? How many companies and universities don't insist that their new users read Usenet FAQs? Elite? Who's elite? My big weights list got started because I suggested that it might be a good idea. By the end of the day I had a bunch of subscription requests for a list that didn't exist. Not very elite. I do agree that it is a labor of love, though, but I'd hardly consider myself elite and I certainly don't...I can't even go on. That last part is just so ridiculous I can't even respond to it. I'll let you in on my situation. The weights list is at over 1200 subscribers with new subscribers daily. It is digest-only and I pretty much run it like a magazine. Subscription requets are done by hand (which really isn't much trouble so I don't know what the big deal is). Contributions go into a mailbox and those that aren't appropriate don't get included in the digest but I do send a note to the author explaining why. When an address bounces I send mail to the postmaster of the bouncing site asking if the address is valid (a neat little shell script I wrote)--kind of like an "Address Correction Requested" request for a magazine. Heck, the biggest problem I have is with those contributions that are more than 80 characters across. Being on _this_ list, though, I see that there are those who are maintaining a whole bunch of lists (is somebody really maintaining 200 lists by themselves?). If something's going to change in the future, it will probably that the number of lists a person maintains will go down to just a handful. Running just the two that I do keeps me a little busy but not enough so that it stops being enjoyable, and I do feel like I'm an active list maintainer, not just a mail reflector site. Anyway, I've rambled long enough. Michael Sullivan sullivan@fa.disney.com Walt Disney Feature Animation +1 818 544 2683 (voice) Glendale, CA +1 818 544 4579 (fax) From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Wed Feb 16 18:48:37 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA02943; Wed, 16 Feb 94 18:48:37 GMT Received: from de5.ctd.ornl.gov by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA02936; Wed, 16 Feb 94 10:48:23 PST Received: from localhost (de5@localhost) by de5.ctd.ornl.gov (8.6.5/8.6.5) id NAA04064; Wed, 16 Feb 1994 13:50:31 -0500 Date: Wed, 16 Feb 1994 13:50:31 -0500 From: Dave Sill Message-Id: <199402161850.NAA04064@de5.ctd.ornl.gov> To: sullivan@fa.disney.com Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: why automate? In-Reply-To: References: Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >I'll let you in on my situation. The weights list is at over 1200 >subscribers with new subscribers daily. It is digest-only and I pretty >much run it like a magazine. Subscription requets are done by hand >(which really isn't much trouble so I don't know what the big deal >is). How much time do you spend handling sub/unsub/help requests? Would like it to be "none"? I used to think like you did--what's 5-15 minutes/day? Finally I just got too busy to spare even that. I installed Majordomo, and it's been a lifesaver. On my off hours I run a small list entirely manually because I want the list badly enough and automation isn't an option on the system I use, but it's extremely frustrating. -- Dave Sill (de5@ornl.gov) I dream of a televisionland where it will be Martin Marietta Energy Systems as hard for a network to expose us to violence Workstation Support as it is for me to tell someone they have spinach on their teeth. --Paula Poundstone URL http://gatekeeper.dec.com/archive/pub/DEC/DECinfo/html/dsill.html From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Wed Feb 16 14:24:21 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA00314; Wed, 16 Feb 94 21:59:07 GMT Received: from z.nsf.gov by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA02829; Wed, 16 Feb 94 10:34:36 PST Received: from localhost (mmorse@localhost) by z.nsf.gov (8.6.4/8.6.4) id NAA19832 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 16 Feb 1994 13:42:28 -0500 Message-Id: <199402161842.NAA19832@z.nsf.gov> From: mmorse@nsf.gov (Michael H. Morse) Date: Wed, 16 Feb 1994 13:42:28 EST In-Reply-To: jailbait@intercon.com (Jailbait) "Re: [Jody Schivley: change in address]" (Feb 16, 11:44am) X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.1.1 5/02/90) To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: [Jody Schivley: change in address] Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > Yup. And motivated by the discussion here, I sent a (fairly polite, I think) > flame to a list I'm on that's been deluged with unsubscribe requests > (almost all from .mil, .com, and .edu - none from the commercial service > providers) and yet again today someone (from a .edu host) sent an unsubscribe > request to the list...even after the list owner had replied to my note > agreeing and saying that he handles misdirected admin requests LAST... > *sigh* There seems to be two schools of thought for the "problem" of people sending subscribe/unsubscribe requests to the mailing list itself: School of thought #1: People who send such messages to the wrong address are clueless, and must be educated. If you subscribe to this point of view, you probably spend a lot of time educating users and periodically the stress gets to you and you flame off on this list. School of thought #2: People in general cannot be expected to gain proficiency in a task that they perform very infrequently. Therefore it behooves the list manager to install software that filters out subscribe/unsubscribe messages from the real mailing list. I happen to be a strong believer in the 2nd school of thought, but I've been on this list long enough to know that those of you that believe in the first school are sincere, hard-working, and dedicated. My only concern is that your periodic flames might be mis-interpretted by new list managers who won't realize that there are simple technological solutions to this problem, and that many list-managers don't even think about the problem any more. --Mike -- Michael Morse Internet: mmorse@nsf.gov National Science Foundation BITNET: mmorse@NSF Div. of Information Systems, Room 455.39 4201 Wilson Boulevard Telephone: 703-306-1159 x4660 Arlington, VA 22230 FAX: 703-306-0234 From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Wed Feb 16 14:30:18 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA00284; Wed, 16 Feb 94 21:57:17 GMT Received: from wilma.cs.utk.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA00277; Wed, 16 Feb 94 13:57:02 PST Received: from LOCALHOST by wilma.cs.utk.edu with SMTP (8.6.4/2.8c-UTK) id OAA07379; Wed, 16 Feb 1994 14:43:19 -0500 Message-Id: <199402161943.OAA07379@wilma.cs.utk.edu> From: Keith Moore To: Jerry Peek Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com, moore@cs.utk.edu Subject: Re: waves of the future? In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 16 Feb 1994 09:23:14 PST." <21821.761419394@rubble.west.ora.com> Date: Wed, 16 Feb 1994 14:43:18 -0500 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > Yesterday I posted two ideas for helping newbies: > 1. Work toward a standard MLM interface by writing a translator that'll > convert commands to the various listserv/listproc/majordomo/etc MLMs. > 2. Have a central "clearing house" for subscriptions. It would handle > subscription requests from newbies, translate them into the right > format for a particular list, and forward them to the right address. > > Overall, people seemed to like the ideas. I didn't see much negative > feedback about #1. Some people pointed out how much work #2 would be. > There's no question that this would take some work. The question is > whether enough people are interested in the idea to explore it some > more. We need to do *something* to smooth out the jumble of MLM > interfaces. What we start on now may save list administrators some > exponential headaches as more waves of newbies flood onto our lists. > > #1 seems pretty straightforward. It wouldn't have to support every > function (set listname file-transfer foobar baz) of every MLM, just > the basics. It should be *very* good about handling stuff it doesn't > recognize, sending back detailed help info and/or mailing to a human > who can help the subscriber. It would have a standard address that > was the same on *every* host using it. If the service worked > completely over email and didn't require an interactive connection, > it'd be available to all the Compuserve/GEnie/etc users. (Of course, > it could also have an interactive interface...) Actually, a step toward #1 would be to have the relevant portion of the list-of-lists maintained in a machine-readable format. What I have in mind is something like printf strings to tell a smart program how to do standard things for a specific list. For example, an entry for a human-maintained list might look like: subscribe: rcpt="listname-request@whatever.com"; body="please add %{address} to the %{listname} list"; subj="subscription request for %{listname}" unsubscribe: rcpt="listname-request@whatever.com"; body="please remove %{address} from the %{listname} list"; subj="subscription request for %{listname}" change: rcpt="listname-request@whatever.com"; body="please change %{old-address} to %{new-address}"; subj="subscription request for %{listname}" moderator: rcpt="listname-request@whatever.com" maintainer: rcpt="listname-request@whatever.com" while one for a listserv list might be like: subscribe: rcpt="listserv@foo.bitnet"; body="subscribe %{listname} %{firstname} %{lastname}"; from="%{address}" unsubscribe: rcpt="listserv@foo.bitnet"; body="subscribe %{listname} %{firstname} %{lastname}"; from="%{address}" moderator: (I don't know. How *do* you send a message to a moderator of a listserv list?) maintainer: (hmmm, maybe postmaster@foo.bitnet?) You could use this kind of scheme to encode the how-to information for pretty much all of the lists out there. These templates could be advertised and distributed over the net, maybe even in a moderated usenet newsgroup (similar to comp.mail.maps). That way the "central" subscription service doesn't have to be centralized. (so there's no central control) With any luck, maintenance of this information could be done by the list maintainers themselves, just by posting the correct information periodically from a cron job. Keith From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Wed Feb 16 22:45:21 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA00664; Wed, 16 Feb 94 22:45:21 GMT Received: from slopoke.mlb.semi.harris.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA00655; Wed, 16 Feb 94 14:45:02 PST Received: from ace.mlb.semi.harris.com by slopoke.mlb.semi.harris.com (4.0/SMI-4.0) id AA17223; Wed, 16 Feb 94 15:05:44 EST Received: from rtfm.UUCP by ace.mlb.semi.harris.com (4.1/SMI-4.1-jmb+uucp) id AA21132; Wed, 16 Feb 94 15:05:38 EST Received: by rtfm.mlb.fl.us (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA20276; Wed, 16 Feb 94 15:03:43 EST Date: Wed, 16 Feb 1994 15:02:23 -0500 (EST) From: Grayson Walker Subject: Re: The elite respond To: sullivan@fa.disney.com Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Michael: Thank you for your response. If everybody had your perspective, we would not have a problem. It was a genuine pleasure reading your note. Thanks. From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Wed Feb 16 22:59:55 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA00755; Wed, 16 Feb 94 22:59:55 GMT Received: from wilma.cs.utk.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA00643; Wed, 16 Feb 94 14:44:11 PST Received: from LOCALHOST by wilma.cs.utk.edu with SMTP (8.6.4/2.8c-UTK) id RAA10288; Wed, 16 Feb 1994 17:37:18 -0500 Message-Id: <199402162237.RAA10288@wilma.cs.utk.edu> From: Keith Moore To: mmorse@nsf.gov (Michael H. Morse) Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com, moore@cs.utk.edu Subject: Re: [Jody Schivley: change in address] In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 16 Feb 1994 13:42:28 EST." <199402161842.NAA19832@z.nsf.gov> Date: Wed, 16 Feb 1994 17:37:18 -0500 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > There seems to be two schools of thought for the "problem" of people > sending subscribe/unsubscribe requests to the mailing list itself: > > School of thought #1: > People who send such messages to the wrong address are > clueless, and must be educated. [...] > School of thought #2: > People in general cannot be expected to gain proficiency > in a task that they perform very infrequently. Therefore > it behooves the list manager to install software that > filters out subscribe/unsubscribe messages from the real > mailing list. > > I happen to be a strong believer in the 2nd school of thought, but > I've been on this list long enough to know that those of you that > believe in the first school are sincere, hard-working, and dedicated. > My only concern is that your periodic flames might be mis-interpretted > by new list managers who won't realize that there are simple > technological solutions to this problem, and that many list-managers > don't even think about the problem any more. I'm not sure that the simple solutions are beneficial in the long term. The problem is that the simple solutions encourage users to *expect* that just sending to the list address will work, and then everyone has to deal with it. That's why I prefer a hybrid approach...try to detect these conditions, but rather than just fixing the problem on the user's behalf, take the opportunity to educate the user. That way, it eventually becomes part of the culture. But educating users "by hand", one-at-a-time, certainly doesn't scale to an Internet with tens of millions of users. Keith From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Wed Feb 16 23:01:39 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA00822; Wed, 16 Feb 94 23:01:39 GMT Received: from lokkur.dexter.mi.us (dexter-gw.dexter.msen.com) by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA00812; Wed, 16 Feb 94 15:01:13 PST Received: by lokkur.dexter.mi.us (5.65c/IDA-1.2.8) id AA11497; Wed, 16 Feb 1994 18:00:57 -0500 From: Steve Simmons Message-Id: <199402162300.AA11497@lokkur.dexter.mi.us> Subject: Re: [Jody Schivley: change in address] To: mmorse@nsf.gov (Michael H. Morse) Date: Wed, 16 Feb 1994 18:00:57 -0500 (EST) Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com In-Reply-To: <199402161842.NAA19832@z.nsf.gov> from "Michael H. Morse" at Feb 16, 94 01:42:28 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1065 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Michael Morse wrote: >I happen to be a strong believer in the 2nd school of thought, [[that >people in general cannot be expected to gain proficiency in a task that >they perform very infrequently]] but I've been on this list long enough >to know that those of you that believe in the first school are sincere, >hard-working, and dedicated. Seconded. Recently I had the joy of attempting to remove a former employee from a wide variety of lists he'd subscribed to. With 6 lists, I have (thus far) found at least four distinct methods. In each case it was trial and error to find out which address to send requests to (the list, list-request, majordomo, listserv), which set of commands (delete, unsub, kill), and in at least one case it simply couldn't be done without recreating the users account and sending the request as him from his now-renamed workstation (thank Ghod for 'telnet smtp' :-)). And I *am* a list manager. I really feel sorry for the new users who, in a flurry of anticipation, subscribe to two dozen lists and then flee in horror. From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Wed Feb 16 23:33:32 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA01102; Wed, 16 Feb 94 23:33:32 GMT Received: from mail.netcom.com (netcom4.netcom.com) by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA01095; Wed, 16 Feb 94 15:33:24 PST Received: from localhost by mail.netcom.com (8.6.4/SMI-4.1/Netcom) id PAA25761; Wed, 16 Feb 1994 15:36:28 -0800 Date: Wed, 16 Feb 1994 15:36:28 -0800 Message-Id: <199402162336.PAA25761@mail.netcom.com> To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM From: tag-net-request@netcom.com X-Loop: tag-net-request@netcom.com Subject: Illegal command Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hi List-Managers, You specified an illegal command: `List'. These are available commands at tag-net-request@netcom.com ========================================================================= SUBSCRIBE tag-net - Subscribe to tag-net UNSUBSCRIBE tag-net - Unsubscribe from tag-net INDEX - List available files. SEND file [n] - Request `file'; [n] is an optional split size SERVERINFO - Some information about this autoreplyer HELP - Your lookin' at it! `list' can be one of: tag-net - Discussion of Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia caves and caving topics. `file' can be one of: cave.gif - beautiful cave picture (binary) pompe.txt - review of The Pompe ascender from Petzl (text) tag-net - Discussion of Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia caves and caving topics. Addresses ========================================================================= tag-net-request@netcom.com (tag-net request service) Autoreplyer service. Send e-mail containing one command per line in the message body, as described above. tag-net@netcom.com (tag-net mailing list) The tag-net mailing list, for tag-net related discussions. owner-tag-net@netcom.com (tag-net list owner) Send any comments, complaints, questions, suggestions you have about the tag-net list and file service here. dilcher@netcom.com (jeff dilcher) Me. Same as above. -jeff dilcher@netcom.com From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Thu Feb 17 00:24:01 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA01303; Thu, 17 Feb 94 00:24:01 GMT Received: from midway.uchicago.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA01296; Wed, 16 Feb 94 16:23:46 PST Received: from kimbark.uchicago.edu by midway.uchicago.edu for List-Managers@greatcircle.com Wed, 16 Feb 94 18:26:06 CST Received: from localhost.uchicago.edu by kimbark.uchicago.edu (4.1/UCCO-1.0A) id AA01979; Wed, 16 Feb 94 18:26:00 CST Message-Id: <9402170026.AA01979@kimbark.uchicago.edu> To: List-Managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Former employees (re Jody Schivley: change in address) In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 16 Feb 94 15:01:55 PST." <9402162301.AA00831@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM> Date: Wed, 16 Feb 94 18:25:59 -0600 From: ckoenig@midway.uchicago.edu Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Steve Simmons brings up another important topic: the user at YOUR SITE who has subscribed to many lists AT OTHER SITES and then leaves, either permanently (departed employee, graduated student) or temporarily (student home over the summer) without un-subscribing to all the lists..... what do YOU DO as the sysadmin who has to delete the user and consider unsubscribing them from all their lists? One common sysadmin approach is to simply make the former address disappear, then all mail to it starts bouncing, and it becomes someone else's problem, as long as the local sysadmin doesn't mind the extra sendmail/postmaster load from the subsequent bounce wars. (bitch bitch, rant rant, quack quack, I'm in the situation, as postmaster@uchicago.edu, where this "not my problem" of the local sysadmin suddenly becomes MY PROBLEM.... when root@foo.uchicago.edu nukes departed luser@foo, then mail to departed luser@foo.uchicago.edu bounces as it's forwarded through our PH directory, i.e. luser-alias@uchicago.edu, intended for foo but bouncing back to postmaster/ME since root@foo never bothered to tell us to delete luser from the campus-wide PH directory, or because someone offsite write to me and says "One of YOUR HOSTS is broken" concerning the host foo which I have no idea who runs it, etc. :-) Even more fun when the local luser@foo address is actually subscribed to an intermediate re-distribution list, so no one can figure out WHERE a particular bad address has been subscribed, i.e. "unsubscribe" messages to the main list-request come back with "they're not subscribed in the first place!" although the bounces may even get back and contaminate the whole original list :-) So, while we're making up lists of netiquette for subscribers, of universal generic translators for subscribing/unsubscribing to all Internet mailing lists, how about making it easier for the local sysadmins (the root@foo's) to "do the right thing" (whatever that is?) concerning their lusers who are subscribing/unsubscribing/disappearing while still subscribed to various and sundry random lists? For example, an Exemplary Net Citizen-run list could periodically send out an "Ack" message, say at the beginning of the summer vacation (Northern hemisphere, or Southern? :-) requiring a reply (to the list-request address) to re-new one's subscription, and could drop all addresses that don't respond to the Ack? Another approach is that taken by Carnegie Mellon's Andrew Message System (I was the postmaster@andrew for a while). There, the philosophy is to subscribe the system itself, to every possible mailing list out there on the Internet, and make them all available as shared public bboards. That way, no one has to enter an individual subscription to any mailing lists, and no one has to unsubscribe, either, because everyone's reading the shared copies. (many of you List-Managers have "arpalists+foo@andrew.cmu.edu" subscribed to your list) Of course, this way you lose the sense mentioned here previously of a mailing list consisting of a small, well-defined group of people who have each taken explicit action to join, and who receive copies in their individual mailboxes... this is especially unsuitable for sensitive or personal subjects, like the Men's (mail-men) list, the Feminist list (femail), or gay/lesbian etc. lists..... Chris Koenigsberg ckk@uchicago.edu, ckoenig@midway.uchicago.edu U. of Chicago Academic Information Technologies Voice 1-312-702-8189, FAX 1-312-702-3219 From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Thu Feb 17 02:53:19 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA01797; Thu, 17 Feb 94 02:53:19 GMT Received: from summit.novell.com (usl.usl.com) by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA01790; Wed, 16 Feb 94 18:53:11 PST Date: Wed, 16 Feb 94 21:54 EST Message-Id: <9402162154.AA03909@summit.novell.com> From: mingus@summit.novell.com (Marcel-Franck Simon) To: ckoenig@midway.uchicago.edu, List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Received: from summit by summit.novell.com; Wed, 16 Feb 94 21:54 EST Subject: Re: Former employees (re Jody Schivley: change in address) Content-Length: 1783 Content-Type: text/plain Original-Content-Type: Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > From: ckoenig@midway.uchicago.edu > > Of course, this way you lose the sense mentioned here previously of a > mailing list consisting of a small, well-defined group of people who > have each taken explicit action to join, and who receive copies in > their individual mailboxes... this is especially unsuitable for > sensitive or personal subjects, like the Men's (mail-men) list, the > Feminist list (femail), or gay/lesbian etc. lists..... For such lists, a digested format may be best, at the cost of extra moderator/list owner work. That person gets to put a digest together, filtering out "inappropriate" message and all that. A standard part of the digest is a short section that tells users how to un/subscribe, how to submit messages to the whole list etc. This is what I do on mail-men; perhaps coincidentally, there has not been too much of a problem with admin messages sent to the list address etc. If you'll forgive my using this to bring back the aol.com question... Mail-men too was deluged with the dreaded aol.com newbies, all of whom mailed the wrong address and did not provide appropriate information (I ask for name as well as email address.) I just send them a canned message telling them what to do. Some have not come back. The ones who did and have contributed, have generally made positive contributions. So the education job I had to do has been "good for the list", again at the cost of more work for me. BUT: I am annoyed with postmaster@aol.com, to whom I've written twice asking that s/he update whatever information is on their system about mail-men, to make it correct and get me out of this "do this" cycle. No response; no acknowledgement that the message has been received; nothing; black hole city. Unprofessional to say the least. Marcel From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Thu Feb 17 12:41:03 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA03860; Thu, 17 Feb 94 12:41:03 GMT Received: from z.nsf.gov by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA03853; Thu, 17 Feb 94 04:40:55 PST Received: from localhost (mmorse@localhost) by z.nsf.gov (8.6.4/8.6.4) id HAA20170; Thu, 17 Feb 1994 07:48:52 -0500 Message-Id: <199402171248.HAA20170@z.nsf.gov> From: mmorse@nsf.gov (Michael H. Morse) Date: Thu, 17 Feb 1994 07:48:52 EST In-Reply-To: Keith Moore "Re: waves of the future?" (Feb 16, 2:43pm) X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.1.1 5/02/90) To: Keith Moore , Jerry Peek Subject: Re: waves of the future? Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > Actually, a step toward #1 would be to have the relevant portion of the > list-of-lists maintained in a machine-readable format. The folks that invented Archie are working on a project for the IAFA (Internet Anonymous FTP Archives) working group of the IETF. Despite the name, the project would provide a standard Internet-wide way for sites to advertise mailing-lists. Unfortunately, I haven't heard much from them lately, so I don't know where the project stands. --Mike -- Michael Morse Internet: mmorse@nsf.gov National Science Foundation BITNET: mmorse@NSF Div. of Information Systems, Room 455.39 4201 Wilson Boulevard Telephone: 703-306-1159 x4660 Arlington, VA 22230 FAX: 703-306-0234 From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Thu Feb 17 12:57:57 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA03904; Thu, 17 Feb 94 12:57:57 GMT Received: from z.nsf.gov by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA03897; Thu, 17 Feb 94 04:57:48 PST Received: from localhost (mmorse@localhost) by z.nsf.gov (8.6.4/8.6.4) id IAA20188; Thu, 17 Feb 1994 08:05:44 -0500 Message-Id: <199402171305.IAA20188@z.nsf.gov> From: mmorse@nsf.gov (Michael H. Morse) Date: Thu, 17 Feb 1994 08:05:44 EST In-Reply-To: ckoenig@midway.uchicago.edu "Former employees (re Jody Schivley: change in address)" (Feb 16, 6:25pm) X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.1.1 5/02/90) To: ckoenig@midway.uchicago.edu, List-Managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Former employees (re Jody Schivley: change in address) Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > For example, an Exemplary Net Citizen-run list could periodically send > out an "Ack" message, say at the beginning of the summer vacation > (Northern hemisphere, or Southern? :-) requiring a reply (to the > list-request address) to re-new one's subscription, and could drop all > addresses that don't respond to the Ack? I think renewal notices are a great feature! But, as you imply, they won't help the problem where there are subsequent redistributions, since the redistribution point itself may have erroneous addresses. A long time ago, about when sendmail got smart enough to send one message to a host even if there were multiple recipients, many list managers decided that re-distribution points were a Bad Thing, and try to discourage them. --Mike -- Michael Morse Internet: mmorse@nsf.gov National Science Foundation BITNET: mmorse@NSF Div. of Information Systems, Room 455.39 4201 Wilson Boulevard Telephone: 703-306-1159 x4660 Arlington, VA 22230 FAX: 703-306-0234 From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Thu Feb 17 18:39:19 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA05269; Thu, 17 Feb 94 18:39:19 GMT Received: from wilma.cs.utk.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA05262; Thu, 17 Feb 94 10:39:11 PST Received: from LOCALHOST by wilma.cs.utk.edu with SMTP (8.6.4/2.8c-UTK) id NAA13630; Thu, 17 Feb 1994 13:31:41 -0500 Message-Id: <199402171831.NAA13630@wilma.cs.utk.edu> From: Keith Moore To: ckoenig@midway.uchicago.edu Cc: List-Managers@greatcircle.com, moore@cs.utk.edu Subject: Re: Former employees (re Jody Schivley: change in address) In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 16 Feb 1994 18:25:59 CST." <9402170026.AA01979@kimbark.uchicago.edu> Date: Thu, 17 Feb 1994 13:31:40 -0500 Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > Steve Simmons brings up another important topic: the user at YOUR SITE > who has subscribed to many lists AT OTHER SITES and then leaves, > either permanently (departed employee, graduated student) or > temporarily (student home over the summer) without un-subscribing to > all the lists..... what do YOU DO as the sysadmin who has to delete > the user and consider unsubscribing them from all their lists? several things would help: 1) standardized nondelivery reports that say "this user is no longer here" (and maybe even "has moved to this address"). List expanders could then update themselves automagically. 2) require a renewal notice every so often is a good idea, as long as it's very easy to do so. (e.g. use a special reply address on such messages and make it so that a simple reply to the message will constitute a request for renewal.) 3) forbid redistribution of a list unless the downstream list expander fixes the envelope return address to point to *him* rather than the main list's envelope return address. 4) occasionally, have the list expander send out a message with one recipient per envelope, and put the subscriber's address in the header of the message. Then if the message bounces you know which subscriber is responsible. Keith Moore From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Thu Feb 17 19:02:36 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA05476; Thu, 17 Feb 94 19:02:36 GMT Received: from summit.novell.com (usl.usl.com) by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA05469; Thu, 17 Feb 94 11:02:28 PST Date: Thu, 17 Feb 94 14:03 EST Message-Id: <9402171404.AA02488@summit.novell.com> From: mingus@summit.novell.com (Marcel-Franck Simon) To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Received: from summit by summit.novell.com; Thu, 17 Feb 94 14:03 EST Subject: AOL update Content-Length: 611 Content-Type: text/plain Original-Content-Type: Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Well, if you're gonna send grenades, you also gotta be willing to send bouquets. Don't know whether this was as a result of my mail to list-managers yesterday, but today I got messages respectively from postmaster@aol.com and listmaster@aol.com that assured me they had received my message and the updated list address and text I'd sent had installed it and were asking aol.com susbcribers to contact *them* with questions before going to the list. Whatever the reason, this newfound efficiency is welcome. It's much easier to work through issues if you feel the other side is cooperating with you... Marcel From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Fri Feb 18 09:04:48 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA08715; Fri, 18 Feb 94 09:04:48 GMT Received: from eros.britain.eu.net by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA08708; Fri, 18 Feb 94 01:04:38 PST Received: from andersen.co.uk by eros.britain.eu.net with UUCP id ; Fri, 18 Feb 1994 09:06:52 +0000 Received: by andersen.co.uk (4.1/sp-0.1) id AA02453; Fri, 18 Feb 94 08:48:31 GMT Newsgroups: mail.list-managers-digest Path: sdpage From: sdpage@andersen.co.uk (Stephen Page) Subject: Re: AOL update - nice guys! Message-Id: <1994Feb18.084827.2407@andersen.co.uk> Organization: Andersen Consulting (UK Practice) References: <9402162301.AA00831@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM> Distribution: local Date: Fri, 18 Feb 1994 08:48:27 GMT Lines: 17 Apparently-To: list-managers@GreatCircle.com Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM writes: >If you're still having problems with AOL subscribers, you may >wish to change their online description of your list. Yes, I would LOVE to see the description of my list (Music-Research Digest) and to change it. The reason I started all this extraordinary volume of debate (which I welcome - lots of interesting angles!) was that I had mailed the postmaster at aol.com twice and got absolutely no reply. I think that any service joining the Internet should feel a moral obligation to give someone the responsibility for answering postmaster mail, especially when it comes from list maintainers, managers of other services, etc. I object more to the failure to answer postmaster mail than I object to the flood of newbies. From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Fri Feb 18 09:13:34 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA08768; Fri, 18 Feb 94 09:13:34 GMT Received: from mail.netcom.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA08761; Fri, 18 Feb 94 01:13:26 PST Received: from localhost by mail.netcom.com (8.6.4/SMI-4.1/Netcom) id BAA18696; Fri, 18 Feb 1994 01:16:35 -0800 Date: Fri, 18 Feb 1994 01:16:35 -0800 Message-Id: <199402180916.BAA18696@mail.netcom.com> To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM From: tag-net-request@netcom.com X-Loop: tag-net-request@netcom.com Subject: Illegal command Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hi List-Managers, You specified an illegal command: `List'. These are available commands at tag-net-request@netcom.com ========================================================================= SUBSCRIBE tag-net - Subscribe to tag-net UNSUBSCRIBE tag-net - Unsubscribe from tag-net INDEX - List available files. SEND file [n] - Request `file'; [n] is an optional split size SERVERINFO - Some information about this autoreplyer HELP - You're lookin' at it! `list' can be one of: tag-net - Discussion of Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia caves and caving topics. `file' can be one of: cave.gif - beautiful cave picture (binary) pompe.txt - review of The Pompe ascender from Petzl (text) tag-net - Discussion of Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia caves and caving topics. Addresses ========================================================================= tag-net-request@netcom.com (tag-net request service) Autoreplyer service. Send e-mail containing one command per line in the message body, as described above. tag-net@netcom.com (tag-net mailing list) The tag-net mailing list, for tag-net related discussions. owner-tag-net@netcom.com (tag-net list owner) Send any comments, complaints, questions, suggestions you have about the tag-net list and file service here. dilcher@netcom.com (jeff dilcher) Me. Same as above. -jeff dilcher@netcom.com From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Fri Feb 18 17:14:55 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA10725; Fri, 18 Feb 94 17:14:55 GMT Received: from midway.uchicago.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA10718; Fri, 18 Feb 94 09:14:45 PST Received: from kimbark.uchicago.edu by midway.uchicago.edu for List-Managers@greatcircle.com Fri, 18 Feb 94 11:17:10 CST Received: from localhost.uchicago.edu by kimbark.uchicago.edu (4.1/UCCO-1.0A) id AA21126; Fri, 18 Feb 94 11:16:43 CST Message-Id: <9402181716.AA21126@kimbark.uchicago.edu> To: List-Managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: failing to answer postmaster In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 18 Feb 94 01:10:05 PST." <9402180910.AA08748@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM> Date: Fri, 18 Feb 94 11:16:42 -0600 From: ckoenig@midway.uchicago.edu Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Stephen Page mentions the he objects more to the failure to answer postmaster mail than he objects to the flood of newbies. I must admit that I am guilty of failing to answer postmaster@uchicago.edu mail occasionally. Problems, I always answer right away. But sometimes people send something and say "Forward this to the Admissions office for me" (they have no email address), or to the Engineering department (there IS no Engineering at this University!), or to the editor of such and such a Journal, or they want to send something to all the History grad students. I'd like to have good answers for them, but unfortunately much of this University is not yet in the electronic world, there are no email addresses for Departments etc. yet, and indeed there is even active resistance to being pressured into using email in a few Luddite quarters. I know that I should at least acknowledge their messages even if I can't help them, and I usually do, but a few of these painful "sorry, I can't help you" messages have been sitting in my inbox for far too long. (recently I got the Admissions office to agree to my printing out all the mail for them, and sending it by campus postal mail) So I'll apologize to YOU and you can flame me as a substitute for flaming whichever other postmaster has failed to answer you.... :-) I'm coordinating a long-term "UCHI Email Systems" project which will ease my pain and enable email to many or most departments etc., and is somewhat related to mailing-list management. My intention is to provide services to organizations which will include "organizational mailbox" POP-(or IMAP)-only accounts, but also the facilities to manage lots and lots of mailing lists, adding some creation and oversight tools to what Majordomo basically provides. And then, we'll have Grand Central Station of Mailing Lists hell ... :-) Chris Koenigsberg: ckk@uchicago.edu, ckoenig@midway.uchicago.edu From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Fri Feb 18 18:06:22 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA10979; Fri, 18 Feb 94 18:06:22 GMT Received: from localhost by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA10970; Fri, 18 Feb 94 10:06:15 PST Message-Id: <9402181806.AA10970@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM> To: dilcher@netcom.com Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: [tag-net-request@netcom.com: Illegal command] Date: Fri, 18 Feb 1994 10:06:14 -0800 From: Brent Chapman Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I've just unsubscribed you from List-Managers-Digest because your mail handling system keeps sending responses like this back to the whole List-Managers mailing list. -Brent -- Brent Chapman Great Circle Associates Brent@GreatCircle.COM 1057 West Dana Street +1 415 962 0841 Mountain View, CA 94041 ------- Forwarded Message Return-Path: List-Managers-Owner Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA08768; Fri, 18 Feb 94 09:13:34 GMT Received: from mail.netcom.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA08761; Fri, 18 Feb 94 01:13:26 PST Received: from localhost by mail.netcom.com (8.6.4/SMI-4.1/Netcom) id BAA18696; Fri, 18 Feb 1994 01:16:35 -0800 Date: Fri, 18 Feb 1994 01:16:35 -0800 Message-Id: <199402180916.BAA18696@mail.netcom.com> To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM From: tag-net-request@netcom.com X-Loop: tag-net-request@netcom.com Subject: Illegal command Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hi List-Managers, You specified an illegal command: `List'. These are available commands at tag-net-request@netcom.com ========================================================================= SUBSCRIBE tag-net - Subscribe to tag-net UNSUBSCRIBE tag-net - Unsubscribe from tag-net INDEX - List available files. SEND file [n] - Request `file'; [n] is an optional split size SERVERINFO - Some information about this autoreplyer HELP - You're lookin' at it! `list' can be one of: tag-net - Discussion of Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia caves and caving topics. `file' can be one of: cave.gif - beautiful cave picture (binary) pompe.txt - review of The Pompe ascender from Petzl (text) tag-net - Discussion of Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia caves and caving topics. Addresses ========================================================================= tag-net-request@netcom.com (tag-net request service) Autoreplyer service. Send e-mail containing one command per line in the message body, as described above. tag-net@netcom.com (tag-net mailing list) The tag-net mailing list, for tag-net related discussions. owner-tag-net@netcom.com (tag-net list owner) Send any comments, complaints, questions, suggestions you have about the tag-net list and file service here. dilcher@netcom.com (jeff dilcher) Me. Same as above. - -jeff dilcher@netcom.com ------- End of Forwarded Message From List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Fri Feb 18 11:26:32 1994 Return-Path: Received: by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA11241; Fri, 18 Feb 94 18:25:10 GMT Received: from de5.ctd.ornl.gov by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA10787; Fri, 18 Feb 94 09:35:50 PST Received: from localhost (de5@localhost) by de5.ctd.ornl.gov (8.6.5/8.6.5) id MAA10358; Fri, 18 Feb 1994 12:38:08 -0500 Date: Fri, 18 Feb 1994 12:38:08 -0500 From: Dave Sill Message-Id: <199402181738.MAA10358@de5.ctd.ornl.gov> To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: educating users Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I normally ignore subscribe/unsubscribe messages sent to lists I'm on. I'm too lazy to take a couple minutes and point the poor lost soul in the right direction. I just had the brilliant idea of preparing a canned response for such situations, and thought it would be a good idea to float it by this list and see what people think of it. Once it's polished up a bit, it might be a good thing to pass it around and encourage conscientious list members to forward it on (personally, of course) to those that seem to need it. Maybe someone should hack up a little script called "clue" that would take message on standard input and generate a reply containing this text. Or how about a "clue" server...an e-mail service that one could forward requests to. It could even be given brains enough someday to check the machine-readable list-of-lists that Keith suggested and provide detailed information appropriate for the list in question. Here's the message: -- *NEVER* send requests to be added to or removed from a mailing list to the address used to send messages to recipients of the list. It annoys them, and they can't handle your request. If you don't remember how you subscribed to the list originally, or someone just gave you the list address, try: 1) -request Many lists provide such a mailbox for list "administrivia", as this type of request is called. If the list address is newbies@no.such.host, try sending your request to: newsbies-request@no.such.host 2) Automated list manager Many lists are managed by automated list managers. If -request doesn't work, try sending the message "help" to each of the above addresses. If the list address is newbies@no.such.host, try sending to: listserv@no.such.host listproc@no.such.host majordomo@no.such.host 3) Postmaster As a last resort, you can write to the postmaster on the list system and ask how to get your request processed. If the list address is newbies@no.such.host, try sending to: postmaster@no.such.host Good luck! -- -- Dave Sill (de5@ornl.gov) I dream of a televisionland where it will be Martin Marietta Energy Systems as hard for a network to expose us to violence Workstation Support as it is for me to tell someone they have spinach on their teeth. --Paula Poundstone URL http://gatekeeper.dec.com/archive/pub/DEC/DECinfo/html/dsill.html From list-managers-owner Sat Feb 19 20:08:13 1994 Return-Path: Received: from localhost by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id UAA25726; Sat, 19 Feb 1994 20:08:13 GMT Received: from sunshine.eushc.org by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id MAA25720; Sat, 19 Feb 1994 12:08:06 -0800 Received: from uumind.UUCP (uucp@localhost) by sunshine.eushc.org (8.6.5/EUSHC) with UUCP id PAA12941; Sat, 19 Feb 1994 15:10:01 -0500 Received: by mind.org (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Sat, 19 Feb 94 11:51:03 -0500 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Received: by knex.via.mind.org (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Sat, 19 Feb 94 11:38:52 EST for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: More AOL woes: "connection refused" From: Gess Shankar Reply-To: gess@knex.via.mind.org (Gess Shankar) Message-ID: Date: Sat, 19 Feb 94 11:32:53 EST In-Reply-To: <9402190438.AB13194@emory.mathcs.emory.edu> Organization: |<><>| Knowledge Exchange, GA, USA |<><>| Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk To add to the recent discussions, about America On Line: (1) Email to postmaster and Listmaster to aol.com produced no response, acknowlegement, form letter or anything. Not a good thing. (2) I am not receiving a spate of error messages quoted below following list mail distribution. > 421 aol.com.tcp... Deferred: Connection refused by mailgate.prod.aol.net ^^^^^^^ Has any one else seen this phenomenon? Should I consider turning all mail to aol.com off? GeSS -- Gess Shankar |<><>| Internet: gess@knex.via.mind.ORG |<><>| CDPub List Admin. |<><>| {rutgers,ogicse,gatech}!emory!uumind!knex!gess |<><>| From list-managers-owner Sat Feb 19 21:34:38 1994 Return-Path: Received: from localhost by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id VAA26141; Sat, 19 Feb 1994 21:34:38 GMT Received: from mycroft.GreatCircle.COM by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id NAA26134; Sat, 19 Feb 1994 13:34:31 -0800 Message-Id: <199402192134.NAA26134@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM> To: gess@knex.via.mind.org (Gess Shankar) cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: More AOL woes: "connection refused" In-reply-to: Your message of Sat, 19 Feb 94 11:32:53 EST Date: Sat, 19 Feb 1994 13:34:30 -0800 From: Brent Chapman Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Gess Shankar writes: # To add to the recent discussions, about America On Line: # # (1) Email to postmaster and Listmaster to aol.com produced no response, # acknowlegement, form letter or anything. Not a good thing. # # (2) I am not receiving a spate of error messages quoted below # following list mail distribution. # # > 421 aol.com.tcp... Deferred: Connection refused by mailgate.prod.aol.net # ^^^^^^^ # Has any one else seen this phenomenon? Should I consider turning all mail # to aol.com off? These are both signs of an overloaded mail system at aol.com. The "421 ... Deferred" is a transient error, unless the "Subject:" line of the bounce indicates otherwise (i.e., that your mailer gave up after getting that error continuously for several days). -Brent -- Brent Chapman Great Circle Associates Brent@GreatCircle.COM 1057 West Dana Street +1 415 962 0841 Mountain View, CA 94041 From list-managers-owner Sat Feb 19 22:22:47 1994 Return-Path: Received: from localhost by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id WAA26443; Sat, 19 Feb 1994 22:22:47 GMT Received: from sunshine.eushc.org by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id OAA26437; Sat, 19 Feb 1994 14:22:39 -0800 Received: from uumind.UUCP (uucp@localhost) by sunshine.eushc.org (8.6.5/EUSHC) with UUCP id RAA13341; Sat, 19 Feb 1994 17:24:27 -0500 Received: by mind.org (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Sat, 19 Feb 94 16:26:19 -0500 for list-managers@greatcircle.com Received: by knex.via.mind.org (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Sat, 19 Feb 94 16:25:59 EST for list-managers@greatcircle.com To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: More AOL woes: "connection refused" From: Gess Shankar Reply-To: gess@knex.via.mind.org (Gess Shankar) Message-ID: Date: Sat, 19 Feb 94 16:23:34 EST In-Reply-To: Organization: |<><>| Knowledge Exchange, GA, USA |<><>| Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Gess Shankar writes: > To add to the recent discussions, about America On Line: > > (1) Email to postmaster and Listmaster to aol.com produced no response, > acknowlegement, form letter or anything. Not a good thing. > > (2) I am not receiving a spate of error messages quoted below ^^^ > following list mail distribution. > > > 421 aol.com.tcp... Deferred: Connection refused by mailgate.prod.aol.net > ^^^^^^^ > Has any one else seen this phenomenon? Should I consider turning all mail > to aol.com off? > Err... That should read: I am NOW receiving a spate of error messges quoted below. Rather silly complaining about NOT receiving bounces... :-) GeSS -- Gess Shankar |<><>| Internet: gess@knex.via.mind.ORG |<><>| CDPub List Admin. |<><>| {rutgers,ogicse,gatech}!emory!uumind!knex!gess |<><>| From list-managers-owner Sat Feb 19 17:39:33 1994 Return-Path: Received: from localhost by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id BAA27092; Sun, 20 Feb 1994 01:27:26 GMT Received: from mycroft.GreatCircle.COM by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id RAA27083; Sat, 19 Feb 1994 17:27:20 -0800 Message-Id: <199402200127.RAA27083@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM> To: list-managers Subject: Re: [tag-net-request@netcom.com: Illegal command] In-reply-to: Your message of Fri, 18 Feb 1994 10:06:14 -0800 Date: Sat, 19 Feb 1994 17:27:19 -0800 From: Brent Chapman Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Brent Chapman writes: # I've just unsubscribed you from List-Managers-Digest because your mail # handling system keeps sending responses like this back to the whole # List-Managers mailing list. A number of List-Managers members have written to me in confusion, thinking I had unsubscribed _them_ from List-Managers because of this problem. I should have been more clear: I unsubscribed "dilcher@netcom.com" because of the problem described above, and made a last-second decision to "Cc:" the message to "List-Managers" to let folks know I'd found and solved the problem of these bogus "Tag-Net" messages being reflected back to the list. Sorry for the confusion. -Brent -- Brent Chapman Great Circle Associates Brent@GreatCircle.COM 1057 West Dana Street +1 415 962 0841 Mountain View, CA 94041 From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 20 08:11:12 1994 Return-Path: Received: from localhost by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id IAA29752; Sun, 20 Feb 1994 08:11:12 GMT Received: from merlin.resmel.bhp.com.au by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id AA01344; Wed, 16 Feb 94 16:36:21 PST Received: from beta.itwhy.bhp.com.au by merlin.resmel.bhp.com.au with SMTP id AA03795 (5.67b/IDA-1.5 for ); Thu, 17 Feb 1994 11:38:32 +1100 Received: from [134.18.56.252] (alpha.itwhy.bhp.com.au [134.18.56.252]) by beta.itwhy.bhp.com.au (8.6.4/8.6.4) with SMTP id IAA00527 for ; Thu, 17 Feb 1994 08:36:43 +1030 Message-Id: <199402162206.IAA00527@beta.itwhy.bhp.com.au> X-Sender: andrewp@134.18.56.253 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Thu, 17 Feb 1994 11:10:40 -0800 To: List-Managers@greatcircle.com From: andrewp@itwhy.bhp.com.au (Andrew PRUSEK) Subject: Is there an FAQ for the list you manage? Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hello List Admins Just a thought, how many of you regularly post an info package to the people who subscribe to your lists? Info such as: What is the name of the list. Where does it come from. How can I subscribe/unsubscribe. Who manages the list. What are list policies. Where are the archives. etc This can be automated or someone may volunteer to automate it for you. One would be one mailing that would save a lot of headaches. Some one could even set up a list that carries such mailings, or the mailings could be gatewayed to a news group. regards Andrew -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Andrew PRUSEK Phone +61 86 40 4590 BHP Information Technology Fax +61 86 40 4720 PO Box 21 / Port Augusta Road Email andrewp@itwhy.bhp.com.au Whyalla SA 5600 FTP alpha.itwhy.bhp.com.au Australia MSERV mail-server@itwhy.bhp.com.au ---------------------------------------- X.400 G=ANDREW;S=PRUSEK;O=BHP; Common sense is not that common! ADMD=TELEMEMO;C=AU From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 20 16:21:04 1994 Return-Path: Received: from localhost by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id QAA03151; Sun, 20 Feb 1994 16:21:04 GMT Received: from sunshine.eushc.org by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id IAA03145; Sun, 20 Feb 1994 08:20:57 -0800 Received: from uumind.UUCP (uucp@localhost) by sunshine.eushc.org (8.6.5/EUSHC) with UUCP id LAA14780; Sun, 20 Feb 1994 11:23:24 -0500 Received: by mind.org (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Sun, 20 Feb 94 09:55:27 -0500 for List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Received: by knex.via.mind.org (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Sun, 20 Feb 94 09:01:00 EST for List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Is there an FAQ for the list you manage? From: Gess Shankar Reply-To: gess@knex.via.mind.org (Gess Shankar) Message-ID: Date: Sun, 20 Feb 94 08:49:48 EST In-Reply-To: <199402162206.IAA00527@beta.itwhy.bhp.com.au> Organization: |<><>| Knowledge Exchange, GA, USA |<><>| Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk emory!itwhy.bhp.com.au!andrewp (Andrew PRUSEK) writes: > Hello List Admins > > Just a thought, how many of you regularly post an info package to > the people who subscribe to your lists? > > Info such as: > > What is the name of the list. > Where does it come from. > How can I subscribe/unsubscribe. > Who manages the list. > What are list policies. > Where are the archives. > etc > I do this. I have a cron job scheduled to send an admininstrivia mailing every month, which provides all the above info, along with DOs and DON'Ts etc with pleadings requesting the subscriber to save the posting for reference. May be it helps some. But I have not seen any reduction in misdirected mail. As a matter of fact, I have even seen direct responses to the same posting, breaking suggested rules. :( I guess subscribers fall into two categories - people who will make every attempt to do the right thing (try to send for help etc., before sending commands and such) and people who do whatever they want despite staring at a full set of instructions (because of many reasons... don't care enough, don't know how to follow instructions because they don't know enough about the mailer they are using or the environment they are in will not allow it and so forth). GeSS -- Gess Shankar |<><>| Internet: gess@knex.via.mind.ORG |<><>| CDPub List Admin. |<><>| {rutgers,ogicse,gatech}!emory!uumind!knex!gess |<><>| From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 21 02:53:57 1994 Return-Path: Received: from localhost by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id JAA05918; Mon, 21 Feb 1994 09:58:07 GMT Received: from eros.britain.eu.net by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id BAA05911; Mon, 21 Feb 1994 01:57:39 -0800 Received: from andersen.co.uk by eros.britain.eu.net with UUCP id ; Mon, 21 Feb 1994 09:59:45 +0000 Received: by andersen.co.uk (4.1/sp-0.1) id AA15102; Mon, 21 Feb 94 09:09:18 GMT Newsgroups: mail.list-managers-digest Path: sdpage From: sdpage@andersen.co.uk (Stephen Page) Subject: Re: failing to answer postmaster Message-Id: <1994Feb21.090915.15056@andersen.co.uk> Organization: Andersen Consulting (UK Practice) References: <199402190910.BAA24221@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM> Distribution: local Date: Mon, 21 Feb 1994 09:09:15 GMT Lines: 24 Apparently-To: list-managers@GreatCircle.com Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM writes: > I am guilty of failing to answer postmaster@uchicago.edu mail >occasionally. Problems, I always answer right away. Yes, I certainly accept that answering postmaster mail can be pretty unexciting, and I always appreciate courteous responses from postmasters greatly (knowing how many messages they get!). Many postmasters are people who have at least one other full-time job, and they are answering mail out of courtesy rather than from a institutional requirement. My problem with aol.com is that it is a commercial service. It pays staff to manage the service delivery to its members. I therefore believe that it (and others like it which are connecting to the Internet) has a responsibility to pay someone to read and answer the postmaster mail, acting professionally and responsibly. Otherwise why should "the rest of us" play our small part in helping aol.com to deliver service to its customers? PS Does anyone actually know anyone in the aol.com management? Care to seek their view on the thorough slating they have been receiving in this forum? Stephen Page (aka postmaster@andersen.co.uk) From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 21 16:14:18 1994 Return-Path: Received: from localhost by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id QAA07158; Mon, 21 Feb 1994 16:14:18 GMT Received: from uu9.psi.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id IAA07152; Mon, 21 Feb 1994 08:14:04 -0800 Received: from wri.org by uu9.psi.com (5.65b/4.0.061193-PSI/PSINet) via SMTP; id AA17651 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 21 Feb 94 11:17:08 -0500 Received: from smtpgate id: 2D68DD33.CD1 (WordPerfect SMTP Gateway V3.1a 04/27/92) Received: from earth (WP Connection) Received: from TCPBRIDGE (WP Connection) Received: from HOBBES (WP Connection) Received: from CALVIN (WP Connection) From: LAURENN%smtpgate@earth.wri.org Mmdf-Warning: Parse error in original version of preceding line at earth.wri.org To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Mmdf-Warning: Parse error in original version of preceding line at earth.wri.org Subject: re: why AOL.Com isn't replying to postm. Date: Mon Feb 21 11:11:31 1994 Message-Id: <9402211112.aa17265@earth.wri.org> Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Subject: Re: failing to answer postmaster List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM writes: > My problem with aol.com is that it is a commercial > service. It pays staff to manage the service delivery > to its members. I therefore believe that it > (and others like it which are connecting to the Internet) > has a responsibility to pay someone to read and answer the > postmaster mail, acting professionally and responsibly. > Otherwise why should "the rest of us" play our small part > in helping aol.com to deliver service to its customers? > PS Does anyone actually know anyone in the aol.com > management? Care to seek their view on the thorough > slating they have been receiving in this forum? > Stephen Page > (aka postmaster@andersen.co.uk) This may be the reason you're not getting a response.... Whoever set it AOL's postmaster was lame and added VA to it. -- Forwarded Message -- ------------------------------------------------------------ in dc.general: From: ziegast@godzilla.UU.NET (Eric W. Ziegast) Newsgroups: dc.general,nyc.seminars Subject: Re: Internet: Business and Trade Applications Date: 14 Dec 1993 21:24:50 GMT Organization: UUNET Technologies - Falls Church, VA |> Are all these present in the D.C. metro area? |> Digex is the only one I've found around here. Full service Internet providers (with high-speed Internet backbones, not just a point of entry): ProviderE-mail Contact Info ------------------------------------------------------- PSI, Reston, VAinfo@psi.com SprintLink, Herndon, VApostmaster@icm1.icp.net (*) SURAnet, College Park, MDservices@sura.net UUNET/AlterNet, Falls Church, VAinfo@uunet.uu.net + other non-local companies with access points in DC: ANS, JVNCnet, Netcom DC regional Internet service providers (IP/Unix/E-mail) that access the above networks: ProviderE-mail Contact Info ------------------------------------------------------- CAPCON, Washington, DCcapcon@capcon.net Clark, Ellicott City, MDinfo@clark.net Digital Express, Greenbelt, MDinfo@digex.com Grebyn, Vienna, VAinfo@grebyn.com The Meta Network, Arlington, VAinfo@tmn.com + and more (lots of BBSs and Public Access Unix sites with Internet e-mail access). Large online services providers (that have Internet e-mail access): ProviderE-mail Contact Info ------------------------------------------------------- America Online, Vienna, VApostmaster@aol.net (*) GEine, Rockville, MDpostmaster@geis.com (*) + other non-local companies with access points in DC: ATTmail, Compuserve, MCImail, Prodigy(?) (*) Postmaster is used when I can't find an e-mail contact address. Ask the postmaster at the site what the contact address is. -- Eric Ziegast ---------------------------------------------------------- -- End of Message -- From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 21 21:07:46 1994 Return-Path: Received: from localhost by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id VAA08647; Mon, 21 Feb 1994 21:07:46 GMT Received: from sunshine.eushc.org by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id NAA08641; Mon, 21 Feb 1994 13:07:38 -0800 Received: from uumind.UUCP (uucp@localhost) by sunshine.eushc.org (8.6.5/EUSHC) with UUCP id QAA17480; Mon, 21 Feb 1994 16:10:01 -0500 Received: by mind.org (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Mon, 21 Feb 94 13:30:38 -0500 for list-managers@greatcircle.com Received: by knex.via.mind.org (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Mon, 21 Feb 94 14:15:10 EST for list-managers@greatcircle.com To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: re: why AOL.Com isn't replying to postm. From: Gess Shankar Reply-To: gess@knex.via.mind.org (Gess Shankar) Message-ID: <7434Hc1w165w@knex.via.mind.org> Date: Mon, 21 Feb 94 14:10:29 EST In-Reply-To: <9402211112.aa17265@earth.wri.org> Organization: |<><>| Knowledge Exchange, GA, USA |<><>| Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk emory!earth.wri.org!smtpgate!LAURENN writes: > > This may be the reason you're not getting a response.... > Whoever set it AOL's postmaster was lame and added VA to it. > > -- Forwarded Message -- > ------------------------------------------------------------ [...] > ProviderE-mail Contact Info > ------------------------------------------------------- > America Online, Vienna, VApostmaster@aol.net (*) > GEine, Rockville, MDpostmaster@geis.com (*) > [etc.] Ultimately I did get response from postmaster@aol.com So VA or otherwise, there is a postmaster..... ----- severely edited mail from postmaster@aol.com ------- X-Mailer: America Online Mailer Sender: "postmaster" [message deleted] Cheryl postmaster@aol.com America Online, Inc. ---- end of quote --------------------------------------- GeSS -- Gess Shankar |<><>|Internet: gess@knex.via.mind.ORG |<><>| Knowledge Exchange|<><>|{rutgers,ogicse,gatech}!emory!uumind!knex!gess |<><>| From list-managers-owner Tue Feb 22 11:54:50 1994 Return-Path: Received: from localhost by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id LAA12747; Tue, 22 Feb 1994 11:54:50 GMT Received: from vector.casti.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id DAA12741; Tue, 22 Feb 1994 03:54:43 -0800 Received: by vector.casti.com (NX5.67d/5.931230) id AA09010; Tue, 22 Feb 94 06:56:59 -0500 Date: Tue, 22 Feb 1994 06:50:41 -0500 (EST) From: David Casti Reply-To: David Casti Subject: Majordomo and bouncing? To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hi folks, I think I'm having an unusual problem with Majordomo. Someone from delphi is sending mail to majordom which it can't understand. Instead of bouncing an error of some sort back to the offending delphi user, a message which looks like this goes back to postmaster@delphi.com: Return-path: Return-path: majordom@vector.casti.com Received: from vector.casti.com by delphi.com (PMDF V4.2-11 #6311) id <01H95MG9H9G08WY62J@delphi.com>; Mon, 21 Feb 1994 17:45:03 EST Received: by vector.casti.com (NX5.67d/5.931230) id AA03959; Mon, 21 Feb 94 17:44:52 -0500 Date: Mon, 21 Feb 1994 17:44:52 -0500 From: Majordomo@vector.casti.com Subject: Majordomo results To: postmaster@delphi.com Reply-to: Majordomo@vector.casti.com Message-id: <9402212244.AA03959@vector.casti.com> Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT -- >>>> --Boundary (ID /5XeBSE6cPKP+t2o6FTyMg) END OF COMMANDS I've looked through my sendmail logs, and I do find some suspicious-looking entries like: Feb 21 18:20:01 vector sendmail[4292]: AA04292: from=<>, size=6453, class=0, received from delphi.com (192.80.63.3) Followed almost immediately by mail back to postmaster@delphi.com. Two questions: First, and most obviously, how can I throw those messages away instead of sending them back to postmaster@delphi.com? Second, why are they going to postmaster@delphi and not postmaster locally? Thanks, David. From list-managers-owner Tue Feb 22 12:46:57 1994 Return-Path: Received: from localhost by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id MAA12972; Tue, 22 Feb 1994 12:46:57 GMT Received: from z.nsf.gov by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id EAA12966; Tue, 22 Feb 1994 04:46:51 -0800 Received: from localhost (mmorse@localhost) by z.nsf.gov (8.6.4/8.6.4) id HAA23565; Tue, 22 Feb 1994 07:54:44 -0500 Message-Id: <199402221254.HAA23565@z.nsf.gov> From: mmorse@nsf.gov (Michael H. Morse) Date: Tue, 22 Feb 1994 07:54:44 EST In-Reply-To: sdpage@andersen.co.uk (Stephen Page) "Re: failing to answer postmaster" (Feb 21, 9:09am) X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.1.1 5/02/90) To: sdpage@andersen.co.uk (Stephen Page), list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: failing to answer postmaster Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > PS Does anyone actually know anyone in the aol.com management? Care to seek > their view on the thorough slating they have been receiving in this forum? I don't know anyone in aol management, but my contact with the company has shown that they are responsible and that they are tuned in to complaints. However, I am sure they are also wise enough to know that you can't handle hundreds of thousands of customers without generating some complaints. They probably also know that the discussions on an Internet mailing list are not representative of the reality that pays their salaries. --Mike From list-managers-owner Tue Feb 22 13:43:48 1994 Return-Path: Received: from localhost by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id NAA13151; Tue, 22 Feb 1994 13:43:48 GMT Received: from jupiter.cc.gettysburg.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id FAA13145; Tue, 22 Feb 1994 05:43:40 -0800 Received: from jupiter2.cc.gettysburg.edu by jupiter.cc.gettysburg.edu with SMTP id AA21183 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4); Tue, 22 Feb 1994 08:51:30 -0500 Received: by jupiter2.cc.gettysburg.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1-Gburg-Sun-dummy-(cc.gettysburg.edu)-1.1) id AA04809; Tue, 22 Feb 94 08:49:40 EST Date: Tue, 22 Feb 1994 08:48:21 -0500 (EST) From: Joe Stafford Subject: Re: [List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM: BOUNCE List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM: Admin request] To: Brent Chapman Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com In-Reply-To: <199402212011.MAA08498@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM> Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk From list-managers-owner Tue Feb 22 14:00:29 1994 Return-Path: Received: from localhost by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id OAA13305; Tue, 22 Feb 1994 14:00:29 GMT Received: from spiff.ccs.carleton.ca by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id GAA13299; Tue, 22 Feb 1994 06:00:20 -0800 Received: by spiff.ccs.carleton.ca (4.1/SMI-4.0-mcr) id AA13148; Tue, 22 Feb 94 09:03:12 EST Date: Tue, 22 Feb 94 09:03:12 EST From: mcr@spiff.ccs.carleton.ca (Michael Richardson) Message-Id: <9402221403.AA13148@spiff.ccs.carleton.ca> To: disc@vector.casti.com Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: David Casti's message of Tue, 22 Feb 1994 06:50:41 -0500 (EST) Subject: Majordomo and bouncing? Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk [At first, I figured this belonged on majordomo-users, but...] >>>>> "David" == David Casti writes: David> I think I'm having an unusual problem with Majordomo. David> Someone from delphi is sending mail to majordom which it David> can't understand. Instead of bouncing an error of some David> sort back to the offending delphi user, a message which David> looks like this goes back to postmaster@delphi.com: David> Feb 21 18:20:01 vector sendmail[4292]: AA04292: from=<>, David> size=6453, class=0, received from delphi.com (192.80.63.3) Looks like Delphi isn't sending the right stuff in the MAIL FROM: SMTP connection. <> tends to get mapped to a magic token, which often gets changed to postmaster after some thought in sendmail. More broken mailers on the $$$-services :-) -- :!mcr!: HOME: mcr@sandelman.ocunix.on.ca +1 613 788 2600 3853 Michael Richardson WORK: mcr@ccs.carleton.ca (Conservation Ecology) Here is an HTML reference to my bio. foreach $X ("E-Journal","NetBSD","Perl","Physics") { print "MCR hacks $X\n"; }; From list-managers-owner Wed Feb 23 02:22:29 1994 Return-Path: Received: from localhost by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id CAA18485; Wed, 23 Feb 1994 02:22:29 GMT Received: from cln.etc.bc.ca by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id SAA18479; Tue, 22 Feb 1994 18:22:20 -0800 Received: from by cln.etc.bc.ca for List-Managers@greatcircle.com (4.1/1.39) id AB26630; Tue, 22 Feb 94 18:28:09 PST Message-Id: <9402230228.AB26630@cln.etc.bc.ca> Date: Tue, 22 Feb 1994 18:29:15 -0800 To: List-Managers@greatcircle.com From: cshields@cln.etc.bc.ca (Chris Shields) Subject: New List Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I am very new to the Internet, however, I am working on a very exciting project, and I've found myself managing a list! I would appreciate any suggestions as to how and where do I post my new list in a "New List" list of lists. My list serve is called: safari-l and it resides at: cln.etc.bc.ca Thanks __________________________________________________ Chris Shields, Manager, Corporate Relations Safari Operations, Royal British Columbia Museum 514 Government Street, Victoria, BC, V8V 4X4 Tel (604) 480-1264 Toll-free 1-800-661-5411 Fax (604) 387-1251 E-mail cshields@cln.etc.bc.ca __________________________________________________ From list-managers-owner Wed Feb 23 07:02:57 1994 Return-Path: Received: from localhost by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id HAA19265; Wed, 23 Feb 1994 07:02:57 GMT Received: from cs.columbia.edu by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id XAA19259; Tue, 22 Feb 1994 23:02:49 -0800 Received: from hudson.cs.columbia.edu (hudson.cs.columbia.edu [128.59.25.2]) by cs.columbia.edu (8.6.4/8.6.4) with ESMTP id CAA27910; Wed, 23 Feb 1994 02:04:46 -0500 Received: from localhost (dupuy@localhost) by hudson.cs.columbia.edu (8.6.4/8.6.4) id CAA13070; Wed, 23 Feb 1994 02:04:44 -0500 Date: Wed, 23 Feb 94 2:04:43 EST From: Alexander Dupuy To: sdpage@andersen.co.uk (Stephen Page) CC: list-managers@greatcircle.com Reply-To: dupuy@cs.columbia.edu Subject: News->Mail gateways (was: failing to answer postmaster) In-Reply-To: Your message of Mon, 21 Feb 1994 09:09:15 GMT Message-ID: Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Apropos of another subject, but your news->mail gateway at andersen.co.uk just dumped a whole bunch of ancient articles back onto the firewalls list. Not to mention that your postings to your local mail.list-managers-digest fail to include a valid To: header (as required by RFC 822) when they are converted into list-managers mailing list submissions by your gateway. It's arguable that majordomo is broken for not adding RFC-822 required headers to submissions before it sends them out (heck, I have argued similar points in the past), or that sendmail is broken for adding Apparently-To: headers rather than a real To: header, but given the state of most mailing list management, it would be a good net citizen's duty to have their news->mail gateways generate proper RFC-822 mail messages in any case. And once you've fixed that little nit, and said three hail marys as penance for misconfiguring your firewalls mail->news gateway, you'll be able to criticize the postmasters at aol.com with a pure conscience. [Actually, I just realized I was jumping to conclusions here, since you might well be postmaster, but not administer netnews, or the mail->news gateway at your site]. I would be tempted at this point to start a discussion of whether news->mail gateways are actually the largest single cause of duplicate messages and mail loops, or if there is something worse (like X.400-based vacation programs), but I just unsubscribed from this list and the unix-listproc list at stormking.com, since I have been (thankfully) free of the responsibility of managing mailing lists for the last year since I changed jobs, and have been just deleting messages from these mailing lists unread due to the volume. Anyhow, I thought I'd take this opportunity to thank everyone who has contributed to these useful lists, and the authors of the marvelous software that allowed me to delete myself from them so easily, and to send all of you list-managers, postmasters and netnews admins out there good luck and best wishes in the neverending struggle to improve this part of the internet. @alex (still postmaster at a small site, no longer listmanager at a large one) From list-managers-owner Wed Feb 23 08:17:17 1994 Return-Path: Received: from localhost by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id QAA21602; Wed, 23 Feb 1994 16:07:02 GMT Received: from SNYBUFVA.CS.SNYBUF.EDU by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id IAA21581; Wed, 23 Feb 1994 08:06:47 -0800 Message-Id: <199402231606.IAA21581@mycroft.GreatCircle.COM> Date: Wed, 23 Feb 1994 11:08 +0500 From: STEVENCA@SNYBUFVA.CS.SNYBUF.EDU (Carol Ann Stevens) To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Cc: STEVENCA@SNYBUFVA.CS.SNYBUF.EDU Subject: E-Mail Conference Location Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk To Whom It May Concern: It is our wish to develop an e-mail conference group for the National Reading Conference (NRC). The purpose of this conference would be to provide access to research and dialogue among members of the NRC and others interested in current issues pertaining to reading and education. We have been advised that this discussion group might help us to locate a listserver to serve as host for such an e-mail list conference. Please advise. Thank you. Drs. S. Weidler, R. Lonberger, and C. Stevens From list-managers-owner Sat Feb 26 13:41:40 1994 Return-Path: Received: from localhost by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id NAA04711; Sat, 26 Feb 1994 13:41:40 GMT Received: from netcomsv.netcom.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id FAA04705; Sat, 26 Feb 1994 05:41:34 -0800 Received: from solar.org by netcomsv.netcom.com with UUCP (8.6.4/SMI-4.1) id FAA09764; Sat, 26 Feb 1994 05:41:51 -0800 Received: by solar.org (wcUUCP 3.90B) id N97600W Sat, 26 Feb 1994 02:25:43 GMT From: doug.evans@solar.org (Doug Evans) Subject: Listservers? Date: Sat, 26 Feb 1994 02:01:00 GMT Message-Id: <9402251925436763@solar.org> Organization: The Solar System BBS 714-837-9677 6.5gig To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Can anyone tell me if there are sites that service lists? I have a small group of people who are currently e-mailing, to the group, as a whole, and we do not have the host site for listservice. If there are, please tell me how I might contact one or more of them. Thanks, Doug Evans * QMPro 1.51 * MSI HQ! BBS * 805-39 From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 27 21:38:43 1994 Return-Path: Received: from localhost by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id VAA10284; Sun, 27 Feb 1994 21:38:43 GMT Received: from ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id NAA10278; Sun, 27 Feb 1994 13:38:36 -0800 Received: from zog.arc.nasa.gov by ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov (4.1/) id ; Sun, 27 Feb 94 13:40:00 PST Received: by zog.arc.nasa.gov (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA22412; Sun, 27 Feb 94 13:39:57 PST Date: Sun, 27 Feb 94 13:39:57 PST Message-Id: <9402272139.AA22412@zog.arc.nasa.gov> From: k p c To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: strange bounces Reply-To: kpc@ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov X-Disclaimer: No organization, company, or government is represented here. Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk 1. I received the following strange bounce. John Doe at Acadia posted to my list and the bounce, which was sent to owner-mylist-list, looked like this: Connected to pica.army.mil: >>> MAIL From: <<< 451 [ Connection refused ] Nameserver timeout for 'john.doe@acadiau.ca Why would I receive a bounce about the nameserver at Acadia from pica.army.mil? Is pica doing some sort of nefarious checking of from addresses? And why would the connection be refused? John Doe (not his real name) has been receiving my email. 2. I should say that I find bounces to be confusing. Sometimes the poster of an article gets the bounce, while most of the time I as the list admin do. Why would that be? I don't insert an errors-to header, since it is a plain sendmail alias mailing list, but the posters don't either. Thanks for your comments in advance. From list-managers-owner Mon Feb 28 01:06:15 1994 Return-Path: Received: from localhost by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id BAA10904; Mon, 28 Feb 1994 01:06:15 GMT Received: from netmail2.microsoft.com by mycroft.GreatCircle.COM (8.6.5/SMI-4.1/Brent-931103) id RAA10898; Sun, 27 Feb 1994 17:06:02 -0800 Received: by netmail2.microsoft.com (5.65/25-eef) id AA21064; Sun, 27 Feb 94 17:09:24 -0800 Message-Id: <9402280109.AA21064@netmail2.microsoft.com> Received: by netmail2 using fxenixd 1.0 Sun, 27 Feb 94 17:09:24 PST X-Msmail-Message-Id: 6149A304 X-Msmail-Conversation-Id: 6149A304 From: Alec Saunders To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Sun, 27 Feb 94 20:11:54 PST Subject: List Server Software Sender: List-Managers-Owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I'm interested in list server software. Can anyone tell me what list servers are available, and what hardware they run on? In particular I'd like to find a list server which has been ported to Windows NT. Alec.