From list-managers-owner Sat Feb 1 17:13:56 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id RAA26115 for list-managers-outgoing; Sat, 1 Feb 1997 17:00:26 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) id RAA26033 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sat, 1 Feb 1997 17:00:08 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.his.com (mail.his.com [205.177.25.9]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with ESMTP id GAA29951 for ; Thu, 30 Jan 1997 06:54:23 -0800 (PST) Received: from [205.252.121.200] (shiva1-mclean-200.his.com [205.252.121.200]) by mail.his.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id JAA10081; Thu, 30 Jan 1997 09:53:24 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <199701222307.SAA22835@www6.clever.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Thu, 30 Jan 1997 09:12:27 -0500 To: CEO@Citadel.Net, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Brad Knowles Subject: Re: fresh horror from AOL Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 12:09 PM -0500 1/22/1997, Dr. Manion wrote: >Juno, never gives me any problems but AOL is a constant source of >problems. Their people subscribe and then immediately start posting >messages to the list, "GET ME OFF THIS DAMN LIST!" etc.. Just wait until they get bigger. I guarantee that you'll have precisely the same problems with AT&T WorldNet, WebTV, and anyone else who gets really big. It's just the nature of the beast of large communities -- we don't have any more than our share of clueless customers (not much, anyway ;-), it's just that because we've got eight million customers, we've got a lot more total clueless people than other places. If you want another comparison, look at crime statistics for small towns of a few hundred or a few thousand people, and compare that to the largest cities in the world. They don't really have much more crimes of most types per capita, but because they have a lot more people, it seems that way. >At the moment, I'm trying to figure out how to refuse any and all >email from AOL. That should also eliminate about 99% of the spams we >receive. If that's what you want. We can make sure that no mail from your site makes it into AOL, too. -- Brad Knowles, MIME/PGP: brad@his.com comp.mail.sendmail FAQ Maintainer finger brad@his.com for my PGP Public Keys and Geek Code The comp.mail.sendmail FAQ is at From list-managers-owner Sat Feb 1 21:25:59 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id VAA16380 for list-managers-outgoing; Sat, 1 Feb 1997 21:10:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from urth.acsu.buffalo.edu (urth.acsu.buffalo.edu [128.205.7.9]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with SMTP id VAA16082 for ; Sat, 1 Feb 1997 21:09:27 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 28777 invoked by uid 305); 2 Feb 1997 05:08:13 -0000 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Missed point... References: <199701310031.TAA12683@www6.clever.net> From: Paul Graham Date: 02 Feb 1997 00:08:13 -0500 In-Reply-To: Jason L Tibbitts III's message of 31 Jan 1997 00:39:13 -0600 Message-ID: Lines: 16 X-Mailer: Gnus v5.4.9/Emacs 19.34 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk indeed. i wonder when aol is going to switch to dsn style bounces. if your list software permits unchecked subscriptions then you will have problems. however i do think that aol -- as the largest source of bounced mail on the Internet -- has some obligation to format bounces in a style that's at least close to the rfc (e.g. doing failures would be good enough). >>>>> "J" == Jason L Tibbitts writes: J> As far as I'm concerned AOL has provided access for many of the J> members of my mailing lists, and has given me another bounce format J> to try to figure out. That's about it. -- paul pjg(at)acsu.Buffalo.EDU |public keys at: | http://urth.acsu.Buffalo.EDU/~pjg/key.html if the above contains opinions they are mine unless marked otherwise. From list-managers-owner Sat Feb 1 22:10:32 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id WAA21333 for list-managers-outgoing; Sat, 1 Feb 1997 22:03:41 -0800 (PST) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [207.167.80.66]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with SMTP id WAA21298 for ; Sat, 1 Feb 1997 22:03:24 -0800 (PST) Received: from [207.167.80.70] (zamboni.plaidworks.com [207.167.80.70]) by plaidworks.com (8.6.9/A/UX 3.1) with ESMTP id WAA04543; Sat, 1 Feb 1997 22:02:15 -0800 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: <199701222307.SAA22835@www6.clever.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 22:01:05 -0800 To: Brad Knowles , CEO@Citadel.Net, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: fresh horror from AOL Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 6:12 AM -0800 1/30/97, Brad Knowles wrote: >It's just the nature of the beast of large >communities -- we don't have any more than our share of clueless >customers (not much, anyway ;-), it's just that because we've got >eight million customers, we've got a lot more total clueless people >than other places. Hate to say it, Brad, but as someone who's defended AOL in the past, I have to now say -- I don't think so. Right now, I'm doing an address verification probe over on solutions.apple.com, sending out mail to each subscribed address to check for bounces. So far, I've sent out about 22,000 of the 52,000 e-mails (I've got the process throttled to avoid overloading any server, including my own, so mail is going out once every 7-10 seconds. It'll take about 5 days to finish the entire probe). As part of the message, I say, quite explicitly and in capital letters, DO NOT REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE. I also give an address that people can mail to if they have questions/problems/need help, whatever. So far, just FWIW, my bounce rate is about 2%. Given that I try to keep my mailing lists pretty clean from bounces, I find that number fascinating, because there seems to be an awful lot of bouncemail that's not getting back to my server. Some servers just seem to not send errors back to bulk priority at all, or do so intermittently, so this standard-class probe is getting a bunch of things sent to it. Of course, a number of people are using this as a hook into getting help, either to update addresses or to get off the lists. That was part of it (and, frankly, the "DO NOT REPLY..." was *just* to see who reads and follows instructions and who doesn't. I was curious). I have picked up about 250 messages in response to this probe of an administrative nature -- that means wanting addresses changed or wanting to be unsubscribed. That ignores vacation bots and the like, which I'm seeing a lot less of than I'd expected. Of that 250 (roughly) messages so far, about 60% are coming to the requested address. The other 40% are from people replying despite the instructions and returning messages to the bounce-test mailbot. Now, for the interesting part. Of that 40% ignoring the instructions, a solid 80% of those are AOL people. Only about 20% of the AOL accounts sending me mail on this followed that instruction. So, I've sent about 3,500 e-mails to AOL accounts, and 18,500 e-mails to non-AOL accounts. My response is about 120 to the wrong address, of which about 95 were AOL addresses. And about 140 to the requested address, of which about 25 were AOL addresses. Right off the bat, there's a discrepancy: AOL responses are about 3.5% of the subscriber base, while for the rest of the net, it's only 0.7%. 80% of those responses were misdirected, either because the users didn't bother to read the instructions or chose not to follow them, while for the rest of the net, that number was quite small. I don't have to run this through a stat package to see it's statistically significant -- AOL users under identical situations are a *LOT* worse at reading and following instructions. They don't bother, or they can't, or whatever. A few, who's responses ranged from haughty to obnoxious to one rather abusive twit sent responses that boiled down to "I don't care what you say, I'm responding here, and dammit, you do what I tell you to do." And the responses I got back from AOL made it clear these folks don't know how to operate the machinery. Period. Despite my system sending instructions on subscription, and re-sending them to the list every two weeks, these people in many cases had no clue how to unsubscribe, had no clue how to get help, never bothered to read any of the instructions, don't know basics like e-mailing postmaster for help -- nothing. And when the information *is* presented to them, there's a high level of simply choosing to ignore it, doing what they want, and assuming it'll work anyway. I'm *not* seeing this from Compuserve (also probed), or earthlink (whihc is probably a very distant second in cluelessness so far), or any other service. It's kinda scary -- AOL users don't read the instructions, don't learn the basics,a dn then just sit back and TAKE IT in a very passive way, or they lash out and start doing random things, like screaming at the list, screaming at users posting to the list -- anything but the right thing. And from my feedback of the last couple of days, they're not terribly interested in learning. They want pack slaves to do all this for them. I'm *not* seeing that, except for a very isolated person here or there, anywhere else, but it's fairly common in the culture of the users I'm working with on AOL right now. This is not good. AOL has a huge amount of work to do to clean up their user base. Statistically, they *are* much different from the rest of the net, and with a high level of cluelessness and a low interest level in learning this stuff. And there's enough arrogance mixed into the mail I'm getting ("I don't know, I don't wnat to know, it's your job to fix this for me") that I'm not interested in defending AOL much right now. They're different, in very negative ways, and if I were to roll these numbers up formally and identify this in detail, I can prove it statistically. I'm not going to bother - the general trends are enough for me. But you ought to know about this, since this is fairly good data that I'm generating in a concentrated form with a good control against AOL, since I'm annoying users across the world equally here... The fact that something like an order of magnitude more AOL users by percentage of subscribers are responding is a huge warning sign all on its own -- because they're responding because they don't have the *basic* information needed to even find a post master or *ask* for help, until some address pops up they can latch onto. That's scary, or it should be, especially since that information is dumped into their mailbox on a regular basis, if they'd only read it. But the other scary thing is they're proving quite conclusively they don't bother to read instructions, and then wonder why things don't work.... Anyway, just some data to chew on. It turns out, from what I can see, that AOL users are different than the rest fo the net, not in positive ways. AOL's *not* just bigger. They're doing a rotten job of educating their users on how to use these internet tools, and their users are doing a rotten job of using the tools we give them, starting with instructions and help files. And I see a general lack of tacking responsibility for themselves and expecting others to take responsibility for them in their responses to me, which also aren't showing up from any other service.... Use, or ignore, as you wish... Data's always fun, because everyone can interpret it differently. This is mine... -- Chuq Von Rospach (chuq@apple.com) Apple IS&T Mail List Gnome Plaidworks Consulting (chuqui@plaidworks.com) ( +-+ The home for Hockey on the net) From list-managers-owner Sat Feb 1 22:40:41 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id WAA26388 for list-managers-outgoing; Sat, 1 Feb 1997 22:37:51 -0800 (PST) Received: from cinna.ultra.net (cinna.ultra.net [199.232.56.8]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with ESMTP id WAA26359 for ; Sat, 1 Feb 1997 22:37:39 -0800 (PST) Received: from voyager (d5.met.ma.ultra.net [209.6.4.5]) by cinna.ultra.net (8.7.4/ult1.04) with SMTP id BAA19586 for ; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 01:36:20 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <2.2.32.19970202063636.006510dc@pop.ma.ultranet.com> X-Sender: stanr@pop.ma.ultranet.com X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (32) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 02 Feb 1997 01:36:36 -0500 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Stan Ryckman Subject: Re: fresh horror from AOL Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Well, here *is* a "fresh horror from AOL," and it has little or nothing to do with its users' cluefulness. Saturday my list just got three bounces from AOL for the *same* message to the *same* user (as shown by Message-ID and Received headers going into AOL via emin27.mail.aol.com). The bounces came from: MRIN21.MAIL.AOL.COM MRIN19.MAIL.AOL.COM MRIN20.MAIL.AOL.COM It's for a user I'd been getting bounces for full mailbox for a couple of days (but only one per message, and from AOL.COM), so I know he's not triply-subscribed via forwards from somewhere. I had already set him to INDEX (this is a LISTSERV list) to reduce bounce volume; this was from an "old" post preceding that action of mine. If I start hearing from MRINxx for large ranges of xx, things could end up even worse than they were though! Cheers, Stan From list-managers-owner Sat Feb 1 23:55:45 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id XAA00176 for list-managers-outgoing; Sat, 1 Feb 1997 23:39:20 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.his.com (mail.his.com [205.177.25.9]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with ESMTP id XAA00146 for ; Sat, 1 Feb 1997 23:38:57 -0800 (PST) Received: from [205.252.121.253] (shiva1-mclean-253.his.com [205.252.121.253]) by mail.his.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id CAA19520; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 02:37:40 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <199701301710.MAA23755@www6.clever.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 01:57:41 -0500 To: CEO@Citadel.Net, list-managers@greatcircle.com From: Brad Knowles Subject: Re: fresh horror from AOL Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 6:12 AM -0500 1/30/1997, Dr. Manion wrote: >Sorry, I haven't seen any of this. I've been on the Internet for more >than two years. I have yet to see anything positive coming from AOL. I've been on the 'net for well over a decade. Maybe you just have to be a more experienced netizen to see all the various things we do to benefit the 'net. -- Brad Knowles, MIME/PGP: brad@his.com comp.mail.sendmail FAQ Maintainer finger brad@his.com for my PGP Public Keys and Geek Code The comp.mail.sendmail FAQ is at From list-managers-owner Sat Feb 1 23:59:28 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id XAA00466 for list-managers-outgoing; Sat, 1 Feb 1997 23:40:52 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.his.com (mail.his.com [205.177.25.9]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with ESMTP id XAA00243 for ; Sat, 1 Feb 1997 23:39:46 -0800 (PST) Received: from [205.252.121.253] (shiva1-mclean-253.his.com [205.252.121.253]) by mail.his.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id CAA19570; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 02:38:22 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <19274.854704024@rivers.dra.hmg.gb> References: <199701301710.MAA23755@www6.clever.net> <199701301710.MAA23755@www6.clever.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 02:22:33 -0500 To: Christopher Samuel , CEO@citadel.net From: Brad Knowles Subject: Re: fresh horror from AOL Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 4:47 AM -0500 1/31/1997, Christopher Samuel wrote: >In that case can I respectfully request that this be taken to private >e-mail between the participants. You certainly won't see any more posts from me on this matter. -- Brad Knowles, MIME/PGP: brad@his.com comp.mail.sendmail FAQ Maintainer finger brad@his.com for my PGP Public Keys and Geek Code The comp.mail.sendmail FAQ is at From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 2 00:03:32 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id XAA00648 for list-managers-outgoing; Sat, 1 Feb 1997 23:44:01 -0800 (PST) Received: from netcom20.netcom.com (netcom20.netcom.com [192.100.81.133]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with SMTP id XAA00636 for ; Sat, 1 Feb 1997 23:43:48 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (arcie@localhost) by netcom20.netcom.com (8.6.13/Netcom) id AAA05876; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 00:42:33 -0700 Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 00:42:33 -0700 (MST) From: Randy Cassingham X-Sender: arcie@netcom20 To: List Managers List Subject: Re: fresh horror from AOL In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19970202063636.006510dc@pop.ma.ultranet.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Sun, 2 Feb 1997, Stan Ryckman wrote: > Well, here *is* a "fresh horror from AOL," and it has little or > nothing to do with its users' cluefulness. > > Saturday my list just got three bounces from AOL for the *same* message > to the *same* user (as shown by Message-ID and Received headers going > into AOL via emin27.mail.aol.com). The bounces came from: > MRIN21.MAIL.AOL.COM > MRIN19.MAIL.AOL.COM > MRIN20.MAIL.AOL.COM It's not an isolated incident -- it's happening to my list, too. Very annoying. / Randy Cassingham * Author, "This is True" * arcie@netcom.com \ | For info on What I Do, send a blank e-mail to TrueInfo@freecom.com | \ or check out * I promise you'll like it / + FIGHT SPAM! Send a blank e-mail to nospam@mailback.com for help! + From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 2 00:07:28 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id XAA00435 for list-managers-outgoing; Sat, 1 Feb 1997 23:40:38 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.his.com (mail.his.com [205.177.25.9]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with ESMTP id XAA00230 for ; Sat, 1 Feb 1997 23:39:35 -0800 (PST) Received: from [205.252.121.253] (shiva1-mclean-253.his.com [205.252.121.253]) by mail.his.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id CAA19565; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 02:38:17 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Jason L Tibbitts III's message of 31 Jan 1997 00:39:13 -0600 <199701310031.TAA12683@www6.clever.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 02:21:40 -0500 To: Paul Graham , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Brad Knowles Subject: Re: Missed point... Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 12:08 AM -0500 2/2/1997, Paul Graham wrote: >indeed. i wonder when aol is going to switch to dsn style bounces. if >your list software permits unchecked subscriptions then you will have >problems. however i do think that aol -- as the largest source of bounced >mail on the Internet -- has some obligation to format bounces in a style >that's at least close to the rfc (e.g. doing failures would be good enough). FITNR -- Fixed In The Next Release. ;-) -- Brad Knowles, MIME/PGP: brad@his.com comp.mail.sendmail FAQ Maintainer finger brad@his.com for my PGP Public Keys and Geek Code The comp.mail.sendmail FAQ is at From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 2 00:10:30 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id XAA00406 for list-managers-outgoing; Sat, 1 Feb 1997 23:40:31 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.his.com (mail.his.com [205.177.25.9]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with ESMTP id XAA00217 for ; Sat, 1 Feb 1997 23:39:32 -0800 (PST) Received: from [205.252.121.253] (shiva1-mclean-253.his.com [205.252.121.253]) by mail.his.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id CAA19559; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 02:38:10 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: "Dr. Manion"'s message of Thu, 30 Jan 1997 18:34:06 +0000 <199701310031.TAA12683@www6.clever.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 02:19:46 -0500 To: Jason L Tibbitts III , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Brad Knowles Subject: Re: Missed point... Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 1:39 AM -0500 1/31/1997, Jason L Tibbitts III wrote: >As far as I'm concerned AOL has provided access for many of the members of >my mailing lists, and has given me another bounce format to try to figure >out. That's about it. As we become more standard, we'll be fixing that last part. We've had to live with some legacy software for a while, and anytime you get yourselves into that kind of position, it takes a while to get it replaced. But we are working on that. We also hope to help fix that first part, by getting even more people online, and therefore even more potential subscribers for you. ;-) -- Brad Knowles, MIME/PGP: brad@his.com comp.mail.sendmail FAQ Maintainer finger brad@his.com for my PGP Public Keys and Geek Code The comp.mail.sendmail FAQ is at From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 2 00:11:05 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id XAA00106 for list-managers-outgoing; Sat, 1 Feb 1997 23:38:42 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.his.com (mail.his.com [205.177.25.9]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with ESMTP id XAA29981 for ; Sat, 1 Feb 1997 23:38:30 -0800 (PST) Received: from [205.252.121.253] (shiva1-mclean-253.his.com [205.252.121.253]) by mail.his.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id CAA19490; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 02:37:06 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <199701301620.LAA09267@zax.leftbank.com> References: from "Brad Knowles" at Jan 30, 97 09:27:13 am Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 01:28:06 -0500 To: "Nathan J. Mehl" From: Brad Knowles Subject: Re: fresh horror from AOL Cc: meo@schoneal.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 11:20 AM -0500 1/30/1997, Nathan J. Mehl wrote: >In the immortal words of Brad Knowles: > >> We are *very* interested in being proper net.citizens, and are >> not only working to adhere to the rules to the best of our ability >> (as model net.citizens), we are also helping to write the rules when >> there is new ground that hasn't really stabilized yet. > >I've said it before, and I'll say it again: if this is the case, >why are unverified accounts still able to send email and post to >usenet? We verify credit cards interactively. You cannot use a fake credit card number to get an AOL account. I'm not sure what else you might mean by "unverified accounts", though. -- Brad Knowles, MIME/PGP: brad@his.com comp.mail.sendmail FAQ Maintainer finger brad@his.com for my PGP Public Keys and Geek Code The comp.mail.sendmail FAQ is at From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 2 00:15:21 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id AAA02019 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 00:09:03 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.his.com (mail.his.com [205.177.25.9]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with ESMTP id AAA01983 for ; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 00:08:38 -0800 (PST) Received: from [205.252.121.253] (shiva1-mclean-253.his.com [205.252.121.253]) by mail.his.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id DAA22071; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 03:07:14 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19970202063636.006510dc@pop.ma.ultranet.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 03:06:20 -0500 To: Stan Ryckman , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Brad Knowles Subject: New fresh horror (was: Re: fresh horror from AOL) Cc: knowlesb@aol.net Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 1:36 AM -0500 2/2/1997, Stan Ryckman wrote: >Well, here *is* a "fresh horror from AOL," and it has little or >nothing to do with its users' cluefulness. > >Saturday my list just got three bounces from AOL for the *same* message >to the *same* user (as shown by Message-ID and Received headers going >into AOL via emin27.mail.aol.com). The bounces came from: > MRIN21.MAIL.AOL.COM > MRIN19.MAIL.AOL.COM > MRIN20.MAIL.AOL.COM I don't believe these machines are in production yet. If you're getting bounces from them, my guess is that some machine on the sending end is horribly misconfigured, or it pointing at a nameserver that has a horribly corrupted cache (I've seen quite a few messages flowing through or attempting to flow through machines that weren't advertised anywhere and weren't ready or available for general production, and from a variety of sources). If you send copies of all of the relevant mail messages (the original plus the bounces from each of these machines) to my work email address (KnowlesB@aol.net), I'll take a look at them tomorrow and see what I can find. -- Brad Knowles, MIME/PGP: brad@his.com comp.mail.sendmail FAQ Maintainer finger brad@his.com for my PGP Public Keys and Geek Code The comp.mail.sendmail FAQ is at From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 2 00:17:03 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id XAA00351 for list-managers-outgoing; Sat, 1 Feb 1997 23:40:19 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.his.com (mail.his.com [205.177.25.9]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with ESMTP id XAA00197 for ; Sat, 1 Feb 1997 23:39:27 -0800 (PST) Received: from [205.252.121.253] (shiva1-mclean-253.his.com [205.252.121.253]) by mail.his.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id CAA19538; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 02:38:01 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <199701310026.TAA11931@www6.clever.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 02:17:34 -0500 To: CEO@Citadel.Net, Bonnie Scott , list-managers@greatcircle.com From: Brad Knowles Subject: Re: fresh horror from AOL Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 1:29 PM -0500 1/30/1997, Dr. Manion wrote: >He himself, stated that anyone could suggest improvements for AOL. >This is not my job. I am not getting paid to do so. That is AOL's >responsibility. Internal staff do make suggestions, but we are only a relatively small groups of people. We cannot assume that we have the sum total knowledge of the world, or even just the Internet, even if we do have 40% of the "brain trust" from IBM's T.J. Watson research center from back when it seriously down-staffed (they have more patents on file than even Lucent Technologies, which used to be AT&T Bell Labs). So, we came up with this idea that we would let *anyone* in the world who thinks they have a good idea submit it to us for consideration as something we could do to help improve the Internet at a whole. I think we're pretty unique in that respect -- I don't know of anyone else in the world running such a project. Of course, a lot of the things we do help both ourselves and the Internet as a whole. I would expect that to be the case, since by definition, we are a part of the Internet, and are the largest single part of it. That's just simple math. >I believe that you missed the point. This is my experience. Your >experience may differ. However, my experience is that AOL has not >provided any benefit to the Internet as a whole. This is my opinion. Everyone is certainly entitled to their opinion. No doubt about that. However, although I certainly disagree with certain marketing moves and/or their timing, I believe it behooves everyone to have as much facts from both sides of the issue before we start making public position statements, especially strong ones. -- Brad Knowles, MIME/PGP: brad@his.com comp.mail.sendmail FAQ Maintainer finger brad@his.com for my PGP Public Keys and Geek Code The comp.mail.sendmail FAQ is at From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 2 00:20:27 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id XAA00467 for list-managers-outgoing; Sat, 1 Feb 1997 23:41:05 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.his.com (mail.his.com [205.177.25.9]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with ESMTP id XAA00358 for ; Sat, 1 Feb 1997 23:40:19 -0800 (PST) Received: from [205.252.121.253] (shiva1-mclean-253.his.com [205.252.121.253]) by mail.his.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id CAA19504; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 02:37:30 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <199701301631.KAA07986@celery.tssi.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 01:55:42 -0500 To: nolan@tssi.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.com (List Managers) From: Brad Knowles Subject: Re: fresh horror from AOL Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 11:31 AM -0500 1/30/1997, Mike Nolan wrote: >There was a time when AOL was a whole lot less cooperative when dealing with >standards and netiquette. I think their mail blocker is a good idea, but >still needs refinement to deal with the issues we've been discussing here. As the guy who's going to be implementing a large part of whatever we may be doing in the future for dealing with certain types of mail, I can guarantee you we've got quite a few techniques in mind. When we actually roll them out, you better hope you're not anywhere near the systems that these bozos are using. >I've got over 100 AOL subscribers on my lists, and I have a lot more trouble >from other services with a lot fewer subscribers. (But, if AOL would just >increase their mailbox size...) Well, we already allow them 550 messages. Since we limit Internet mail to a maximum of 2MB (assuming you're sending attachments), this means we allow each user up to ~1.6GB mailbox storage space (internally, attachments can be up to 15MB in size, so this would be ~8.2GB, if you were talking about only internal mail). Show me another place on the planet that allows their users to build up mailboxes this large. >And being the big dog, AOL is going to be the whipping boy for the industry. >(Compuserve and Prodigy took their lumps, too.) Yup. Life is tough being the top dog, but I'll be one of the first to take potshots at AOL if I think they're doing stupid stuff. What I don't appreciate is public bashing by people who don't have all the facts. >BTW, my 11 year old son keeps pointing out that AOL is still running some >spot TV ads. I believe that the settlement was to not run ads in areas where the access points are full, and beyond that we would advertise only enough to keep a steady-state membership of eight million users, until such time as we've spent that 330 million to upgrade our systems, and have the necessary capacity. -- Brad Knowles, MIME/PGP: brad@his.com comp.mail.sendmail FAQ Maintainer finger brad@his.com for my PGP Public Keys and Geek Code The comp.mail.sendmail FAQ is at From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 2 00:22:28 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id XAA00344 for list-managers-outgoing; Sat, 1 Feb 1997 23:40:15 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.his.com (mail.his.com [205.177.25.9]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with ESMTP id XAA00188 for ; Sat, 1 Feb 1997 23:39:25 -0800 (PST) Received: from [205.252.121.253] (shiva1-mclean-253.his.com [205.252.121.253]) by mail.his.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id CAA19526; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 02:37:45 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <199701301837.NAA16899@Thinkage.On.CA> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 02:07:53 -0500 To: Ken Dykes , list-managers@greatcircle.com From: Brad Knowles Subject: Re: Stale horror from AOL Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 1:37 PM -0500 1/30/1997, Ken Dykes wrote: >while Brad writes a reasonable message, i must take one minor exception... > >>Date: Thu, 30 Jan 1997 09:17:26 -0500 >>From: Brad Knowles >>Subject: Re: fresh horror from AOL >> >> Check the comp.mail.sendmail FAQ. That wouldn't get written >>without their [AOL] support. Check all the mailing lists run on > >of course it would have been. >dont presume that just because AOL do something that it wouldn't have >been done otherwise. No, although I was maintaining it when I was hired, I guarantee you that I wouldn't have had the time or interest to continue for much longer, had I not been hired into a position where I would be implementing that sort of thing on a daily basis and managing the resulting systems. The original sendmail FAQ as it was certainly wouldn't have gotten much work at all, had I not taken it over from Eric. And I don't believe that there would have been anyone interested or willing to take it over if I'd let the thing drop a year and a half ago. >so, if AOL is so supportive of sendmail users, when will AOL's own mail >software do the sendmail-thing with respect to "Precedence: list (or bulk)" >and NOT send back whole digests just to say "user invalid". That's a flaw in the way our gateway system works, and we are spending millions of dollars to replace the whole thing (removing our dependance on sendmail for that function). At that point, we will generate "invalid user" email messages during the collection phase, and it will be up to the sending MTA to generate the bounce and send it back (which would be whatever MTA your mailing list management package uses). Since we will have never accepted the message in the first place (at least, not to that recipient), there will be no possibility for us to cause the bounce to mis-delivered. And by the way, if you'll check the README that ships with sendmail (up to 8.8.5), you'll note that I personally have made several suggestions or actual contributions of code. I am particularly proud of the fact that support for TCP-Wrappers is now integrated, so that Email Administrators across the world can have access to this very powerful tool to help them control abuse of their systems. I could not possibly have made those contributions, were I not at a place like AOL where those kinds of issues came up, and where the results end up benefitting everyone. >you'd think the resulting massive reduction in bandwith at their own >gateways would be to their own advantage... Yup, it would. And it will. We've been working on this replacement system for several months now, and it's finally getting to the point where we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. But we've had to make sure that it got implemented right the first time, so that we don't have the same kinds of problems as CompuServe did when they first rolled out their new gateway system. -- Brad Knowles, MIME/PGP: brad@his.com comp.mail.sendmail FAQ Maintainer finger brad@his.com for my PGP Public Keys and Geek Code The comp.mail.sendmail FAQ is at From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 2 00:24:05 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id AAA02018 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 00:09:01 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.his.com (mail.his.com [205.177.25.9]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with ESMTP id AAA01984 for ; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 00:08:38 -0800 (PST) Received: from [205.252.121.253] (shiva1-mclean-253.his.com [205.252.121.253]) by mail.his.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id DAA22047; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 03:06:58 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: <199701222307.SAA22835@www6.clever.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 03:00:01 -0500 To: Chuq Von Rospach , CEO@Citadel.Net, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Brad Knowles Subject: Educating large masses of users (was: Re: fresh horror from AOL) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 1:01 AM -0500 2/2/1997, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: >Anyway, just some data to chew on. It turns out, from what I can see, >that AOL users are different than the rest fo the net, not in positive >ways. AOL's *not* just bigger. They're doing a rotten job of educating >their users on how to use these internet tools, and their users are >doing a rotten job of using the tools we give them, starting with >instructions and help files. And I see a general lack of tacking >responsibility for themselves and expecting others to take >responsibility for them in their responses to me, which also aren't >showing up from any other service.... I guess this means I'm going to have to violate my most recent statement in this thread. I've read this note, and I've known you long enough to know that there is no need to do the statistical analysis. You've convinced me that I was wrong, and that we do have significantly higher percentage of clueless users than the average. We clearly need to educate our users better. But, taking my AOL hat off now, how would you educate a large user community like this? I mean, the average Usenet poster seems quite clueless enough (give most of the posts I've read and personal email messages I get from people asking me to solve their problem for them), and quite incapable of reading the amazingly complete and accurate array of information that can be found in the FAQ archives. I mean, you can lead a user to the FAQ Archives, but you can't make them drink from the Font of Knowledge or the Well of Wisdom. How, then, do we educate a community of users that is even more clueless than this average? Up until a few months ago, it took a fairly significant investment of money to get on the 'net -- probably something like $1000 for the computer, then you had to understand how to hook up a modem to it, and use whatever software (whether it's AOL or something else) to get online. But now, you've got WebTV. $300, and it does everything for you -- you just have to plug in three cables (one power, one video, one telephone). The ISP access provided by AT&T WorldNet (and the RBOCs) are going to create similar problems -- Internet "dialtone" for many people will now be provided by the same folks who provide their "voice dialtone". You think eight million users creates a concentrated percentage of clueless users? Try 250 million, and that's just in the U.S. How can we educate a community like this? I mean, this is a group of people, the vast majority of whom can't even fix the blinking "12:00" on their VCRs -- how can we possibly hope to educate them to a level we consider minimally acceptable? As a guy who sees the FAQ he currently maintains growing ad infinitum (as I dumb it down further and further, to try and answer more and more basic questions), I'm beginning to get quite disheartened here. Does anyone have any ideas? -- Brad Knowles, MIME/PGP: brad@his.com comp.mail.sendmail FAQ Maintainer finger brad@his.com for my PGP Public Keys and Geek Code The comp.mail.sendmail FAQ is at From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 2 00:26:47 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id XAA00162 for list-managers-outgoing; Sat, 1 Feb 1997 23:39:06 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.his.com (mail.his.com [205.177.25.9]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with ESMTP id XAA00118 for ; Sat, 1 Feb 1997 23:38:44 -0800 (PST) Received: from [205.252.121.253] (shiva1-mclean-253.his.com [205.252.121.253]) by mail.his.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id CAA19494; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 02:37:12 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <199701301651.LAA20750@www6.clever.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 01:48:14 -0500 To: CEO@Citadel.Net, list-managers@greatcircle.com From: Brad Knowles Subject: RE: Fresh horror from AOL Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 5:53 AM -0500 1/30/1997, Dr. Manion wrote: >This wasn't a bash on AOL this was a statement of fact. If AOL was >truly responsible it wouldn't have taken the threat of court action to >get them to take action. I've got this *wonderful* little joke I found at work. When I get there Monday morning, I'll forward it to myself at home, then onto the list. However, let me summarize it here: You see, this guy threatens to sue the telephone companies, because sometimes he tries to call someone (especially on a holiday like Mother's Day), and all he gets is busy signals. Obviously, the phone company is incompetent and should be sued for selling him a service he can't use. Likewise, he's going to sue every government on the face of the planet, because when he goes out onto the highway at rush hour, he has to wait in traffic. He's also going to sue every bank and other financial institution in the world, because they obviously should have increased their capacity so that he wouldn't have to wait in line. In addition, he's going to sue the cable companies for all those times when he turned on the set and the reception wasn't perfect, or when he had to wait on the phone while they processed his order for some pay-per-view service. Suffice it to say that it puts into very real perspective what it's like for people to file suit against us for not having sufficient capacity. However, don't misunderstand me -- I'll be the first person to speak up and say that AOL screwed up *royally* in not having more hardware in place sooner. Unfortunately, that was a decision made somewhere above the level of the people who have to try to manage this system (i.e., all us technical guys who had some clue as to how ludicrous this concept was), and we have just had to live with it. Now, you try working fourteen-plus hours a day trying to hold a system together with your bare hands, and we'll see how you react when you see the kind of AOL-bashing I've seen here. I guarantee you that everyone in Operations is literally working their butt off (and endangering their marriages, etc...) to keep this system up and working, and more importantly, to expand the system quickly enough that we can catch up to and overtake the growth we've seen, so that we can get ahead of that damn eight-ball. If you want to help us in that process, please do. If you have a problem with some part of the system right now, if you bring that to our attention in a reasonably professional manner, we'll do everything we can to help you get that problem solved (given the physical constraints of how many seconds there are in a minute, how many minutes there are in a day, how many days there are in a year, how fast our vendors can roll hardware out their doors, etc...). >There are all kinds of excuses that AOL has for their actions. They >have the resources to first run "controlled tests" of their email >before providing it. Whatever problems their email or subscribers >cause is still their responsibility *not* the responsibility of the >listowners who are providing service to everyone. We do controlled tests. In fact, from what I know of the sizes of the other largest systems on the 'net, our *test* systems are as large as or larger than the *production* systems of most of our competitors. However, that fact means that there are some issues of scale that simply will not show up until something is rolled out into production, because there is nothing else on the planet that is of the same scale and type. In addition, no matter how big your test systems are, there are simply some things that are esoteric enough that they cannot possibly all be tested. If that were the case, then nothing but perfect code would roll out of Microsoft's offices in Redmond, because they've got more money to spend on testing their various OSes and applications than anyone else in the world, and yet their code is buggier than most anyone else I can think of. I can only assume that they don't really care, or they could at least do better than they currently manage (knowing something of operating and testing very large systems, I would never expect them to be perfect). >AOL is a commercial service and despite illusions of grandeur, >doesn't own the Internet. I personally wasted three days cleaning up >after AOL. Three days which could have better spent elsewhere. In all likelihood, if you compare the amount of time spent cleaning up per user, we're not costing you much more effort or money per users, it's the fact that we have 20% of the entire Internet population on AOL. I'd say our "error" rates per capita are probably about as low as or lower than most any other site on the 'net, it's just that we have so many more users than any other site on the 'net. At least, I say this based on my own experience as a list manager (in my private life), and on my conversations with other list managers (over the years). If this is not true for your particular list, then there must be something unique about your list that is causing you more problems than most others. -- Brad Knowles, MIME/PGP: brad@his.com comp.mail.sendmail FAQ Maintainer finger brad@his.com for my PGP Public Keys and Geek Code The comp.mail.sendmail FAQ is at From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 2 07:25:43 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id HAA20242 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 07:22:14 -0800 (PST) Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE (searn.sunet.se [192.36.125.4]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with SMTP id HAA20226 for ; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 07:22:05 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199702021522.HAA20226@miles.greatcircle.com> Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE by SEARN.SUNET.SE (IBM VM SMTP V2R3) with BSMTP id 5663; Sun, 02 Feb 97 16:15:01 +0100 Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE (NJE origin ERIC@SEARN) by SEARN.SUNET.SE (LMail V1.2c/1.8c) with RFC822 id 9446; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 16:15:01 +0100 Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 16:11:43 +0100 From: Eric Thomas Subject: Re: fresh horror from AOL To: List Managers In-Reply-To: Message of Sun, 2 Feb 1997 01:55:42 -0500 from list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Sun, 2 Feb 1997 01:55:42 -0500 Brad Knowles said: > Well, we already allow them 550 messages. Since we limit >Internet mail to a maximum of 2MB (assuming you're sending attachments), >this means we allow each user up to ~1.6GB mailbox storage space I have no problem with that, however it would be really nice if people were allowed to accumulate more mail as long as the total did not exceed 20M or whatever quota you felt comfortable with. Maybe even as a premium service costing another $2/month or whatever. To give just one example, there's a lot (as list owner demographics go) of people trying to run moderated lists on AOL and finding it very difficult to cope with long weekends or the like when they are away for 3-4 days. Yet some of them are not comfortable enough with other services and want to stay on AOL. Eric From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 2 09:40:35 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id JAA24809 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 09:30:19 -0800 (PST) Received: from eagle.inetnebr.com (eagle.inetnebr.com [199.184.119.14]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with ESMTP id JAA24800 for ; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 09:30:08 -0800 (PST) Received: from carrot.tssi.com (root@gateway.tssi.com [198.147.197.29]) by eagle.inetnebr.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA01548; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 11:28:25 -0600 (CST) Received: from celery.tssi.com (carrot.tssi.com) by carrot.tssi.com (8.6.12/8.6.9) with ESMTP id LAA12366; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 11:28:26 -0600 Received: (from celery.tssi.com) by celery.tssi.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id LAA12221; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 11:28:25 -0600 From: Mike Nolan Message-Id: <199702021728.LAA12221@celery.tssi.com> Subject: AOL mailbox limit, hig volume lists in general To: brad@his.com (Brad Knowles) Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 11:28:24 -0600 (CST) Cc: nolan@tssi.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: from "Brad Knowles" at Feb 2, 97 01:55:42 am Reply-To: nolan@tssi.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Brad Knowles wrote: > Well, we [AOL] already allow them 550 messages. Since we limit > Internet mail to a maximum of 2MB (assuming you're sending > attachments), this means we allow each user up to ~1.6GB mailbox > storage space (internally, attachments can be up to 15MB in size, so > this would be ~8.2GB, if you were talking about only internal mail). The problem is the fixed number of messages. I'd much rather see a disk quota limit, perhaps as an option. That way users who choose to subscribe to busy lists like mine (the average message is under 1K, but I've been known to send out over 100 messages in a single day) don't fill up just because they take a long weekend off as long as they stay within their disk quota. (I do offer a daily digest, I'll make sure my AOL subscribers know it is one way around the full mailbox syndrome, although at the cost of losing some immediacy.) > >BTW, my 11 year old son keeps pointing out that AOL is still running some > >spot TV ads. > > I believe that the settlement was to not run ads in areas where > the access points are full, and beyond that we would advertise only > enough to keep a steady-state membership of eight million users, > until such time as we've spent that 330 million to upgrade our > systems, and have the necessary capacity. Well, one of the places I'm seeing the ads is on the Preview Channel, but I don't know if their ads are different on every cable service that carries it. (I'm in Lincoln, Nebraska, and according to the local media AOL lines are busy here a lot--in fact that's why I dropped my AOL subscription 3 or so years ago, I could never get on so I found a better provider for me.) Mentioning my traffic level raises a question, so to return to the general subject of mailing list management, what do other list managers running high volume lists do about bounces? If I'm sending out 100 messages a day, that means I'm sending out one every few minutes. A two or three hour outage (unfortunately, still common on the Internet) means I can get a dozen or more bounces from a single subscriber, well above the bounce threshold for most list packages. I really don't want to kick people off my lists just because of a transient net problem, because it winds up generating a lot of traffic to me about 'what happened to my subscription?' so to get around this, on my most active lists I've raised the limit. As a result I've been known to get a thousand bounces in a single day. Are there packages that can discriminate between different classes of bounces and handle them differently in terms of deciding whether or not to purge the subscriber? (Procmail/Smartlist doesn't, except for 'warning' messages, which technically aren't bounces anyway. Speaking of which, aren't non-delivery notices sort of unnecessary these days for bulk mail, to to mention nearly as much of an annoyance as 'message opened' notices?) One thought I've had was that to keep track by days rather than by number of bounces. (3 consecutive days of bounced messages and you're off.) Unfortunately, if I'm sending out 100 messages/day, that makes things worse, because I've got my limit set at something like 40 bounces right now. Since I'm in free association here, I've seen packages (majordomo-based) that rolled bounced users over to a daily 'bounce notice' list, is anyone rolling bounced users over to some kind of digest form as an intermediate step before purging them? (That would have the advantage of putting my AOL users on a list form that takes up fewer of their 550 mailbox slots.) -- Mike Nolan From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 2 10:10:36 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id KAA25613 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 10:08:03 -0800 (PST) Received: from eagle.inetnebr.com (eagle.inetnebr.com [199.184.119.14]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with ESMTP id KAA25606 for ; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 10:07:54 -0800 (PST) Received: from carrot.tssi.com (root@gateway.tssi.com [198.147.197.29]) by eagle.inetnebr.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA02349 for ; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 12:06:38 -0600 (CST) Received: from celery.tssi.com (carrot.tssi.com) by carrot.tssi.com (8.6.12/8.6.9) with ESMTP id MAA12914 for ; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 12:06:36 -0600 Received: (from celery.tssi.com) by celery.tssi.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id MAA12974 for list-managers@GreatCircle.com; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 12:06:34 -0600 From: Mike Nolan Message-Id: <199702021806.MAA12974@celery.tssi.com> Subject: Re: AOL mailbox limit, hig volume lists in general To: list-managers@GreatCircle.com (List Managers) Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 12:06:34 -0600 (CST) Reply-To: nolan@tssi.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk The following bouce struck me as being highly appropriate to the subject matter under discussion, not to mention a bit ironic. I don't know if my list management software would recognize this as a bounce, but wouldn't it be a good idea if the message indicated what the limit being exceeded was? BTW, the bounce included the full text of my message, so apparently Sprynet doesn't truncate bounces on bulk mail, either. -- Mike Nolan Forwarded message: > From root@m4.sprynet.com Sun Feb 2 11:52:28 1997 > Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 09:47:14 -0800 > Message-Id: <199702021747.JAA25397@m4.sprynet.com> > To: nolan@tssi.com > References: <199702021728.LAA12221@celery.tssi.com> > In-Reply-To: <199702021728.LAA12221@celery.tssi.com> > X-Loop: postmaster@sprynet.com > From: Interserv Operations > Subject: Re: AOL mailbox limit, hig volume lists in general [delivery failure to foodfant@m4.sprynet.com] > > The message that you sent to the above recipient was not delivered. All mail > sent to this account will continue to be returned until the recipient has > removed enough mail to lower the mailbox size below the system mailbox limit. > > -- > > Sprynet Network Operations Center Postmaster@sprynet.com > 2001 6th Ave. Suite 3025B noc@interserv.net > Seattle, WA. 95121 CompuServe/Internet Division From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 2 10:40:41 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id KAA26934 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 10:37:04 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.proper.com (mail.proper.com [206.86.127.224]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with ESMTP id KAA26927 for ; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 10:36:48 -0800 (PST) Received: from [165.227.249.100] (dharma.proper.com [165.227.249.100]) by mail.proper.com (8.8.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id KAA09875; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 10:34:26 -0800 (PST) X-Sender: paulh@mail.proper.com Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: <199701222307.SAA22835@www6.clever.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 10:36:52 -0800 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Paul Hoffman Subject: Re: Educating large masses of users Cc: Brad Knowles , Chuq Von Rospach Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk (Disclaimer: both AOL and Apple are members of IMC.) Since this is the list-managers mailing list, let's keep this focused on mailing lists. AOL has not done a great job of helping their members understand how to get on, get off, and be nice members of mailing lists. Unfortunately, the same can be said for Apple and its employees, from my personal list management experience (I say "unfortunately" because I'm a card-carrying Mac enthusiast). The issue of mailing list education goes way beyond finger-pointing and accusing. Today, AOL attracts more people who are probably harder to educate about the Internet than other ISPs do. However, I believe that we are rapidly running out of new Internet users who are easily trained, and we are about to see new users from all ISPs starting to look like the clueless (and sometimes abusive) AOL users that list managers dread. Corporate employees, even at computer manufacturers like Apple, have either chosen to get on the Internet before today, or have chosen not to. Those who have chosen not to but change their minds (probably involuntarily) this year represent a challenge to all mailing list owners. Instead of having just one email interface, they'll have many, many of them not native Internet applications, often written by companies that were actively antagonistic to the Internet. So, what can we do to educate the members of our lists? What can we do to reduce the problems caused by the users who can't/won't be educated about the basics? Is this an issue of education or enforcement? --Paul Hoffman, Director --Internet Mail Consortium From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 2 10:55:32 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id KAA27135 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 10:41:38 -0800 (PST) Received: from urth.acsu.buffalo.edu (urth.acsu.buffalo.edu [128.205.7.9]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with SMTP id KAA27117 for ; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 10:41:23 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 15335 invoked by uid 305); 2 Feb 1997 18:40:09 -0000 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: AOL mailbox limit, hig volume lists in general References: <199702021728.LAA12221@celery.tssi.com> From: Paul Graham Date: 02 Feb 1997 13:40:08 -0500 In-Reply-To: Mike Nolan's message of Sun, 2 Feb 1997 11:28:24 -0600 (CST) Message-ID: Lines: 30 X-Mailer: Gnus v5.4.9/Emacs 19.34 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk listserv handles most bounces directly. addresses are removed when either a time or volume threshold has been passed. this sort of approach is vital if you have busy lists. i believe it also distinguishes between transient and permanent failures (as dsn encodes them). after you do this you have to deal with broken mailers that return bounces to the From: line and annoying mailers that don't use dsn format (or really annoying mailers like sendmail 8.6 that use mime but don't do dsn or x400 gateways that return random looking junk that isn't worth trying to parse). despite my profound annoyance at the way aol works at least their bounce format can be trivially converted to dsn (so why don't they do it?). another approach is to simply discard all bounces and periodically probe or confirm addresses. btw, bounces remain useful for people who want to prune lists but don't want to or can't do probes or reconfirmations. >>>>> "Mike" == Mike Nolan writes: Mike> Mentioning my traffic level raises a question, so to return to Mike> the general subject of mailing list management, what do other Mike> list managers running high volume lists do about bounces? -- paul pjg@acsu.Buffalo.EDU |public keys at: | http://urth.acsu.Buffalo.EDU/~pjg/key.html if the above contains opinions they are mine unless marked otherwise. From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 2 11:40:41 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id LAA29118 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 11:39:21 -0800 (PST) Received: from OCELOT.RUTGERS.EDU (ocelot.rutgers.edu [128.6.11.33]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with SMTP id LAA29078 for ; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 11:36:36 -0800 (PST) Received: from mbcl.rutgers.edu by mbcl.rutgers.edu (PMDF #12194) id <01IEXZM61XYW9AN0LG@mbcl.rutgers.edu>; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 14:33 EDT Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 14:33 EDT From: "E. Allen Smith" Subject: Re: Educating large masses of users (was: Re: fresh horror from AOL) To: brad@his.com Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Message-id: <01IEXZM61XYW9AN0LG@mbcl.rutgers.edu> X-Envelope-to: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM X-VMS-To: IN%"brad@his.com" X-VMS-Cc: IN%"list-managers@GreatCircle.COM" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk From: IN%"brad@his.com" "Brad Knowles" 2-FEB-1997 03:29:09.36 > I've read this note, and I've known you long enough to know that >there is no need to do the statistical analysis. You've convinced me >that I was wrong, and that we do have significantly higher percentage >of clueless users than the average. What proportion of _new_ (say, have used Internet email for less than 3 months total) users does AOL have, both as a proportion of AOL users and as a proportion of new users on the Internet? These would appear to be more significant statistics than the proportion of Internet users going via AOL (20%, as you've said before). I suspect the result would tend to confirm your above statement, and Chuq (sp?)'s findings. > But, taking my AOL hat off now, how would you educate a large >user community like this? I mean, the average Usenet poster seems >quite clueless enough (give most of the posts I've read and personal >email messages I get from people asking me to solve their problem for >them), and quite incapable of reading the amazingly complete and >accurate array of information that can be found in the FAQ archives. >I mean, you can lead a user to the FAQ Archives, but you can't make >them drink from the Font of Knowledge or the Well of Wisdom. I would personally attribute this to A. failures in the educational system; B. liberals busily trying to make sure (and succeeding in convincing people that this _should_ be the case) that people don't have to take care of themselves in regards to income; C. conservatives busily trying to make sure (and succeeding in convincing people that this _should_ be the case) that people don't have to take care of themselves in regards to ideas. (If you aren't a libertarian like me, feel free to delete either B or C as appropriate for your consideration; blaming either side works almost as well as both.) This manifestation is a syndrome that I've seen a lot of, and that I'll be commenting on further. In other words, most people today can't figure something out from simple pre-packaged information; they have to be hand-held. And with a lot lower proportion of experienced to new users on AOL (and on the other quickly-expanding services you mention below), the hand-holding doesn't happen. > How, then, do we educate a community of users that is even more >clueless than this average? Well, A. convince the marketing people not to expand so fast (the recent debacle with expanding too fast in terms of hardware may teach them something... or it may just show exactly how little they're thinking about things like this); and B. don't make things so easy for within-service stuff. The latter appears insane... until you understand what I mean (I hope). First, people who are used to having to work to understand how to get stuff within a service to work will be used to having to work to understand stuff outside of a service. They won't be used to unnecessary levels of hand-holding (as opposed to the necessary variety I spoke of earlier) and to service providers being nice to them despite impoliteness, _determined_ cluelessness, and (to put it bluntly) idiocy. (Of course, part of this is that syndrome I mentioned earlier... that essentially says (in this case) that people who you're not paying to be nice to you should be just as nice to you as people you are paying.) Second, they'll have had to figure out things on their own - which is about the only way I know of to teach people to keep on doing that. (I will comment that GUIs are pretty bad about this, at least for those that (unlike me) find them easy to use. They don't teach you anything about the guts of the computer. When you're used to clicking on a nice dialog box to request help from someone official, you aren't used to figuring out who to send the help request to when it isn't for a dialog box.) Third, it filters out the idiots, both those who are dumb to start with and those who are effectively so because of that syndrome. (I mean no insult to _all_ AOL, etcetera users by this statement; I have a number of friends and family members who use AOL. It's just that making things too easy to do without _learning_ and _thinking_ has this effect.) Now, there is some user-friendliness that should be increased... namely, those aspects that make it less likely that the user will bother someone who isn't being paid for the job. The mail controls bug recently mentioned here is a definite example - having mail bouncing that's coming from someone you've sent mail to is more of a problem for the blockee than the blocker. > Up until a few months ago, it took a fairly significant >investment of money to get on the 'net -- probably something like >$1000 for the computer, then you had to understand how to hook up a >modem to it, and use whatever software (whether it's AOL or something >else) to get online. > But now, you've got WebTV. $300, and it does everything for you >-- you just have to plug in three cables (one power, one video, one >telephone). The ISP access provided by AT&T WorldNet (and the RBOCs) >are going to create similar problems -- Internet "dialtone" for many >people will now be provided by the same folks who provide their >"voice dialtone". Yeah. I'm worried about it too. I'm considering having subscription by an approval-only process... and having the default approval for WebTV, Juno, and (I'm afraid) AOL being no approval. Unless someone's got someone else I know who'll recommend them, they may not be able to get on my list. I don't want to do this... but I will if I have to. Incidentally, I'm not _that_ worried about the AT&T et al stuff, unlike the WebTV et al. Quite simply, I doubt they're going to be very good at being too user-friendly. > You think eight million users creates a concentrated percentage >of clueless users? Try 250 million, and that's just in the U.S. Yeah. I don't know if educational systems, politics, etcetera in Europe, Japan, et al will be worse or better than the ones in the US. I suspect worse in the case of Europe (hand-holding like Germany's belief that it will go Nazi again if it doesn't block _icons_ of swasticas (see CorelDraw, as I recall), plus the overall welfare state); I suspect something in between worse and better in the case of Japan. (They seem likely (as a _vast_ (over)generalization) to be about as clueless (educational systems based on memorization don't encourage thinking), but not to be as noisy about it.) > As a guy who sees the FAQ he currently maintains growing ad >infinitum (as I dumb it down further and further, to try and answer >more and more basic questions), I'm beginning to get quite >disheartened here. Same here. That's one reason that the mailing list I'm getting ready to run (when grad school gives me the time...) will be called Meritocracy. > Does anyone have any ideas? I'm sorry if I've been too discouraging, or too appearing of trolling (I'm not, honest... not that such a claim does much good). I'm not meaning to get into an argument, especially not on the list. Some may call me cynical; I consider myself realistic. I'll be happy to _discuss_ this with those of the optimist persuasion. -Allen From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 2 13:46:57 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id NAA08210 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 13:29:14 -0800 (PST) Received: from deepthought.armory.com (deepthought.armory.com [192.122.209.42]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with SMTP id NAA08162 for ; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 13:28:27 -0800 (PST) Received: from clovis by deepthought.armory.com id aa28013; 2 Feb 97 13:27 PST Received: by clovis.nerdnosh.org (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Sun, 02 Feb 97 11:20:23 PST for list-managers@greatcircle.com To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: fresh horror from AOL From: Tim Bowden Message-ID: Date: Sun, 02 Feb 97 11:16:10 PST In-Reply-To: Organization: NERDNOSH - the story conference as cyber-community! Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Brad Knowles writes: > At 1:29 PM -0500 1/30/1997, Dr. Manion wrote: > >I believe that you missed the point. This is my experience. Your > >experience may differ. However, my experience is that AOL has not > >provided any benefit to the Internet as a whole. This is my opinion. Examples? I'm not sure what Mother Theresa ISP might be expected to perform for the neighborhood, other than provide access to her users which did not overly burden the community at large. Should AOL build a charity homeless hospital on the net, maybe for old disgruntled Source users? --- mailto:tcbowden@clovis.nerdnosh.org (Tim Bowden) Proud member of NERDNOSH (tm)! mailto:info@clovis.nerdnosh.org http://www.corcom.com/reloj/Nerdnosh.html From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 2 13:50:31 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id NAA08209 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 13:29:10 -0800 (PST) Received: from deepthought.armory.com (deepthought.armory.com [192.122.209.42]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with SMTP id NAA08161 for ; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 13:28:27 -0800 (PST) Received: from clovis by deepthought.armory.com id aa28007; 2 Feb 97 13:27 PST Received: by clovis.nerdnosh.org (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Sun, 02 Feb 97 11:11:26 PST for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: fresh horror from AOL From: Tim Bowden Message-ID: <0sii2D2w165w@clovis.nerdnosh.org> Date: Sun, 02 Feb 97 11:03:57 PST In-Reply-To: Organization: NERDNOSH - the story conference as cyber-community! Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Brad Knowles writes: > We verify credit cards interactively. You cannot use a fake > credit card number to get an AOL account. I'm not sure what else you > might mean by "unverified accounts", though. Possibly: a verified user simply switches his account name. He is now BombasterX@aol.com. He sends a stream of garbage, perhaps even a load of system demands to the last list he was justifiably kicked off. He drops his alias before the material comes back, which of course bounces, which of course adds a heavy load to the system he's bombing, which was his intent. Here's my experience: if I complain about an isolated user to AOL, there is a chance I will see a rather prompt, courtesous, and helpful reply. If I bring to them a possible liability, such as the above (which I have), I will hear total silence. They will not so much as acknowledge my mail. Now, this may've been 1995, and it may have been rare, but there was some dud on AOL sent a resource bomb as I've described to bring down my small system, and AOL did not respond to my repeated demands they take action and inform. I suspect from that the legal department kicks in whenever there is potential for liability, and I wonder if other listowners have seen that sort of non-response. --- mailto:tcbowden@clovis.nerdnosh.org (Tim Bowden) Proud member of NERDNOSH (tm)! mailto:info@clovis.nerdnosh.org http://www.corcom.com/reloj/Nerdnosh.html From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 2 13:55:34 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id NAA08211 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 13:29:16 -0800 (PST) Received: from deepthought.armory.com (deepthought.armory.com [192.122.209.42]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with SMTP id NAA08159 for ; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 13:28:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from clovis by deepthought.armory.com id aa28001; 2 Feb 97 13:27 PST Received: by clovis.nerdnosh.org (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Sun, 02 Feb 97 11:00:35 PST for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: fresh horror from AOL From: Tim Bowden Message-ID: Date: Sun, 02 Feb 97 10:40:33 PST In-Reply-To: Organization: NERDNOSH - the story conference as cyber-community! Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Chuq Von Rospach writes: > At 6:12 AM -0800 1/30/97, Brad Knowles wrote: > > It's just the nature of the beast of large > >communities -- we don't have any more than our share of clueless > >customers (not much, anyway ;-), it's just that because we've got > >eight million customers, we've got a lot more total clueless people > >than other places. > > Hate to say it, Brad, but as someone who's defended AOL in the past, I > have to now say -- I don't think so. I think a good reference point to identify anyone is how they come to be where they are. It works in parenting, politics, and `Hey, dood, where you comin' from?' Setting up a PPP account with most any other ISP is vastly different than a simple dial-in you access because you picked up a glossy mag at the newstand and a disk inviting you to follow the easy clicks to Internet nirvana dropped on your shoes. When I first took up the other accounts I have used, I had to go over docs just to connect, and continue to read in order to stay aboard, and read more to make the various parts work together. It's precisely the problem in education - to raise self-esteem, many are given the point-and-click option, yet when they arrive where they are supposed to perform, they are lost. You can't sell a product based strictly on glitzy ease-of-use and expect to produce qualified engineers. That said, let me also declare right here that I have seen some avid, engaged feedback from support at AOL backstage, both from the individuals who compile and keep current Mailing List data and on the occasions when some garbage spews forth from their vast army of unwashed users. They ain't ogres at AOL, it's just that they're caught in this vast chain of events partly caused by themselves, much like the New York Jets. --- mailto:tcbowden@clovis.nerdnosh.org (Tim Bowden) Proud member of NERDNOSH (tm)! mailto:info@clovis.nerdnosh.org http://www.corcom.com/reloj/Nerdnosh.html From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 2 13:58:24 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id NAA07734 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 13:21:56 -0800 (PST) Received: from webdreams.com (www.webdreams.com [192.80.84.132]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with SMTP id NAA07727 for ; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 13:21:38 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost by webdreams.com (5.65v3.2/1.1.10.5/29Aug96-0251AM) id AA12492; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 16:20:23 -0500 Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 16:20:23 -0500 (EST) From: Brock Rozen To: Brad Knowles Cc: CEO@Citadel.Net, list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: RE: Fresh horror from AOL In-Reply-To: Message-Id: X-Url: http://www.webdreams.com/~brozen Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Sun, 2 Feb 1997, Brad Knowles wrote: > > If you want to help us in that process, please do. If you have a > problem with some part of the system right now, if you bring that to > our attention in a reasonably professional manner, we'll do > everything we can to help you get that problem solved (given the > physical constraints of how many seconds there are in a minute, how > many minutes there are in a day, how many days there are in a year, > how fast our vendors can roll hardware out their doors, etc...). I have to agree with Brad on this, from experience. I'm not affiliated with AOL, but I am a list-manager for two systems with tens of thousands of subscribers. Whenever I've had a problem with AOL, I've approached Brad and he's been very helpful to me. Brad, if anything, I want to let you know that there's at least one person out there who appreciates you and the people in your department. > >There are all kinds of excuses that AOL has for their actions. They > >have the resources to first run "controlled tests" of their email > >before providing it. Whatever problems their email or subscribers > >cause is still their responsibility *not* the responsibility of the > >listowners who are providing service to everyone. > > We do controlled tests. In fact, from what I know of the sizes > of the other largest systems on the 'net, our *test* systems are as > large as or larger than the *production* systems of most of our > competitors. Also agreed. I know, as well as anybody else that deals with things on a sysadmin level, there's only so much testing that can be done before the test has to be put into testing on the public! It's just a fact that when there's a bug in AOL it affects us so greatly because we all have so many AOL subscribers. All this means is that they (AOL) have to be more careful in bringing things to the public. Doesn't mean they can't screw up once and awhile -- I know I have quite a few times. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Brock Rozen | brozen@webdreams.com | http://www.webdreams.com/~brozen | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 2 14:01:34 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id NAA06506 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 13:01:31 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) id NAA06472 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 13:00:25 -0800 (PST) Received: from www6.clever.net (www6.clever.net [208.5.12.1]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with ESMTP id JAA11082 for ; Thu, 30 Jan 1997 09:24:36 -0800 (PST) Received: from llion (llion-cs1-08.llion.org [198.209.45.108]) by www6.clever.net (8.8.5/8.6.9) with SMTP id MAA25768 for ; Thu, 30 Jan 1997 12:23:39 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199701301723.MAA25768@www6.clever.net> Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "Dr. Manion" Organization: Execu/Quest Marketing Consultants To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Date: Thu, 30 Jan 1997 11:26:02 +0000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: fresh horror from AOL Reply-to: CEO@Citadel.Net X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Windows (v2.42a) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 30 Jan 97 ,Brad Knowles insightfully wrote: > At 12:09 PM -0500 1/22/1997, Dr. Manion wrote: > > >Juno, never gives me any problems but AOL is a constant source of > >problems. Their people subscribe and then immediately start posting > >messages to the list, "GET ME OFF THIS DAMN LIST!" etc.. > > Just wait until they get bigger. I guarantee that you'll have > precisely the same problems with AT&T WorldNet, WebTV, and anyone > else who gets really big. It's just the nature of the beast of large > communities -- we don't have any more than our share of clueless > customers (not much, anyway ;-), it's just that because we've got > eight million customers, we've got a lot more total clueless people > than other places. ROFL! Again, I see that AOL doesn't want to take responsibility. "Well, if you were as big as us -- you couldn't do anything either!" ROFL! Thanks! I need a good laugh, today. Brad, you seem to have the same mindset as AOL. In fact, your email is a prime example of AOL's mindset. Simply stated, you don't want to take responsibility for your actions. It's everyone else's fault but yours. "No one else can do this or is doing this, so why should we?" ROFL! Thanks for proving what we all suspected. > If you want another comparison, look at crime statistics for > small towns of a few hundred or a few thousand people, and compare > that to the largest cities in the world. They don't really have much > more crimes of most types per capita, but because they have a lot > more people, it seems that way. Ahh, worthy of a good politician. Mis-direct the conversation to something irrelevant. ROFL! > If that's what you want. We can make sure that no mail from your > site makes it into AOL, too. oooo, a threat! ROFL! Thanks, I have already taken those steps. As noted in a previous email, I had a long discussion with the person who maintains the AOL's directory of lists. It took awhile to be removed but we finally did. But not after AOL trying to convince us how much we "needed" them and how much we would benefit from their subscribers. Again, illusions of gradeur. You assume AOL is "needed". It's not. The Internet was here before AOL and it will be here after after AOL follows the way of Prodigy, Genie and others. Thanks for the entertaining email, Brad. Much appreciated. 8) Leonard From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 2 14:04:38 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id NAA08057 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 13:27:05 -0800 (PST) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [207.167.80.66]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with SMTP id NAA07929 for ; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 13:26:02 -0800 (PST) Received: from [207.167.80.70] (zamboni.plaidworks.com [207.167.80.70]) by plaidworks.com (8.6.9/A/UX 3.1) with ESMTP id NAA19811; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 13:25:45 -0800 X-Sender: chuq@solutions.apple.com Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: <199701222307.SAA22835@www6.clever.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 13:13:35 -0800 To: Paul Hoffman , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Educating large masses of users Cc: Brad Knowles , Chuq Von Rospach Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 10:36 AM -0800 2/2/97, Paul Hoffman wrote: >Unfortunately, the same can be said for Apple and its employees, from my >personal list management experience (I say "unfortunately" because I'm a >card-carrying Mac enthusiast). I don't disagree. There are idiots elsewhere. My email the last few days proves this. What I found significant, and why I brought it up, was how the percentages of "issues" coming from AOL users was so much higher than I was seeing elsewhere. Not that AOL was the *only* problem, or that problems were unique to it, but that the problems coming out of AOL were out of proportion to the net as a whole. We've argued back and forth about AOL ad nauseum, mostly with people on one side or the other making broad statements based on personal feelings. I finally have some real data that I think is useful to put it in perspective. What we do with that data is still TBD.... >So, what can we do to educate the members of our lists? What can we do to >reduce the problems caused by the users who can't/won't be educated about >the basics? Is this an issue of education or enforcement? Yes. First, a big key: "education" is not the answer. USENET has proven this year in and year out for decades. You can only write so many intros, so many FAQs, so many netiquettes. You can drop a horse in the middle of a river, and he'll still die of thirst if he won't open his mouth... At some point, "education" loses economy of scale. It's like stereo equiptment: the first $500 gets you 90% of the way, and then from there, how close you want to get to 100% of the ultimate sound depends only on how many zeroes you want to add to the price tag. At some point, though, practically speaking, adding two more zeros to go from 97% to 97.5% doesn't make sense... So education is *part* of the answer. Improved server technology is another big key. Servers have to get better and working *with* users, and guiding them out of traps and wrong behaviors, and nudging them in the right direction, and feeding them *directed* help. Simply blatting out a 10K help/FAQ file every time they throw a syntax error doesn't solve the problem. Sending them one paragraph on what they did wrong, how it ought to be done, and where to get more detail is, because it's a *lot* more likely to be read. I'll cover the "what can AOL do" in a different message, beacuse I'm still mulling that over, but there are things that the service providers can do to help improve user education and their own user experience (and it may be some stuff as simple as better publicizing existing programs, or making certain documentation easier to find), but those of us who run these things have to realize that we're no longer catering to technologically sophisticated users, and we need to improve our systems as well. My current list server system (and documentation) worked great 18 months ago when I implemented it. It hasn't fallen apart -- but the needs of the users *have* changed significantly, and so areas that used to not be a problem now are. Fault of the system? The user? It's not the system's fault the users have changed and are less technically aware. it is, however, the fault of the system that it hasn't adapted to this.... -- Chuq Von Rospach (chuq@apple.com) Apple IS&T Mail List Gnome Plaidworks Consulting (chuqui@plaidworks.com) ( +-+ The home for Hockey on the net) From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 2 14:12:29 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id NAA06729 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 13:06:28 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) id NAA06710 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 13:06:14 -0800 (PST) Received: from itw.com (rsk.itw.com [206.138.122.70]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with ESMTP id JAA04850 for ; Fri, 31 Jan 1997 09:12:39 -0800 (PST) Received: (from rsk@localhost) by itw.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id MAA24038 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Fri, 31 Jan 1997 12:12:48 -0500 (EST) From: Rich Kulawiec Message-Id: <199701311712.MAA24038@itw.com> Subject: Re: fresh horror from AOL To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Fri, 31 Jan 1997 12:12:46 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: from "Brad Knowles" at Jan 30, 1997 09:17:26 AM Reply-To: rsk@itw.com Organization: Ditka Diplomatic Studies Institute X-Last-River: West Branch, Brandywine River X-Last-CD: Carrie Newcomer, "My Father's Only Son" X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL0b1] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="%--multipart-mixed-boundary-1.23972.854730766--%" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk --%--multipart-mixed-boundary-1.23972.854730766--% Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Brad Knowles writes: > Check the comp.mail.sendmail FAQ. That wouldn't get written >without their support. While I find the comp.mail.sendmail FAQ eminently useful, and am very glad that it exists, there's no doubt in my mind that it would exist even if AOL never had. It's too necessary not to. >Check [...] I know, I see them. But it's my impression that some/many of those resources, such as the list you mentioned about SGML, are provided by people who happen to be at AOL, not by AOL. >In fact, there have been times when we've tried to give large sums >of money to the authors of certain pieces of software, when it turned >out that those authors didn't want money, but instead wanted something >we weren't in a position to provide. I think this may be because we're working under different paradigms. I don't *want* large sums of money for running mailing lists, or writing FAQs, or moderating newsgroups, or creating web-based resources, or writing software, or any of the many things I've contributed since joining the 'net in 1981. [Yes, since someone will ask, I did have a .arpa address.] For example, not implementing poorly-thought-out mail filtering or screwing up HTTP 1.1 support would be a good start [see attached ASCII document] and respecting work done by non-AOLers (meaning leaving copyrighted work intact including all attributions, so that it's easily distinguishable from AOL's own work) would be nice. Please understand clearly: I do not, except under extraordinary circumstances such as security situations where I need their help, expect AOL to do anything FOR me. I simply want them to stop doing things TO me. > I'm sorry guy, if you want to rant and rave, go to alt.aol-sucks. >Let's keep the conversations on this list to *useful* ones. I'm sorry guy, I didn't "rant and rave". I gave my opinion, based on many, many years of experience with the 'net and with AOL. (If you want ranting and raving, ask me about Bobby Knight in rec.sport.basketball.college. :-) ) You may not have found my remarks useful, but other people seem to have, judging from the mail I've received. ---Rsk --%--multipart-mixed-boundary-1.23972.854730766--% Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Description: mail folder Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="wow" >From destiny@crl.com Sat Dec 28 05:11:27 1996 Received: from cloud9.net (SpPeUxzWz9oxKjQNBtYJ3v0YK//f2rBG@cloud9.net [168.100.1.2]) by mail.itw.net (8.8.0/8.7.3) with ESMTP id FAA24399; Sat, 28 Dec 1996 05:33:25 -0500 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by cloud9.net (8.8.4/cloud9-1.0) id DAA15832 for aol-list-outgoing; Sat, 28 Dec 1996 03:54:57 -0500 (EST) Received: from crl.crl.com (unknown@crl.com [165.113.1.12]) by cloud9.net (8.8.4/cloud9-1.0) with SMTP id DAA15827 for ; Sat, 28 Dec 1996 03:54:54 -0500 (EST) Received: by crl.crl.com id AA09888 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for The AOL List ); Sat, 28 Dec 1996 00:43:11 -0800 Date: Sat, 28 Dec 1996 00:43:11 -0800 (PST) From: David Cassel To: The AOL List Subject: The AOL List: War of the Web Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-aol-list@cloud9.net Precedence: bulk Status: RO W a r o f t h e W e b ~~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~ Two weeks ago AOL implemented a new web procedure that blocked millions of their users from thousands of sites. The sites used HTML-compliant protocols, but AOL changed the way they were handled December 14. Days later a webmaster complained that a colleague "has to downgrade his entire site for these ninnies... AOL has no work-around at present." Ten days later, the situation persisted. Hiway technologies issued a press release headlined "AOL Flubs HTTP/1.1 Support". In the crucial pre-Christmas shopping week, AOL failed to address their incompatibility. "[T]he fact that we are in full compliance means nothing to the millions of AOL users that are being denied access by their own provider," Hiway technologies complained, announcing a work-around they'd created specifically for AOL's browser. Within hours of the embarrassing press release, AOL fixed their problem. But hard feelings lingered from their original response--an error message which specifically stated--incorrectly--that "This is an issue with the Web site, and not with AOL." The Apache web page displayed an AOL executive's statement which implied that the action had been taken deliberately: "We wanted to stem the tide of those faults proliferating and becoming a de facto standard by blocking them now." As Apache saw it, "we have a large company which is publicly snubbing consensus-developed Internet standards". (They added that AOL is a member of the W3 Consortium, the organization which arrived at the very standard AOL unilaterally failed to recognize!) A user wrote AOL's "AOL Insider" columnist, "Can you please tell someone at AOL to fix this?!?!?!" It couldn't have come at a worse time. "A year ago, we did not have a terrific Web experience..." Steve Case conceded recently to Tech Wire. "We had a mediocre browser and $3 an hour pricing." But Case went on to boast "We now think we're shipping the best Web experience..." TechWire named AOL "Company of the Year", but elsewhere, ranked the service #1 for the top Web crash of 1996. Addressing the blocked sites, an AOL executive told C|Net Monday, "The company is aware of the problem and is working to rectify it." But blissfully unaware, the AOL Insider continued to insist that "in this case, the fault is not AOL's!" Incorrectly calling the web page hardware an "experimental version of a Web server that doesn't support the Web protocol correctly," they told readers Wednesday "You can write the Webmaster of the site...to tell them there could potentially be 7+ million more people seeing their site if they'd fix their problem. That'll light a fire." It lit a fire, all right... "IMHO, AOL is guilty of slander," one poster noted on Usenet. The sys-op of a BBS in Atlanta commented, "They have told more lies than all the presidents put together!" This isn't the first time AOL sidestepped blame. Last year the 700-member "Undercover" mailing list found that changes to AOL's mail client were preventing mailing list posts from reaching AOL's users--and that AOL's staff were blaming the mailing list operators. And it isn't AOL's first move against the Web community. AOL is encouraging fees on web sites run by their content providers--to make AOL shine in comparison. But there's no guarantee content providers will go along with the scheme. A spokesman for AOL's "Mom's Online" area--featured prominently in AOL's television ads--told the AOL List, "As I view the web as a critical distribution platform in our future, the incentive AOL offers would have to be VERY compelling." The daily columnist for Yahoo! Internet Life cited one AOL one content provider who estimated that under such an arrangement, half AOL's existing partners would leave the service, but another told them AOL's Robert Pittman would still start reviewing all the existing relationships at the end of January. There are even more ominous signs. "America Online Inc.'s move to push its content providers to offer exclusive content may not only be another ploy to strengthen its lead as the dominant online service," wrote Internet Week, "but is another signal that AOL actually wants to be the World Wide Web." The deliberate vagueness of the company's tagline "AOL is the internet," is only the first sign. Boasting about AOL's subscribers to Wired magazine, Ted Leonsis insisted "To these 6 million homes, we are the Web." Ironically, signing onto AOL tonight offered a game that "lets you become part of the Borg Collective...and assimilate every race in the universe, right on your desktop." ("Click on the ORDER button now, and your purchase will be conveniently billed to your AOL account," the post ended.) Even removing a page from a web site doesn't remove it from the AOL universe. Though the page may be gone, typing its URL into AOL's browser returns the message "Please wait while that site is contacted." Persisting in the charade, the browser then announces "Transferring bytes"--and then displays a file which no longer exists...except on AOL's machines in Virginia. AOL stores copies of web pages to conceal the delays its service causes by routing all requests through a chokepoint in Virginia--and users have no way of knowing whether AOL has chosen to display a web page's current version, or an old one. A recent trial-run returned the old version from AOL's cache for at least a half an hour...and there's no way around it. ("Click here to RELOAD the current document," the browser offers helpfully-- but rather than contacting the site, AOL simply re-displays the old, cached version.) This is an important caveat to AOL's claim of "fastest internet experience". ("Based on having the America Online computer at room temperature and the Internet Service computer in a refrigerator," one user quipped.) And it can only get worse as system crowding increases. AOL told the Washington Post they would promote the service less to improve its capacity for current members--but TV ads are still urging users to "Join today". In fact, Robert Pittman recently commented that AOL had underestimated demand when they moved to flat-rate pricing. "I wonder how they can make money," the head of AT&T's Worldnet told the Wall Street Journal. Indeed, Bloomberg recently reported that, less than one month into flat-rate pricing, AOL is now considering charging for parts of their service--which suggests that AOL is, in fact, losing money off their current pricing. AOL's welcome screen have even begun heavily promoting their pay-in-advance plan--and when TechWire asked Steve Case about ads in chat rooms, Case responded, "That's something we'd consider." Meanwhile, life goes on AOL. December 24 found a Christmas spam from CyberPromotions--"have a wonderful holiday, and we'll see you soon, in an e-mailbox near you!!" THE LAST LAUGH In celebration of the holidays, the webmaster at Green Bay Online created a wreath made from AOL disks. (http://www.dct.com/gbol/whats_new/AOL.html) "This is a 2.5 wreath," he told me. "The 3.0 wreath is on my garage." David Cassel More Information - http://www.wco.com/~destiny/time.htm ~~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~ Please forward with subscription information and headers in-tact. To subscribe to this moderated list, send a message to MAJORDOMO@CLOUD9.NET containing the phrase SUBSCRIBE AOL-LIST in the message body. To unsubscribe send a message saying UNSUBSCRIBE AOL-LIST to MAJORDOMO@CLOUD9.NET ~~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~++~ --%--multipart-mixed-boundary-1.23972.854730766--%-- From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 2 14:49:20 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id OAA12797 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 14:31:58 -0800 (PST) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [207.167.80.66]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with SMTP id OAA12779 for ; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 14:31:35 -0800 (PST) Received: from [207.167.80.70] (zamboni.plaidworks.com [207.167.80.70]) by plaidworks.com (8.6.9/A/UX 3.1) with ESMTP id OAA21321; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 14:31:06 -0800 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: "Dr. Manion"'s message of Thu, 30 Jan 1997 18:34:06 +0000 <199701310031.TAA12683@www6.clever.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 14:27:33 -0800 To: Brad Knowles , Jason L Tibbitts III , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Missed point... Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 11:19 PM -0800 2/1/97, Brad Knowles wrote: > As we become more standard, we'll be fixing that last part. >We've had to live with some legacy software for a while, and anytime >you get yourselves into that kind of position, it takes a while to >get it replaced. But we are working on that. God, I know that one... It's even worse when you implemented the legacy stuff yourself and have to live with the warts knowing who to blame.... Let's *not* forget that this stuff ain't magic and you can't fix it overnight. Especially if you can't afford to break mail for eight million users. "oops, we're sorry" just doesn't cut it that well in those situations... (grin) -- Chuq Von Rospach (chuq@apple.com) Apple IS&T Mail List Gnome Plaidworks Consulting (chuqui@plaidworks.com) ( +-+ The home for Hockey on the net) From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 2 14:53:31 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id OAA12777 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 14:31:30 -0800 (PST) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [207.167.80.66]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with SMTP id OAA12756 for ; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 14:31:14 -0800 (PST) Received: from [207.167.80.70] (zamboni.plaidworks.com [207.167.80.70]) by plaidworks.com (8.6.9/A/UX 3.1) with ESMTP id OAA21316; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 14:30:56 -0800 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <199702021522.HAA20226@miles.greatcircle.com> References: Message of Sun, 2 Feb 1997 01:55:42 -0500 from list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 14:26:03 -0800 To: Eric Thomas , List Managers From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: fresh horror from AOL Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 7:11 AM -0800 2/2/97, Eric Thomas wrote: >On Sun, 2 Feb 1997 01:55:42 -0500 Brad Knowles said: > >> Well, we already allow them 550 messages. Since we limit >>Internet mail to a maximum of 2MB (assuming you're sending attachments), >>this means we allow each user up to ~1.6GB mailbox storage space > >I have no problem with that, however it would be really nice if people >were allowed to accumulate more mail as long as the total did not exceed >20M or whatever quota you felt comfortable with. Actually, I solved 99% of *this* problem for my AOL users simply by making DIGEST the default for all of my busy lists. It cut my "mailbox full" errors by a huge percentage (probably 80%), and I found out that large percentage of my users loved digest mode, and didn't even realize it existed, even though it's in the documentation... In general, I'm finding that about 10-12% of my users switch to individual messages. The rest stay in digest, either because they like it or because they don't know there are alternatives because they didn't read the instructions, but that latter group isn't complaining about it, either... And, frankly, DIGEST mode cuts down on my server load by a huge amount, too, so I can serve a lot more mail to a lot more people with less processing overhead. -- Chuq Von Rospach (chuq@apple.com) Apple IS&T Mail List Gnome Plaidworks Consulting (chuqui@plaidworks.com) ( +-+ The home for Hockey on the net) From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 2 15:14:12 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id OAA14362 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 14:56:13 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.his.com (mail.his.com [205.177.25.9]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with ESMTP id OAA14193 for ; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 14:55:21 -0800 (PST) Received: from [205.252.121.193] (shiva1-mclean-193.his.com [205.252.121.193]) by mail.his.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id RAA18143; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 17:54:07 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Mike Nolan's message of Sun, 2 Feb 1997 11:28:24 -0600 (CST) <199702021728.LAA12221@celery.tssi.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 17:25:59 -0500 To: Paul Graham , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Brad Knowles Subject: Re: AOL mailbox limit, hig volume lists in general Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 1:40 PM -0500 2/2/1997, Paul Graham wrote: >despite my profound annoyance at the way aol works at least their bounce >format can be trivially converted to dsn (so why don't they do it?). That change is already under development, and will hopefully arrive when the new Internet Mail gateway system goes into production. As for the current system, you have to pass back the DSN information out-of-bands to the MTA, and right now we have no way of doing that -- all the bounce text is generated on the back-end mainframe, and effectively sent out as a brand new message. -- Brad Knowles, MIME/PGP: brad@his.com comp.mail.sendmail FAQ Maintainer finger brad@his.com for my PGP Public Keys and Geek Code The comp.mail.sendmail FAQ is at From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 2 15:16:50 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id PAA15364 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 15:07:04 -0800 (PST) Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE (searn.sunet.se [192.36.125.4]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with SMTP id PAA15357 for ; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 15:06:54 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199702022306.PAA15357@miles.greatcircle.com> Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE by SEARN.SUNET.SE (IBM VM SMTP V2R3) with BSMTP id 7969; Sun, 02 Feb 97 23:59:47 +0100 Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE (NJE origin ERIC@SEARN) by SEARN.SUNET.SE (LMail V1.2c/1.8c) with RFC822 id 4704; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 23:59:45 +0100 Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 23:49:53 +0100 From: Eric Thomas Subject: Re: fresh horror from AOL To: List Managers In-Reply-To: Message of Sun, 2 Feb 1997 17:22:05 -0500 from Brad Knowles Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Sun, 2 Feb 1997 17:22:05 -0500 Brad Knowles said: > If you now want to see if they're over a certain quantity of >mail, measured in bytes, instead of just slicing through the mailbox and >counting how long it takes you to get to the end, you now have to store >message size along with the pointer to the message, and run an >accumulated total as you're walking down that tree. It doesn't sound >like much, but do it tens of millions of times a day, and you'll quickly >accumulate a lot more CPU time than you thought possible. This is an implementation problem that can be solved in all sorts of ways, such as maintaining a "total size of mailbox" field in the mailbox header or whatever makes sense given your existing implementation. As one of my former bosses used to say when I explained that his latest bright idea wasn't going to work, "Stop! I don't want to hear any of that. This stuff is your job, not mine. My job is to decide if we can afford it, so just tell me who would have to work on it for how long and what hardware we would need to buy, and I'll give you an answer". > We'd probably have to add several dozen more terabytes of disk >storage (because the average mailbox size would grow *dramatically*), That's a valid argument, but you can charge extra for the service, or you can contain the growth by adding a higher per-message cap. To tell you the truth, I think most people would be happy with 1000-1500 total. It's just that if you divide 500 by the number of days in a long weekend, it's less than what most active lists produce a day. People then lose personal mail and get upset. Eric From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 2 15:19:50 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id OAA14354 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 14:56:08 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.his.com (mail.his.com [205.177.25.9]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with ESMTP id OAA14182 for ; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 14:55:18 -0800 (PST) Received: from [205.252.121.193] (shiva1-mclean-193.his.com [205.252.121.193]) by mail.his.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id RAA18106; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 17:53:53 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <199702021522.HAA20226@miles.greatcircle.com> References: Message of Sun, 2 Feb 1997 01:55:42 -0500 from list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 17:22:05 -0500 To: Eric Thomas , List Managers From: Brad Knowles Subject: Re: fresh horror from AOL Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 10:11 AM -0500 2/2/1997, Eric Thomas wrote: >On Sun, 2 Feb 1997 01:55:42 -0500 Brad Knowles said: > >> Well, we already allow them 550 messages. Since we limit >>Internet mail to a maximum of 2MB (assuming you're sending attachments), >>this means we allow each user up to ~1.6GB mailbox storage space > >I have no problem with that, however it would be really nice if people >were allowed to accumulate more mail as long as the total did not exceed >20M or whatever quota you felt comfortable with. Maybe even as a premium >service costing another $2/month or whatever. One problem, as I see it, is that it is easy to count how many messages are in someone's mailbox (just look at how many pointers they have to messages), and if they're over a certain number, then they've got a full mailbox. This is something you can do very quickly. If you now want to see if they're over a certain quantity of mail, measured in bytes, instead of just slicing through the mailbox and counting how long it takes you to get to the end, you now have to store message size along with the pointer to the message, and run an accumulated total as you're walking down that tree. It doesn't sound like much, but do it tens of millions of times a day, and you'll quickly accumulate a lot more CPU time than you thought possible. We'd probably have to add several dozen more terabytes of disk storage (because the average mailbox size would grow *dramatically*), and it takes a lot of work just trying to find space, power, and cooling for that kind of equipment. What it would cost to add this to the billing software is another matter -- we might need several dollars per month additional just to cover the overhead incurred by having to add this to our billing procedure (including the overhead of having to go through and count how many messages/how much space each of our eight million-plus users is taking up). I'll pass this on to our developers, but it's not something we could just drop in overnight. We might have to redesign the way we store our mailboxes, and would certainly have to not only get out from behind the current eight-ball, but get far enough ahead of it that we can then take a major performance hit (by adding this feature) and still be far enough ahead that we don't get behind it again. -- Brad Knowles, MIME/PGP: brad@his.com comp.mail.sendmail FAQ Maintainer finger brad@his.com for my PGP Public Keys and Geek Code The comp.mail.sendmail FAQ is at From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 2 15:22:58 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id OAA14404 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 14:56:32 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.his.com (mail.his.com [205.177.25.9]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with ESMTP id OAA14259 for ; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 14:55:41 -0800 (PST) Received: from [205.252.121.193] (shiva1-mclean-193.his.com [205.252.121.193]) by mail.his.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id RAA18155; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 17:54:12 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <01IEXZM61XYW9AN0LG@mbcl.rutgers.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 17:38:37 -0500 To: "E. Allen Smith" From: Brad Knowles Subject: Re: Educating large masses of users (was: Re: fresh horror from AOL) Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 1:33 PM -0500 2/2/1997, E. Allen Smith wrote: > What proportion of _new_ (say, have used Internet email for less >than 3 months total) users does AOL have, both as a proportion of AOL users >and as a proportion of new users on the Internet? Numbers over the last three months, especially with regards to simply being on the Service versus actually making use of sending/receiving Internet mail, are statistics I don't have, and I don't know who would. We probably have some numbers somehwere of how many members we've added over the last three months, but I know that over the last six to nine months, we've added about three million users. > In other words, most people today can't figure something out from >simple pre-packaged information; they have to be hand-held. And with a >lot lower proportion of experienced to new users on AOL (and on the other >quickly-expanding services you mention below), the hand-holding doesn't >happen. The problem is that the Customer Service folks get the same kind of cluelessness and vitriol for virtually *everything*, as list-managers get when AOL users demand that they take time out of their busy schedule to solve their problems, because that's what they were put on this planet for. In fact, I suspect we see more of it, and in general, worse cases of it, than list-managers typically do. Less hand-holding certainly doesn't work, because then we get more cluelessness and vitriol that we aren't doing enough to help. More hand-holding certainly doesn't work, because then we get cluelessness and vitriol about the eleventy quadzillion other things we *didn't* fix when we added some new specific feature. So, what? Turn off the entire Service and send everyone home? Well, similar problems (perhaps not quite as bad, but certainly bad enough) exist on the Internet already, so why not just turn off the entire Internet and send everyone home -- that's just as valid a solution. In fact, since we know that virtually all of them are incapable of correcting that bloody little blinking "12:00" on their VCRs, why not just turn off the entire power grid for the whole world, and send everyone home? There has to be some sort of intermediate solution, but I haven't been able to come up with one, and I certainly haven't seen one get created to help solve the same kinds of problems as are pre-existant on the Internet already (otherwise we would have already adopted something similar on AOL). This is a tough problem, and so far, no one seems to have come up with any real solutions. -- Brad Knowles, MIME/PGP: brad@his.com comp.mail.sendmail FAQ Maintainer finger brad@his.com for my PGP Public Keys and Geek Code The comp.mail.sendmail FAQ is at From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 2 15:26:21 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id OAA14450 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 14:57:02 -0800 (PST) Received: from ec2.earthchannel.com (ec2.earthchannel.com [205.160.16.65]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with SMTP id OAA14375 for ; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 14:56:23 -0800 (PST) Received: from ec2 (unverified [205.160.16.65]) by ec2.earthchannel.com (EMWAC SMTPRS 0.83) with SMTP id ; Sun, 02 Feb 1997 17:55:14 -0500 Message-ID: Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "Gess Shankar" Organization: Earth Channel Communications LLC To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 17:55:13 -0500 Subject: Re: Educating large masses of users (was: Re: fresh horror from Reply-to: gess@earthchannel.com In-reply-to: <01IEXZM61XYW9AN0LG@mbcl.rutgers.edu> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v2.52) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 2 Feb 97 at 14:33, E. Allen Smith wrote: > In other words, most people today can't figure something out from > simple pre-packaged information; they have to be hand-held. And with a > lot lower proportion of experienced to new users on AOL (and on the other > quickly-expanding services you mention below), the hand-holding doesn't > happen. > Allen hits the nail right on the head with this one. Most people either can't figure out or just can't be bothered to make the attempt, even if they can. Whether politics has anything to do or not, it is a cultural problem. I doubt if there are any quick fixes. Anything more than short phrases or something like a Dave Letterman top ten list is too much trouble to read, understand, and then act upon. With the growth of Internet, written communication manifested itself on an unsuspecting public, raised on television. Web, initially an information treasure trove, made friendlier by hypertext and links, is slowly turning into yet another mindnumbing tv clone. My hopes that literacy would increase because of the net are being dashed. :-( Email is still a relic of the past, enforcing one to do archaic things - like actually reading textual matter and comprehending, creating command lines consisting of multiple words - some of them unspellable like SUBSCRIBE and even worse UNSUBSCRIBE. (Didn't we get away from the nasty MSDOS to avoid have to type such things? Don't even mention uniks) Either list manager software will get better in parsing, using AI, telepathy etc., or lists will soon be used by a few - rather like the book reading public. There will always be one. Volunteer list owners will probably cater only to this audience - the unwashed masses preferring to use point and click web based boards, IRC and such. After all, email has to be read and for participation, one has to actually write something. I think this is the reason that "chats" are more popular - it is more like small talk. No Zen like deep thoughts or large vocabulary required. :-) Looking at the current trends, free email lists may start to disappear, as MUAs get more TV like - multimedia MIME mail complete with animated, audible ad banners and neat boxes to fill your credit card number in. At best, there may be a cult following for discussion oriented lists, rather like the book buying public. What can I say, I am a pessimist too. May be because I am involved in the adult learning process as an occasional trainer. :-) Educating large masses of users who don't want to learn will be the challenge of the next millennium. Gess PS: I used to insist that subscribers learn to spell or cut and paste words like SUBSCRIBE or use available aliases like JOIN and LEAVE. But repeated usage of SUSCRIBE/SUSCRIVE and other creative spellings has forced me to accept all these, as a gesture towards being more "user-friendly". Now working on "GET ME OFF THIS STINKING LIST" and variations thereof. :-) From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 2 15:28:03 1997 Received: (majordom@localhost) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.1-lists/Lists-960417-1) id PAA16423 for list-managers-outgoing; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 15:20:56 -0800 (PST) Received: from OCELOT.RUTGERS.EDU (ocelot.rutgers.edu [128.6.11.33]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.7.4/Miles-960830-1) with SMTP id PAA16365 for ; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 15:20:39 -0800 (PST) Received: from mbcl.rutgers.edu by mbcl.rutgers.edu (PMDF #12194) id <01IEY7G1UD2S9AN0LG@mbcl.rutgers.edu>; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 18:17 EDT Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 18:17 EDT From: "E. Allen Smith" Subject: Re: Educating large masses of users (was: Re: fresh horror from AOL) To: brad@his.com Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Message-id: <01IEY7G1UD2S9AN0LG@mbcl.rutgers.edu> X-Envelope-to: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM X-VMS-To: IN%"brad@his.com" X-VMS-Cc: IN%"list-managers@GreatCircle.COM" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk From: IN%"brad@his.com" "Brad Knowles" 2-FEB-1997 17:54:40.87 > We probably have some numbers somehwere of how many members we've >added over the last three months, but I know that over the last six >to nine months, we've added about three million users. Yeek... no wonder you're having problems. You have my distinct sympathies, given that it's the higher-up's fault and not yours that you've expanded too fast. > The problem is that the Customer Service folks get the same kind >of cluelessness and vitriol for virtually *everything*, as >list-managers get when AOL users demand that they take time out of >their busy schedule to solve their problems, because that's what they >were put on this planet for. In fact, I suspect we see more of it, >and in general, worse cases of it, than list-managers typically do. I'm not surprised by the latter, or, indeed, by the former. The Customer Service people have the problem that, indeed, they _are_ getting paid for taking the cluelessness and vitriol, so you've got a distinctly greater obligation to put up with it and help the users out. One wonders if putting in a limit on the amount of Customer Service time/email messages/whatever would work - or at least a limit on how much you'll do without further charges - with, of course, the exception of if AOL's doing something wrong and not the user. People shriek and scream about software companies doing that, but the companies in question seem to have no other choice. I wonder if rapidly-expanding online services may be the same way. I'd wonder how much of AOL's budget is currently going to _paying_ for Customer Service. In other words, I see an analogy between unlimited Internet hours and unlimited Customer Service. Both get overused for the capacity of the system. It's just that the capacity for the Customer Service system effectively includes the rest of the Internet... and thus that's what gets dumped on when it gets overloaded. How often does Customer Service get questions that should have gone to a list owner... or should have been resolved by reading a _non-AOL_ list's subscription information? > Less hand-holding certainly doesn't work, because then we get >more cluelessness and vitriol that we aren't doing enough to help. >More hand-holding certainly doesn't work, because then we get >cluelessness and vitriol about the eleventy quadzillion other things >we *didn't* fix when we added some new specific feature. I see the catch-22, yes. I wasn't proposing a simple solution... just a switch in priorities from things helpful to the likely-to-be-forever-clueless to things helpful for everyone. I'm not claiming that this will solve everything, merely that it _might_ help. > So, what? Turn off the entire Service and send everyone home? >Well, similar problems (perhaps not quite as bad, but certainly bad >enough) exist on the Internet already, so why not just turn off the >entire Internet and send everyone home -- that's just as valid a >solution. In fact, since we know that virtually all of them are >incapable of correcting that bloody little blinking "12:00" on their >VCRs, why not just turn off the entire power grid for the whole >world, and send everyone home? I certainly wasn't proposing the first; I'd prefer to see AOL keep existing, even with the problems, than it (and the other major internet providers) go out. For one thing, there are quite a lot of competent AOL users - some of them my friends and family. The same thing goes even more for the Internet in general and the power grid in general. > There has to be some sort of intermediate solution, but I haven't >been able to come up with one, and I certainly haven't seen one get >created to help solve the same kinds of problems as are pre-existant >on the Internet already (otherwise we would have already adopted >something similar on AOL). This is a tough problem, and so far, no >one seems to have come up with any real solutions. Yeah, I know. I sometimes think that, partially thanks to hype and partially thanks to real uses, the Internet in general is expanding too fast... not for its physical capacity (a la "The Death of the Internet... GIFs at 11"), but for its social capacity. The problem is how to expand that capacity and/or slow down the growth to a bearable rate. Chuq has proposed a few changes in the realm of this list, namely smarter servers with more intelligent error messages, improved list subscription, and improved list filtering. What are some others? -Allen From list-managers-owner Sun Feb 2 15:30:44 1997