From list-managers-owner Thu Apr 1 13:19:04 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA14527; Thu, 1 Apr 1999 12:54:49 -0800 (PST) Received: from numen.elon.edu (numen.elon.edu [152.33.3.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA14520 for ; Thu, 1 Apr 1999 12:54:43 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (rose@localhost) by numen.elon.edu (8.8.6 (PHNE_14041)/8.8.6) with SMTP id PAA27872 for ; Thu, 1 Apr 1999 15:57:42 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 1999 15:57:42 -0500 (EST) From: Tony Rose To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Return Receipts Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I have recently setup Majordomo at a location that use to have it running, but has not had it working for a couple of years now. I have the latest version running and everything is working well. However, one of the list owners came to me and "warned" me about return receipts. He said that when they use to run it if someone sent a return receipt request to the list that it would bounce to everyone over and over and fill up their queue. So he wanted me to "filter" this. Is this a legitimate concern or is this fixed in the latest version? If this is something to be concerned about still, how do you "filter" it? -tr ________________________________ Tony Rose Elon College Unix/Email Administrator E: rose@elon.edu V: (336)538-6815 F: (336)584-2447 2400 Campus Box Elon College, NC 27244 ________________________________ From list-managers-owner Fri Apr 2 08:20:51 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA28703; Fri, 2 Apr 1999 07:59:20 -0800 (PST) Received: from [192.107.175.229] (dns-west.osti.gov [192.107.175.229]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id HAA28696 for ; Fri, 2 Apr 1999 07:59:11 -0800 (PST) From: Doug_LaVerne@ccmail.osti.gov Received: from mailgate.osti.gov by [192.107.175.229] via smtpd (for honor.greatcircle.com [198.102.244.44]) with SMTP; 2 Apr 1999 16:04:45 UT Received: from ccmail.osti.gov by mailgate.osti.gov (PMDF V5.2-32 #34298) id <0F9K00001KOF2R@mailgate.osti.gov> for list-managers@GreatCircle.com; Fri, 2 Apr 1999 11:05:03 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 02 Apr 1999 10:56 -0500 (EST) To: list-managers@GreatCircle.com Message-id: <0F9K00002KOF2R@mailgate.osti.gov> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Two problems are causing havoc with our lists' readability/usefulness (and no, I'm not asking about specific packages): (1) What causes =20, =B7, =FA etc. to appear at the end of lines, start of lines, or after an indent at the start of a line? Just as importantly, how can Joe/Jo User solve this problem or prevent it if say they're causing it by pulling external material into the message? Setting up test list(s) hasn't worked yet. (2) What causes the user to send out a message, seemingly innocent, (usually with an attachment initially), but to get gibberish results? Again how to solve & prevent? Attachment (gibberish) appears in body. Body often has the =20 =FA gibberish. Example: [Headers] Body ... [Headers e.g. "Boundary..."/"Application"/"Attachment"/ ""/ "...encoding BASE64"] /1dQQ5ALAAABCgIBAAAAAgUAAAC0RAAAAAIAAGUJo3sFcBYhMSF1zi45HgErB2ZF ecUPLEnwFQRPiRz1bWOwZA/9sQRora2eZJq+v4T0QEdixZCdNWD0dJvXt8gW518v [more gibberish] ["Boundary"] Thanks in advance, DGL USDOE Office of Scientific & Tech. Info. List Administration From list-managers-owner Fri Apr 2 14:00:20 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA03224; Fri, 2 Apr 1999 13:46:57 -0800 (PST) Received: from value.net (value.net [204.188.125.4]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA03217 for ; Fri, 2 Apr 1999 13:46:51 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by value.net (8.8.7/8.7.4) with ESMTP id NAA25957; Fri, 2 Apr 1999 13:52:25 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id OAA10150; Fri, 2 Apr 1999 14:02:06 -0800 To: Doug_LaVerne@ccmail.osti.gov cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-reply-to: Your message of Fri, 02 Apr 1999 10:56:00 -0500. <0F9K00002KOF2R@mailgate.osti.gov> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Date: Fri, 02 Apr 1999 14:02:06 -0800 Message-ID: <10148.923090526@monkeys.com> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message <0F9K00002KOF2R@mailgate.osti.gov>, Doug_LaVerne@ccmail.osti.gov wrote: > (1) What causes =20, =B7, =FA etc. to appear at the end of lines, start of > lines, or after an indent at the start of a line?... I see this same sort of jizz all of the time in mail sent to me from Windoze machines. I asked someone knowlegable about such systems about this once. Apparently, it is just one small tactic in the larger plot of Microsoft to take over the world, slowly, in phases, by being just slightly incompatible with every non-Microsoft protocol and/or piece of software in existance. Well, that's what I was told anyway. I'm just passing it along. :-) But seriously, what I was told is that this extra gunk is in fact some sort of bizzare Microsoft goo, and that if you are _viewing_ messages that have this extra goo stuck onto them from a Windoze machine, you won't even see this ugly extra gunk. Apparently, there is some sort of an obscure configuration setting in MS mail clients that has to be set explicitly to ``no extra jizz please'', and if you get a message that contains this gunk, it means that the dufus who sent it to you just dosn't know about this extra configuration setting, or that he should be turning off the extra goo when communicating with all normal people who have normal (non-MS-goo-enhanced) mail clients. Why Microsoft would ship mail clients with the default setting set to ``yes, generate extra goo that only doesn't look stupid to other MS mail clients'' is a question which probably doesn't require much deep pondering. (And then, of course, Netscape got into this incompatability game too with a default setting in THEIR mail clients of ``yes, generate 500KB of extra HTML for each 1KB of ordinary outgoing text in each mail message.'' Isn't progress wonderful?) -- Ron Guilmette, Roseville, California ---------- E-Scrub Technologies, Inc. -- Deadbolt(tm) Personal E-Mail Filter demo: http://www.e-scrub.com/deadbolt/ -- FREE Web Harvester Protection - http://www.e-scrub.com/wpoison/ - Try it! -- FREE DynamicIP Spam Filtering - http://www.imrss.org/dssl/ - TELL YOUR ISP! From list-managers-owner Fri Apr 2 17:30:00 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA05519; Fri, 2 Apr 1999 17:15:41 -0800 (PST) Received: from ivan.iecc.com (ivan.iecc.com [208.31.42.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id RAA05512 for ; Fri, 2 Apr 1999 17:15:35 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 6229 invoked by uid 100); 2 Apr 1999 20:21:12 -0500 Date: Fri, 2 Apr 1999 20:21:12 -0500 (EST) From: John R Levine To: "Ronald F. Guilmette" cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: your mail In-Reply-To: <10148.923090526@monkeys.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > > (1) What causes =20, =B7, =FA etc. to appear at the end of lines, start of > > lines, or after an indent at the start of a line?... > Apparently, it is just one small tactic in the larger plot of Microsoft to > take over the world, slowly, in phases, by being just slightly incompatible > with every non-Microsoft protocol and/or piece of software in existance. No, it's quoted-printable, a standard MIME type. Reasonable responses are either to ban quoted-printable mail or to run it through a de-MIME pass to turn it back into plain text. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 From list-managers-owner Fri Apr 2 18:12:11 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA06011; Fri, 2 Apr 1999 18:07:18 -0800 (PST) Received: from value.net (value.net [204.188.125.4]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id SAA05994 for ; Fri, 2 Apr 1999 18:07:11 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by value.net (8.8.7/8.7.4) with ESMTP id SAA07620 for ; Fri, 2 Apr 1999 18:12:48 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id SAA17627 for ; Fri, 2 Apr 1999 18:22:36 -0800 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: your mail In-reply-to: Your message of Fri, 02 Apr 1999 20:21:12 -0500. From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Date: Fri, 02 Apr 1999 18:22:31 -0800 Message-ID: <17625.923106151@monkeys.com> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message , John R Levine wrote: >> > (1) What causes =20, =B7, =FA etc. to appear at the end of lines, start >of >> > lines, or after an indent at the start of a line?... > >> Apparently, it is just one small tactic in the larger plot of Microsoft to >> take over the world, slowly, in phases, by being just slightly incompatible >> with every non-Microsoft protocol and/or piece of software in existance. > >No, it's quoted-printable, a standard MIME type. Reasonable responses >are either to ban quoted-printable mail or to run it through a de-MIME >pass to turn it back into plain text. OK, me culpa. It isn't _entirely_ just a Microsoft plot. But why is it that MS mail clients are the only ones that seem to generate messages as ``MIME quotable'' (rather than plain text), even when not explicitly asked to do so? -- Ron Guilmette, Roseville, California ---------- E-Scrub Technologies, Inc. -- Deadbolt(tm) Personal E-Mail Filter demo: http://www.e-scrub.com/deadbolt/ -- FREE Web Harvester Protection - http://www.e-scrub.com/wpoison/ - Try it! -- FREE DynamicIP Spam Filtering - http://www.imrss.org/dssl/ - TELL YOUR ISP! From list-managers-owner Fri Apr 2 18:42:11 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA06182; Fri, 2 Apr 1999 18:28:49 -0800 (PST) Received: from ntcorp.dn.net (ntcorp.dn.net [207.226.172.79]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id SAA06175 for ; Fri, 2 Apr 1999 18:28:42 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (fidelman@localhost) by ntcorp.dn.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id VAA09598; Fri, 2 Apr 1999 21:28:35 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 2 Apr 1999 21:28:35 -0500 (EST) From: Miles Fidelman X-Sender: fidelman@ntcorp.dn.net To: Doug_LaVerne@ccmail.osti.gov, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: your mail In-Reply-To: <10148.923090526@monkeys.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Fri, 2 Apr 1999, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: > Doug_LaVerne@ccmail.osti.gov wrote: > > > (1) What causes =20, =B7, =FA etc. to appear at the end of lines, start of > > lines, or after an indent at the start of a line?... > > I see this same sort of jizz all of the time in mail sent to me from Windoze > machines. > > I asked someone knowlegable about such systems about this once. > > But seriously, what I was told is that this extra gunk is in fact some sort > of bizzare Microsoft goo, and that if you are _viewing_ messages that have > this extra goo stuck onto them from a Windoze machine, you won't even see > this ugly extra gunk. It may be that some windows software is particularly bad about this, but what you're really seeing is an artifact of using 8-bit ASCII instead of 7-bit ASCII. Those are "escape codes" used to represent 8-bit characters in a 7-bit character set (the basic Internet email standard only allows 7-bit characters). Mail readers are supposed to convert the escape codes back into the proper character for display. It doesn't always work right - and sometimes requires you to check the configuration of your mail reader. ************************************************************************** The Center for Civic Networking PO Box 600618 Miles R. Fidelman, President & Newtonville, MA 02460-0006 Director of Civic Networking Systems 617-558-3698 fax: 617-630-8946 mfidelman@civicnet.org http://civic.net/ccn.html Information Infrastructure: Public Spaces for the 21st Century Let's Start With: Internet Wall-Plugs Everywhere Say It Often, Say It Loud: "I Want My Internet!" ************************************************************************** From list-managers-owner Fri Apr 2 23:39:35 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA08637; Fri, 2 Apr 1999 23:36:31 -0800 (PST) Received: from windlord.stanford.edu (windlord.Stanford.EDU [171.64.12.23]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id XAA08630 for ; Fri, 2 Apr 1999 23:36:26 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 13140 invoked by uid 50); 3 Apr 1999 07:42:06 -0000 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: your mail References: <17625.923106151@monkeys.com> From: Russ Allbery In-Reply-To: "Ronald F. Guilmette"'s message of "Fri, 02 Apr 1999 18:22:31 -0800" Date: 02 Apr 1999 23:42:06 -0800 Message-ID: Lines: 21 X-Mailer: Gnus v5.4.66/Emacs 19.34 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Ronald F Guilmette writes: > But why is it that MS mail clients are the only ones that seem to > generate messages as ``MIME quotable'' (rather than plain text), even > when not explicitly asked to do so? Probably because none of their mail servers can handle 8bit characters. :) To add more information for the original question asker, that stuff appears on the end of lines if the lines are over 70 characters (MIME usually decides to wrap about there) or if they contain any trailing whitespace (in which case escaping it is required with quoted-printable). All =s in the message also have to be escaped. The complete gibberish is caused by using Base64 encoding, which should really *never* be used for text/plain and similar content types, but which some really broken MIME generators use anyway. Particularly if there are any high-bit characters. -- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) From list-managers-owner Sat Apr 3 14:44:49 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA01634; Sat, 3 Apr 1999 14:31:16 -0800 (PST) Received: from venus.communitech.net (venus.communitech.net [216.89.176.51]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id OAA01627 for ; Sat, 3 Apr 1999 14:31:08 -0800 (PST) Received: from thorby ([204.210.106.57]) by venus.communitech.net ; Sat, 03 Apr 1999 16:26:16 -600 Message-Id: <4.1.19990403122815.01136730@mail.rudbek.com> X-Sender: vawjr@mail.rudbek.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.1 Date: Sat, 03 Apr 1999 12:29:48 -1000 To: Miles Fidelman , Doug_LaVerne@ccmail.osti.gov, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: "Victor A. Wagner, Jr." Subject: Re: your mail In-Reply-To: References: <10148.923090526@monkeys.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I must point out that =20 is valid in both 7 and 8 bit ASCII (well now ANSI) and it's the normal space/blank or whatever you want to call it. so if it's a "7-bit" thing, it's a VERY bad coding error. At Friday 4/2/99 21:28, Miles Fidelman wrote: >It may be that some windows software is particularly bad about this, but >what you're really seeing is an artifact of using 8-bit ASCII instead of >7-bit ASCII. Those are "escape codes" used to represent 8-bit characters >in a 7-bit character set (the basic Internet email standard only allows >7-bit characters). Mail readers are supposed to convert the escape codes >back into the proper character for display. It doesn't always work right >- and sometimes requires you to check the configuration of your mail >reader. Victor A. Wagner, Jr. PGP RSA fingerprint = 4D20 EBF6 0101 B069 3817 8DBF C846 E47A PGP D-H fingerprint = 98BC 65E3 1A19 43EC 3908 65B9 F755 E6F4 63BB 9D93 The five most dangerous words in the English language: "There oughta be a law" From list-managers-owner Sun Apr 4 11:48:28 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA16217; Sun, 4 Apr 1999 11:35:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id LAA16202 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 4 Apr 1999 11:35:00 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ifolk.iserver.net (ifolk.iserver.net [192.41.44.203]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id HAA16025 for ; Sat, 3 Apr 1999 07:25:33 -0800 (PST) Received: from librarynt ([160.43.47.9]) by ifolk.iserver.net (8.8.5) id IAA17782; Sat, 3 Apr 1999 08:31:08 -0700 (MST) From: "Tom Neff" To: Subject: quoted printable and de-mime tools Date: Sat, 3 Apr 1999 10:30:35 -0500 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2212 (4.71.2419.0) In-Reply-To: <199904030900.BAA09454@honor.greatcircle.com> X-Mimeole: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2014.211 Importance: Normal Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk (Would it be too much to ask our fellow list manager geniuses to use a better Subject line than "[none]" or "Re: your mail" in here??) The big problem with quoted-printable and other clever mechanisms for carefully preserving vital message content (like trailing spaces on lines and funky Mac quote marks, oooh boy!) is that they look totally hosed in Digest format, no matter how spiffy your mailreader is. Same goes for enriched-text and text-with-bleach and HTML and all the other well-intentioned disasters visited on email lately. Has anybody got a really killer set of de-MIME tools they swear by? One of my goals for this year is to do less rejecting and more transformation filtering on submissions to my lists. Automation r00lz after all. But I'd rather not reinvent the travois pole if I can avoid it. From list-managers-owner Sun Apr 4 12:02:39 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA16147; Sun, 4 Apr 1999 11:34:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id LAA16134 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 4 Apr 1999 11:34:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sol.airfiberinc.com (sol.airfiberinc.com [209.68.254.188]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id RAA05547 for ; Fri, 2 Apr 1999 17:18:50 -0800 (PST) Received: from airfiberinc.com ([209.68.254.184]) by sol.airfiberinc.com (Netscape Messaging Server 3.5) with ESMTP id 116; Fri, 2 Apr 1999 17:22:33 -0800 Message-ID: <37056E4D.C59B63D0@airfiberinc.com> Date: Fri, 02 Apr 1999 17:26:37 -0800 From: "Bill Houle" X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.51 [en] (WinNT; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Doug_LaVerne@ccmail.osti.gov CC: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: References: <0F9K00002KOF2R@mailgate.osti.gov> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Doug_LaVerne@ccmail.osti.gov wrote: > > (1) What causes =20, =B7, =FA etc. to appear at the end of lines, start of > lines, or after an indent at the start of a line? These are quoted-printable characters, which are the 7bit translation of 8bit characters within the text. Mail cannot contain binary characters. Conversion to QP is the nicer alternative to outright rejection. How to prevent? Depends. Some mailers are more prone to allowing such characters (eg, "smart quotes", foreign language sets, etc). It ultimately is a client compatibility problem and a user-education issue. It is not specifically a Microsoft conspiracy as Ron suggests, though MS is one of those mailers that make such things easier than most to do. > (2) What causes the user to send out a message, seemingly innocent, > (usually with an attachment initially), but to get gibberish results? An attachment is usually a binary object, and as I said, binary data is not allowed in email. So the attachment has to be converted to text "gibberish" in order to pass. It will be converted back to binary at the receiving end. Normally, this process is hidden from the user. However, if something is done to make the gibberish un-convertable, the attachment cannot be remade and you will see the unconverted text. Either the body of the attachment was mangled, or the headers that describe how to decode the gibberish have been tampered with. You need to find out what is corrupting the attachment. BTW, attachments in mailing lists are not a good idea anyway. --bill From list-managers-owner Sun Apr 4 19:03:56 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA21215; Sun, 4 Apr 1999 18:52:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: from scifi.squawk.com (scifi.squawk.com [208.235.116.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id SAA21205 for ; Sun, 4 Apr 1999 18:52:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from tpad.squawk.com (root@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by scifi.squawk.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id VAA04698; Sun, 4 Apr 1999 21:50:52 -0400 Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.19990404205443.0393abe0@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: njs@127.0.0.1 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Sun, 04 Apr 1999 20:54:43 -0400 To: "Victor A. Wagner, Jr." From: Nick Simicich Subject: Re: your mail Cc: Miles Fidelman , Doug_LaVerne@ccmail.osti.gov, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <4.1.19990403122815.01136730@mail.rudbek.com> References: <10148.923090526@monkeys.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 12:29 PM 4/3/99 -1000, Victor A. Wagner, Jr. wrote: >I must point out that =20 is valid in both 7 and 8 bit ASCII (well now >ANSI) and it's the normal space/blank or whatever you want to call it. > >so if it's a "7-bit" thing, it's a VERY bad coding error. Read the "quoted printable" rules - there are cases where you have to quote spaces to "protect" them. -- That which does not kill us, makes us stronger. That which does kill us makes us smell stronger, after a few days, anyway. Nick Simicich mailto:njs@scifi.squawk.com or (last choice) mailto:njs@us.ibm.com http://scifi.squawk.com/njs.html -- Stop by and Light Up The World! From list-managers-owner Tue Apr 6 12:42:33 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA04435; Tue, 6 Apr 1999 12:37:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ns0.iticom.net ([207.49.134.248]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id MAA04428 for ; Tue, 6 Apr 1999 12:37:02 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [209.162.104.32] by ns0.iticom.net ; Tue, 06 Apr 1999 19:37:30 +000 Subject: New List Manager... help! Date: Tue, 6 Apr 1999 12:37:44 -0700 x-sender: jenifer@DivineWebDesign.com x-mailer: Claris Emailer 2.0v3, January 22, 1998 From: Jenifer To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Message-ID: <92342745401@ns0.iticom.net> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I've been on this list for a long time, anticipating starting a list eventually. I have an opportunity to take over a list that is already going right now and would like to if at all possible! I need a server that will host "majordomo (listserv robot)" can somebody let me know where I can find one, preferably one that doesn't charge! Thanks ahead of time! Jenifer From list-managers-owner Tue Apr 6 14:27:53 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA05295; Tue, 6 Apr 1999 14:14:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ns0.iticom.net ([207.49.134.248]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id OAA05288 for ; Tue, 6 Apr 1999 14:14:29 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [209.162.104.32] by ns0.iticom.net ; Tue, 06 Apr 1999 21:14:59 +000 Subject: Another Question... Date: Tue, 6 Apr 1999 14:15:09 -0700 x-sender: jenifer@DivineWebDesign.com x-mailer: Claris Emailer 2.0v3, January 22, 1998 From: Jenifer To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Message-ID: <92343330001@ns0.iticom.net> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk RE: "I need a server that will host "majordomo (listserv robot)" can somebody let me know where I can find one, preferably one that doesn't charge!" Where do I find the most recent majordomo software? Thanks, Jenifer From list-managers-owner Tue Apr 6 15:28:12 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA06280; Tue, 6 Apr 1999 15:19:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: from smtp2.vnet.net (smtp2.vnet.net [166.82.1.32]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA06273 for ; Tue, 6 Apr 1999 15:19:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: from lmd.vnet.net (lmd.vnet.net [166.82.1.41]) by smtp2.vnet.net (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id SAA06111; Tue, 6 Apr 1999 18:19:57 -0400 (EDT) Received: from katie.vnet.net (katie.vnet.net [166.82.1.7]) by lmd.vnet.net (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id SAA10017; Tue, 6 Apr 1999 18:18:24 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (murr@localhost) by katie.vnet.net (8.8.8+Sun/8.8.8) with ESMTP id SAA27072; Tue, 6 Apr 1999 18:18:24 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 6 Apr 1999 18:18:23 -0400 (EDT) From: murr rhame To: Jenifer cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: List Hosting Services In-Reply-To: <92342745401@ns0.iticom.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Brian Edmonds maintains a list of mailing list service providers. - http://www.cs.ubc.ca/spider/edmonds/usenet/ml-providers.txt - send email to majordomo@edmonds.home.cs.ubc.ca with the following line in the body of the message: get faq ml-providers.txt Vivian Neou maintains a similar list of host sites along with additional useful information about mailing lists such as her venerable "List of Lists" and a web page describing various mailing list software packages. - http://www.catalog.com/vivian/ The list host providers offer very wide range of services including: discussion lists, announcement lists, digests, archiving, web interfaced search engines, full service list management, etc. Prices for hosting services range from free to hundreds of dollars a month. To have your mailing list host services listed on these pages contact Brian Edmonds or Vivian Neou . Another list of providers here: http://angus.interspeed.net/listowner/provide.html - murr - From list-managers-owner Wed Apr 7 12:29:38 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA21954; Wed, 7 Apr 1999 12:26:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ns0.iticom.net ([207.49.134.248]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id MAA21946 for ; Wed, 7 Apr 1999 12:26:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [209.162.105.42] by ns0.iticom.net ; Wed, 07 Apr 1999 19:26:34 +000 Subject: Thanks to everyone... Date: Wed, 7 Apr 1999 12:26:43 -0700 x-sender: jenifer@DivineWebDesign.com x-mailer: Claris Emailer 2.0v3, January 22, 1998 From: Jenifer To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Message-ID: <92351319701@ns0.iticom.net> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I was trying to reply individually, but I got such a large response that I decided to send out one reply to all that have offered their help! Thank you all so much, you are really great! Unfortunately, I have decided against taking over the list I orginally mentioned. I really do appreciate everyones help! Thanks again! Jenifer From list-managers-owner Thu Apr 8 21:42:31 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA14363; Thu, 8 Apr 1999 21:33:18 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dewey.mindlink.net (dewey.mindlink.net [204.174.16.4]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA14356 for ; Thu, 8 Apr 1999 21:33:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from l037.abb.dial.paralynx.net ([204.174.29.165] helo=Main) by dewey.mindlink.net with smtp (Exim 2.11 #5) id 10VSyO-0006CX-00 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Thu, 8 Apr 1999 21:32:56 -0700 From: "Mally" To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Thu, 8 Apr 1999 21:34:18 -0700 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: BCC posts being sent to list and others? X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.01d) Message-Id: Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hi :) Is there any way of getting Majordomo to catch and bounce posts to my list that are being BCC'd to other lists or individuals? Because of the sensitive nature of my list, we have a rule against anything posted there being quoted off the list. We've had more than one member reply to a post without snipping the original post in their reply, and BCCing that reply to other lists they belong to. We've only caught these by chance and I'm concerned that more may be going on uncaught. So any help in preventing this by using the config file would be appreciated. I've checked all the headers on BCC'd posts and can't find anything to indicate that they were BCC'd - although I know they were. Also gone through all the info I have on configuring the list and nothing on blocking BCCing there either. TIA Mally :) From list-managers-owner Fri Apr 9 00:42:31 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id AAA16075; Fri, 9 Apr 1999 00:34:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from tcp.com (tcp.com [207.126.126.64]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id AAA16068 for ; Fri, 9 Apr 1999 00:34:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost by tcp.com (8.9.0/8.6.10) with ESMTP id AAA04799; Fri, 9 Apr 1999 00:34:08 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 9 Apr 1999 00:34:07 -0700 (PDT) From: James Lick To: Mally cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: BCC posts being sent to list and others? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, 8 Apr 1999, Mally wrote: > Is there any way of getting Majordomo to catch and bounce posts to > my list that are being BCC'd to other lists or individuals? As you've found, bcc does not normally leave any signs in the headers. This is why it is called "blind" carbon copy. Your only hope is if the first mail server mistakenly adds on Apparently-To: header lines, but that server would have to be misconfigured. ---- James Lick ---- jlick@drivel.com ---- http://drivel.com/ ---- From list-managers-owner Fri Apr 9 01:42:32 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id BAA17573; Fri, 9 Apr 1999 01:32:00 -0700 (PDT) Received: from server.postmodern.com (server.postmodern.com [209.157.82.3]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id BAA17566 for ; Fri, 9 Apr 1999 01:31:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from mcb@localhost) by server.postmodern.com (8.8.5/mcb-980201) id BAA00342; Fri, 9 Apr 1999 01:31:32 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199904090831.BAA00342@server.postmodern.com> From: mcb@postmodern.com (Michael C. Berch) Date: Fri, 9 Apr 1999 01:31:31 +0000 In-Reply-To: X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.2.5 10/14/92) To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: BCC posts being sent to list and others? Cc: "Mally" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > Is there any way of getting Majordomo to catch and bounce posts to > my list that are being BCC'd to other lists or individuals? > [...] > > I've checked all the headers on BCC'd posts and can't find anything > to indicate that they were BCC'd - although I know they were. Also > gone through all the info I have on configuring the list and nothing on > blocking BCCing there either. Indeed. The entire BCC concept is that it is in fact "blind" (the "B" in "BCC") to the named recipients. The BCC recipients have been separately delivered to before a copy of the message is forwarded to you, and any evidence of their addresses (or even the existence of a BCC line at all) should have been removed. This is 100% a policy issue, not a technical one. In a technical sense, BCC is equivalent to the author having sent the message to your list, and then forwarded his/her own saved author's copy to others. -- Michael C. Berch mcb@greatcircle.com / mcb@postmodern.com From list-managers-owner Fri Apr 9 03:57:40 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id DAA20838; Fri, 9 Apr 1999 03:54:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dewey.mindlink.net (dewey.mindlink.net [204.174.16.4]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id DAA20831 for ; Fri, 9 Apr 1999 03:54:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from l005.abb.dial.paralynx.net ([204.174.29.133] helo=Main) by dewey.mindlink.net with smtp (Exim 2.11 #5) id 10VYvl-0005OJ-00 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Fri, 9 Apr 1999 03:54:37 -0700 From: "Mally" To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Fri, 9 Apr 1999 03:55:50 -0700 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: BCC posts being sent to list and others? References: In-reply-to: X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.01d) Message-Id: Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > On Thu, 8 Apr 1999, Mally wrote: > > Is there any way of getting Majordomo to catch and bounce posts to my > > list that are being BCC'd to other lists or individuals? > > As you've found, bcc does not normally leave any signs in the headers. > This is why it is called "blind" carbon copy. Your only hope is if the > first mail server mistakenly adds on Apparently-To: header lines, but that > server would have to be misconfigured. Thanks for the help. I think this latest BCC user is using it to get all the members addresses (we keep our Who list locked). However, to quote Black Adder, "I have a plan!" Thanks again! Mally :) From list-managers-owner Fri Apr 9 04:57:46 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id EAA21374; Fri, 9 Apr 1999 04:50:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: from euler.central.cranfield.ac.uk (euler.central.cranfield.ac.uk [138.250.48.9]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id EAA21366 for ; Fri, 9 Apr 1999 04:50:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nassau.pegasus.cranfield.ac.uk ([138.250.1.183]) by euler.central.cranfield.ac.uk with esmtp (Exim 2.12 #1) id 10VZng-000364-00; Fri, 9 Apr 1999 12:50:20 +0100 Date: Fri, 9 Apr 1999 12:50:11 +0100 (BST) From: Jeffrey Goldberg X-Sender: cc047@nassau.pegasus.cranfield.ac.uk Reply-To: Jeffrey Goldberg To: James Lick cc: Mally , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: BCC posts being sent to list and others? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Organization: Cranfield University Computer Centre MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I missed the original On Fri, 9 Apr 1999, James Lick wrote: > On Thu, 8 Apr 1999, Mally wrote: > > Is there any way of getting Majordomo to catch and bounce posts to > > my list that are being BCC'd to other lists or individuals? > Your only hope is if the first mail server mistakenly adds on > Apparently-To: header lines, but that server would have to be > misconfigured. Also imagine a world without Bcc. If I wanted to have the effect of Bcc without Bcc on this message, I would just resend my copy of it to other recipients. You will never be able to block or stop things being sent elsewhere. -j -- Jeffrey Goldberg +44 (0)1234 750 111 x 2826 Cranfield Computer Centre FAX 751 814 J.Goldberg@Cranfield.ac.uk http://WWW.Cranfield.ac.uk/public/cc/cc047/ Relativism is the triumph of authority over truth, convention over justice. From list-managers-owner Fri Apr 9 09:27:49 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA24118; Fri, 9 Apr 1999 09:02:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: from stcgate.statcan.ca (stcgate.statcan.ca [142.206.192.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id JAA24111 for ; Fri, 9 Apr 1999 09:02:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from stcinet (stcinet.statcan.ca [142.206.128.146]) by stcgate.statcan.ca (8.9.1/8.6.9) with SMTP id MAA13702; Fri, 9 Apr 1999 12:08:57 -0400 (EDT) Received: by statcan.ca (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id MAA28291; Fri, 9 Apr 1999 12:02:02 -0400; sender wenbing Message-Id: <199904091602.MAA28291@statcan.ca> Subject: Re: BCC posts being sent to list and others? To: mcb@postmodern.com (Michael C. Berch) Date: Fri, 9 Apr 1999 12:02:00 -0400 (EDT) Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, nemesis@paralynx.com In-Reply-To: <199904090831.BAA00342@server.postmodern.com> from "Michael C. Berch" at Apr 9, 99 01:31:31 am From: wenbing@statcan.ca (Bing WEN) Organization: Infrastructure Support, Statistics Canada, Ottawa X-Reminder: Email is unreliable. Please re-send your message, X-Reminder: if you don't see a reply from me in a day or two. X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] Content-Type: text Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk you may find the bcc addresses in the sendmail log. - > > I've checked all the headers on BCC'd posts and can't find anything > > to indicate that they were BCC'd - although I know they were. Also > > gone through all the info I have on configuring the list and nothing on > > blocking BCCing there either. > > Indeed. The entire BCC concept is that it is in fact "blind" (the "B" > in "BCC") to the named recipients. The BCC recipients have been > separately delivered to before a copy of the message is forwarded to > you, and any evidence of their addresses (or even the existence of a > BCC line at all) should have been removed. > From list-managers-owner Fri Apr 9 13:15:13 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA26407; Fri, 9 Apr 1999 13:05:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from scaup.prod.itd.earthlink.net (scaup.prod.itd.earthlink.net [207.217.120.49]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA26400 for ; Fri, 9 Apr 1999 13:05:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: from liszt.com (1Cust215.tnt3.new-port-richey.fl.da.uu.net [63.11.38.215]) by scaup.prod.itd.earthlink.net (8.8.7/8.8.5) with ESMTP id NAA19015 for ; Fri, 9 Apr 1999 13:05:30 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <370E5D46.C6EDC7EC@liszt.com> Date: Fri, 09 Apr 1999 13:04:22 -0700 From: Scott Southwick X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Liszt and Topica Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hi, Some of you may know me from Liszt (http://www.liszt.com), the mailing list directory, which I've been running since 1995. I've had the pleasure of dealing with many of you over the years. I wanted to tell you myself about something that will significantly impact the world of mailing lists for the better. Liszt has officially joined forces with Topica (http://www.topica.com). I've had extensive communications with Topica ever since their inception, and I am totally impressed with them. They brought many list owners into their development process - they're genuinely obsessed with creating a valuable service for mailing list owners and subscribers. That really cemented my confidence in combining efforts with them. I know that Liszt and Topica together can do much more for list owners and subscribers than either of us could do on our own. I'll continue to work with Topica closely, as an advisor. Anyways. Just wanted to let you know. Thanks to all of you who have used and contributed to Liszt over the years; I think you'll really enjoy the next stage in its development, as Topica starts providing a whole array of new services. I'd be more than happy to answer any questions (mailto:scotty@liszt.com). You can also check out my letter (http://www.liszt.com/topica.html) or the press release on the Topica site. yrs, Scotty Scott Southwick -- scotty@liszt.com Founder, Liszt (http://www.liszt.com/) From list-managers-owner Fri Apr 9 14:00:27 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA26946; Fri, 9 Apr 1999 13:57:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: from server.postmodern.com (server.postmodern.com [209.157.82.3]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA26939 for ; Fri, 9 Apr 1999 13:57:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from postmodern.com (foucault.postmodern.com [209.157.82.5]) by server.postmodern.com (8.8.5/mcb-980201) with ESMTP id NAA02805; Fri, 9 Apr 1999 13:56:58 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <370E699A.E33D48CC@postmodern.com> Date: Fri, 09 Apr 1999 13:57:23 -0700 From: "Michael C. Berch" Reply-To: mcb@postmodern.com Organization: Postmodern Consulting, California USA X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 (Macintosh; U; PPC) X-Accept-Language: en-US MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Bing WEN Subject: Re: BCC posts being sent to list and others? References: <199904091602.MAA28291@statcan.ca> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Bing WEN wrote: > > you may find the bcc addresses in the sendmail log. In *whose* sendmail log? If user@site1 sends a message to list@site2 with bcc to user@site3, there will be no mention of user@site3 in site2's mailer log, because the bcc existed only in the SMTP envelope (or a temporary header) passed from the mail client to site1's outgoing mailer. The address will appear in site1's mailer log, but that is unlikely to be of value to a list manager at site2 except under extremely unusual circumstances. If someone at another site asked me to research my mail logs for addressee details of one of my users' outgoing messages, I'd probably laugh at them. (Unless there was some overriding legal reason for me to be interested, of course.) -- Michael C. Berch mcb@greatcircle.com / mcb@postmodern.com From list-managers-owner Fri Apr 9 15:58:55 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA28190; Fri, 9 Apr 1999 15:54:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dewey.mindlink.net (dewey.mindlink.net [204.174.16.4]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA28183 for ; Fri, 9 Apr 1999 15:54:15 -0700 (PDT) Received: from l018.abb.dial.paralynx.net ([204.174.29.146] helo=Main) by dewey.mindlink.net with smtp (Exim 2.11 #5) id 10VkA4-0004yb-00; Fri, 9 Apr 1999 15:54:08 -0700 From: "Mally" To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, nemesis@paralynx.com Date: Fri, 9 Apr 1999 15:55:16 -0700 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Thank you! Was: Re: BCC posts being sent to list and others? In-reply-to: <199904091602.MAA28291@statcan.ca> References: <199904090831.BAA00342@server.postmodern.com> from "Michael C. Berch" at Apr 9, 99 01:31:31 am X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.01d) Message-Id: Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hi :) Sorry for not responding individually to all the helpful posts here, I'd like to say a collective THANK YOU to all of you who responded to my request for help with this problem. I really do appreciate the time and thought that was put into so many posts. Thank you again so very much. Mally :) From list-managers-owner Fri Apr 9 18:15:44 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA29326; Fri, 9 Apr 1999 17:58:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from scifi.squawk.com (scifi.squawk.com [208.235.116.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id RAA29319 for ; Fri, 9 Apr 1999 17:58:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: from tpad.squawk.com (root@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by scifi.squawk.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id UAA24349 for ; Fri, 9 Apr 1999 20:58:11 -0400 Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.19990409204833.03f8d780@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: njs@127.0.0.1 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Fri, 09 Apr 1999 20:48:33 -0400 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Nick Simicich Subject: Re: BCC posts being sent to list and others? In-Reply-To: <199904091602.MAA28291@statcan.ca> References: <199904090831.BAA00342@server.postmodern.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk My guess is that this is a "disposition-notification-to" or similar situation, and not a bcc situation. -- That which does not kill us, makes us stronger. That which does kill us makes us smell stronger, after a few days, anyway. Nick Simicich mailto:njs@scifi.squawk.com or (last choice) mailto:njs@us.ibm.com http://scifi.squawk.com/njs.html -- Stop by and Light Up The World! From list-managers-owner Sat Apr 10 22:16:38 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id WAA18593; Sat, 10 Apr 1999 22:06:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: from bouvreuil.cybercable.fr (bouvreuil.cybercable.fr [212.198.3.12]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id WAA18586 for ; Sat, 10 Apr 1999 22:06:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 17923 invoked from network); 11 Apr 1999 07:06:26 +0200 Received: from d164.paris-174.cybercable.fr (HELO ?212.198.174.164?) (212.198.174.164) by bouvreuil.cybercable.fr with SMTP; 11 Apr 1999 05:06:26 -0000 X-Sender: dsharp@pop3.cybercable.fr Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 11 Apr 1999 07:04:46 +0200 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: David Sharp Subject: Free services: Where's the catch? Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hi, I'm new to this list, so forgive me if this question has been asked before. (I've scanned the past four or five months of posts, and haven't seen it directly addressed in that time) What's the catch with these free email hosting services? I'm involved in Jliste, a mailing list for journalists here in France ( - sorry, it's all in French!), and we're currently looking around at possibilities for moving to a new kind of hosting service. We find ourselves faced with a choice between paid services, most of which will involve our costs zooming up towards the $500 a month mark in the forseeable future, and an array of free services such as Topica and Onelist. We have for the moment ruled out a sponsorship arrangement as we would like to remain independent of advertisers. We've instead been asking our members to help finance the list by joining a non-profit organisation, which will also organise initiatives centred on journalism and the Internet. In view of the costs of a paid service - list traffic more than doubled last month, so the Lyris bill did as well - some of those members are telling us: "Why don't you just put the list onto a free service?" Our reply to date has been: A: Because we have made a principled decision not to rely on advertising B: Because we want to be sure that member information remains confidential, and C: Because with a free service there's no guarantee of a reliable service. -- Concerning point A, I note that on Onelist, the only direct advertising placed on the bottom of messages, for the moment at least, is for the services of Onelist itself. (I haven't yet had direct experience of a Topica list). But I don't see anything that would prevent them, if they wanted, from putting ads for third-party products or services on the bottom of messages. -- On point B, Onelist explain in their terms of service that they won't hand out members' email addresses, although they do reserve the right to exploit other info. This sounds ominous to me: they must be exploiting member information in some way or other. -- Regarding point C, I've noticed a few glitches with Onelist services, including not only long delays but lost messages. However opinions seem to diverge on that question. Needless to say, the people advocating a "free" solution are also the ones who haven't noticed any problems. To cut a long story short, I find it hard to believe that commercial undertakings such as Onelist and Topica are spending all that money on server capacity and jazzy hosting features just for the greater good of humanity. So what's the deal? Are we at Jliste crazy to be considering staying with a paid service? If we are, how come the paid services are staying in business? -- David Sharp, journaliste, France Tel (home) 331 42 64 35 94 - (office) 331 40 41 47 92 E-mail ICQ: 16881741 From list-managers-owner Sun Apr 11 05:17:50 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id FAA25105; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 05:06:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from smtp1.vnet.net (smtp1.vnet.net [166.82.1.31]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id FAA25098 for ; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 05:06:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from lmd.vnet.net (lmd.vnet.net [166.82.1.41]) by smtp1.vnet.net (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id IAA05290 for ; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 08:08:07 -0400 (EDT) Received: from katie.vnet.net (katie.vnet.net [166.82.1.7]) by lmd.vnet.net (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id IAA05256 for ; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 08:06:51 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (murr@localhost) by katie.vnet.net (8.8.8+Sun/8.8.8) with ESMTP id IAA01834 for ; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 08:06:50 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 11 Apr 1999 08:06:50 -0400 (EDT) From: murr rhame To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: List Host Service Providers In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Brian Edmonds maintains a list of mailing list service providers. - http://www.gweep.bc.ca/~edmonds/usenet/ml-providers.html - send email to majordomo@gweep.bc.ca with the following line in the body of the message: get faq ml-providers.txt Contact: Brian Edmonds Vivian Neou maintains a similar list of host sites along with additional useful information about mailing lists such as her venerable "List of Lists" and a web page describing various mailing list software packages. - http://www.catalog.com/vivian/ Contact: Vivian Neou Cleo Kiernan at Interspeed Net maintains an unoffical listowner guide which includes a page of mailing list service providers and various mailing list related links at: - http://angus.interspeed.net/listowner/provide.html Contact: Cleo Kiernan The list host providers offer very wide range of services including: discussion lists, announcement lists, digests, archiving, web interfaced search engines, full-service list management, etc. Prices for hosting services range from free, with ads appended to posts, to hundreds of dollars a month. Prices vary with number of subscribers, traffic volume, added features and the level of service. To have your mailing list host services listed on these pages, contact the the folks who maintain the lists at the addresses listed above. - murr - From list-managers-owner Sun Apr 11 05:33:09 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id FAA25081; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 05:04:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: from smtp1.vnet.net (smtp1.vnet.net [166.82.1.31]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id FAA25074 for ; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 05:04:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: from lmd.vnet.net (lmd.vnet.net [166.82.1.41]) by smtp1.vnet.net (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id IAA05240; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 08:05:41 -0400 (EDT) Received: from katie.vnet.net (katie.vnet.net [166.82.1.7]) by lmd.vnet.net (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id IAA05138; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 08:04:26 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (murr@localhost) by katie.vnet.net (8.8.8+Sun/8.8.8) with ESMTP id IAA01820; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 08:04:24 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 11 Apr 1999 08:04:24 -0400 (EDT) From: murr rhame To: David Sharp cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Free services: Where's the catch? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Sun, 11 Apr 1999, David Sharp wrote: > I'm involved in Jliste, a mailing list for journalists here in > France ( - sorry, it's all in > French!), and we're currently looking around at possibilities for > moving to a new kind of hosting service. > > We find ourselves faced with a choice between paid services, most > of which will involve our costs zooming up towards the $500 a > month mark in the forseeable future, and an array of free services > such as Topica and Onelist. While I like Lyris software for features, quality and price, their hosting services are rather expensive. Per their web page, they charge a flat fee of $0.001US per item distributed. There are other commercial providers who charge much less. I'll post contact info for list service providers in a moment. > B: Because we want to be sure that member information remains > confidential, and I'm curious about the confidentiality of subscriber info on ALL list service providers. Subscriber lists are valuable. It would be tempting to sell this info. I protect the subscriber lists on my server. I presume most service providers also protect subscriber info. I would definitely ask the policy of any service provider under consideration. > C: Because with a free service there's no guarantee of a reliable service. I doubt there is a very strong correlation between cost and quality. If the free services are making money selling their ads, there is no reason that they could not provide quality service. When you buy bandwidth in quantity, costs are A LOT LESS than a tenth of a penny per item distributed. The unknown is, are they making money. Services who charge for lists may also be unprofitable. > ... But I don't see anything that would prevent them, if they > wanted, from putting ads for third-party products or services on > the bottom of messages. I subscribe to a couple of lists with third-party ads appended to the articles. As long as the ads are short and at the end, they don't bother me much. > -- On point B, Onelist explain in their terms of service that they > won't hand out members' email addresses, although they do reserve > the right to exploit other info. This sounds ominous to me: they > must be exploiting member information in some way or other. Exploiting "other" member info does sound ominous. > -- Regarding point C, I've noticed a few glitches with Onelist > services, including not only long delays but lost messages. > However opinions seem to diverge on that question. Needless to > say, the people advocating a "free" solution are also the ones who > haven't noticed any problems. I doubt that you will find many service providers who are perfect. 100% uptime is extremely rare. 100% delivery doesn't happen on the Internet. Even if the mail is sent to 100% of the subscribers, a small percentage of the mailboxes can not be reached at a given moment. Most often, the delivery problems are at the receiving end. You can not force someone to accept their email. > To cut a long story short, I find it hard to believe that > commercial undertakings such as Onelist and Topica are spending > all that money on server capacity and jazzy hosting features just > for the greater good of humanity. "Free" list hosting services are out to make a dollar. Their main source of income is injected advertising both on the lists and on their web pages. I don't think this is an evil plot as long as they tell you up font what they are doing. > So what's the deal? > Are we at Jliste crazy to be considering staying with a paid service? > If we are, how come the paid services are staying in business? The paid services will remain in business because there is still a market for ad-free or custom services. Either business model can work. Time will tell if both types of service will make it for the long haul. - murr - From list-managers-owner Sun Apr 11 05:48:01 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id FAA25153; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 05:08:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dewey.mindlink.net (dewey.mindlink.net [204.174.16.4]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id FAA25146 for ; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 05:08:48 -0700 (PDT) Received: from l007.abb.dial.paralynx.net ([204.174.29.135] helo=Main) by dewey.mindlink.net with smtp (Exim 2.11 #5) id 10WJ2h-0004ov-00 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 05:08:52 -0700 From: "Mally" To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Sun, 11 Apr 1999 05:10:28 -0700 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/enriched; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Free services: Where's the catch? In-reply-to: X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.01d) Message-Id: Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hi :) ~~~wee snip~~~ > What's the catch with these free email hosting services? ~~~'nother snip~~~ > We find ourselves faced with a choice between paid services, most of which > will involve our costs zooming up towards the $500 a month mark in the > forseeable future, and an array of free services such as Topica and > Onelist. Wow! We paid $100. set up and it's $25. a month Canadian for our list - unlimited mail and members and a digest option. We tried Coollist and OneList and one other free list service (can't remember the name) before one of our members (who always wins at poker <) offered to pay the bills for a paid service because of the constant hassles of dealing with the freebie list services. > We have for the moment ruled out a sponsorship arrangement as we would > like to remain independent of advertisers. > > We've instead been asking our members to help finance the list by joining > a non-profit organisation, which will also organise initiatives centred on > journalism and the Internet. > > In view of the costs of a paid service - list traffic more than doubled > last month, so the Lyris bill did as well - some of those members are > telling us: "Why don't you just put the list onto a free service?" > > Our reply to date has been: > > A: Because we have made a principled decision not to rely on advertising > B: Because we want to be sure that member information remains > confidential, and C: Because with a free service there's no guarantee of a > reliable service. All three of your points are the reasons we went for a paid for service. The need for confidentiality is extremely important for the type of list we have. > -- Concerning point A, I note that on Onelist, the only direct advertising > placed on the bottom of messages, for the moment at least, is for the > services of Onelist itself. (I haven't yet had direct experience of a > Topica list). But I don't see anything that would prevent them, if they > wanted, from putting ads for third-party products or services on the > bottom of messages. They can and do put third-party ad's onto messages as footers. Happened while we were there. Don't know anything about Topica either. > -- On point B, Onelist explain in their terms of service that they won't > hand out members' email addresses, although they do reserve the right to > exploit other info. This sounds ominous to me: they must be exploiting > member information in some way or other. In the approx. two months or so we had our list there, the spam mail that our members received really shot up. Much of it from spammers selling products related to the central topic of our list. Coincidence? Same with Coollist if I remember rightly. > -- Regarding point C, I've noticed a few glitches with Onelist services, > including not only long delays but lost messages. However opinions seem to > diverge on that question. Needless to say, the people advocating a "free" > solution are also the ones who haven't noticed any problems. We had nothing but grief when we were there (that'd be about a little more than a year ago - they may have improved their technical facilities since then). Constant break-downs and lost messages. I think we ran more often using a distribution list than we did using OneList whilst we were there. > To cut a long story short, I find it hard to believe that commercial > undertakings such as Onelist and Topica are spending all that money on > server capacity and jazzy hosting features just for the greater good of > humanity. My own personal impression was that OneList was struggling to keep afloat with inadequate equipment and not enough advertisers - at least whilst we were there. However, I recently joined a mail list there for a few months and there wasn't a single break-down whilst I belonged to the list. A lot more lists too than there had been. The archives would worry me though. AFAIK, lists are archived whether you want them to be or not. While it's probably possible to lock them to non-members, many aren't (prime hunting ground for spammers I'd think) - but I don't think it would be all that difficult for someone who knew what they were doing to access those archives. At least IMO. > So what's the deal? > Are we at Jliste crazy to be considering staying with a paid service? If > we are, how come the paid services are staying in business? As far as our list is concerned, we're much happier with a paid service. We get good technical help, no archiving, no break-downs to speak of, privacy (at least as far as it's possible to be private on the Net) and friendly folks we can actually *talk* to if we need advice. :) Mally :) > -- > David Sharp, journaliste, France < > Tel (home) 331 42 64 35 94 - (office) 331 40 41 47 92 > E-mail < ICQ: 16881741 > > From list-managers-owner Sun Apr 11 07:02:51 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA25866; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 06:43:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ntcorp.dn.net (ntcorp.dn.net [207.226.172.79]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id GAA25859 for ; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 06:43:42 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (fidelman@localhost) by ntcorp.dn.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id JAA08815; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 09:38:03 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 11 Apr 1999 09:38:02 -0400 (EDT) From: Miles Fidelman X-Sender: fidelman@ntcorp.dn.net To: David Sharp cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Free services: Where's the catch? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hello David, On Sun, 11 Apr 1999, David Sharp wrote : > What's the catch with these free email hosting services? > To cut a long story short, I find it hard to believe that commercial > undertakings such as Onelist and Topica are spending all that money on > server capacity and jazzy hosting features just for the greater good of > humanity. > > So what's the deal? > Are we at Jliste crazy to be considering staying with a paid service? > If we are, how come the paid services are staying in business? > >Our reply to date has been: > > A: Because we have made a principled decision not to rely on advertising > B: Because we want to be sure that member information remains > confidential, and > C: Because with a free service there's no guarantee of a reliable > service. These are very good reasons for going with a paid service, and I'd add three more: D. You're stuck with their domain, which locks you in to their service forever (with your own domain, you can change service providers whenever you want), and worse, E. If they go out of business, then you lose touch with your audience (since your list is now in a non-existant domain). This is not an unreasonable fear, since most of these free services are running an operating loss and surviving on their investment capital -- quite a few of them can be expected to go out of business, or F. Your free provider may get acquired by someone else (e.g. hotmail is now owned by Microsoft). At some point, your free provider may start charging - and since your list is in their domain, you'll be forced to go along or go through a painful transition period. That's why we've always paid for our lists, and more recently started leasing a dedicated server on which we host all our lists and web servers - which also gives us a lot of flexibility to configure things like password-protected archives. (actually, these days, my small for-profit leases the server and donates space to the non-profit activities I conduct under the Center for Civic Networking). By the way, $500/month sounds awfully high - most ISPs charge around $30/month for a list, and the one I used for years charged only $5/month (Software Tool and Die / The World, www.std.com). If you really WANT to spend $500/month, let me know and I can host your list on our machine :-) Miles Fidelman ************************************************************************** The Center for Civic Networking PO Box 600618 Miles R. Fidelman, President & Newtonville, MA 02460-0006 Director of Civic Networking Systems 617-558-3698 fax: 617-630-8946 mfidelman@civicnet.org http://civic.net/ccn.html Information Infrastructure: Public Spaces for the 21st Century Let's Start With: Internet Wall-Plugs Everywhere Say It Often, Say It Loud: "I Want My Internet!" ************************************************************************** From list-managers-owner Sun Apr 11 09:32:55 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA27217; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 09:20:42 -0700 (PDT) Received: from vjs.telephonet.com (vjs.telephonet.com [207.252.88.49]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id JAA27204 for ; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 09:20:29 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [207.252.88.49] (207.252.88.49) by vjs.telephonet.com with ESMTP (Eudora Internet Mail Server 2.2); Sun, 11 Apr 1999 12:22:24 -0400 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" X-Organization: Little to None X-Mailer: Eudora 4.0 for Cray T3E-1200 Date: Sun, 11 Apr 1999 12:22:16 -0400 To: David Sharp From: Vince Sabio Subject: Re: Free services: Where's the catch? Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk ** Sometime around 01:04 -0400 04/11/1999, David Sharp said: >What's the catch with these free email hosting services? First-born child. No, they don't want to take it from you; you just have to name it after their service. Personally, I'd rather have a kid called "Topica" than "eGroups," but that's just me. >I'm involved in Jliste, a mailing list for journalists here in France >( - sorry, it's all in French!), and we're >currently looking around at possibilities for moving to a new kind of >hosting service. In its defense, Lyris.net *does* provide a top-notch hosting service. I have awhole slew of lists there -- a large announcement list and a bunch of good-sized discussion lists -- and they have always done a superb job. (No, I'm not directly affiliated with them, except that I have a bunch of lists hosted there and I really like the service a lot.) >We find ourselves faced with a choice between paid services, most of which >will involve our costs zooming up towards the $500 a month mark in the >forseeable future, and an array of free services such as Topica and Onelist. [..] >In view of the costs of a paid service - list traffic more than doubled >last month, so the Lyris bill did as well - some of those members are >telling us: "Why don't you just put the list onto a free service?" > >Our reply to date has been: > >A: Because we have made a principled decision not to rely on advertising >B: Because we want to be sure that member information remains confidential, and >C: Because with a free service there's no guarantee of a reliable service. > >-- Concerning point A, I note that on Onelist, the only direct advertising >placed on the bottom of messages, for the moment at least, is for the >services of Onelist itself. (I haven't yet had direct experience of a >Topica list). This is also the case with Topica (with whom I *am* affiliated, BTW; I do not and can not speak for them, but I am a technical advisor for them); they insert a single tag line, like "Make mailing lists work for you," with their URL. >But I don't see anything that would prevent them, if they >wanted, from putting ads for third-party products or services on the bottom >of messages. Topica's policy is that they will *not* insert advertising into list messages without your permission. Which, of course, begs the question, "Who in his right mind would *voluntarily* give permission for a third aprty to advertise on his mailing list if he didn't have to?" Good question, David -- the answer is that Topica plans to provide "incentives" in exchange for your opting-in to advertising. The nature of those incentives is left as an exercise for the reader; the point, though, is that advertising on the list will be purely voluntary. >-- On point B, Onelist explain in their terms of service that they won't >hand out members' email addresses, although they do reserve the right to >exploit other info. This sounds ominous to me: they must be exploiting >member information in some way or other. I can tell you that Topica takes member privacy *very* seriously. They have engaged in discussions with several of us on various privacy fronts, to ensure that their membership policies address even the a skittish list owner like me. You can check out their privacy statement here: In short, member information will be used to compile demographics info, but will never be used in any capacity other than that. (For example the demographics info could be used -- in the form of statistical summaries, not individual data -- to acquire advertising on the site.) Topica also allows you to "hide" your list archives from non-subscribers, and also allows you to hide the very existence of the mailing list (i.e., you can choose to *not* have it listed in the directory). In all, Topica takes privacy very seriously. >-- Regarding point C, I've noticed a few glitches with Onelist services, >including not only long delays but lost messages. However opinions seem to >diverge on that question. Needless to say, the people advocating a "free" >solution are also the ones who haven't noticed any problems. I can assue you that Topica has quite a good deal of capacity, including a *lot* of reserve capacity. I am running several active discussion lists over there, including one that I launched even before they went public, and have not had a single glitch on any of them. Feedback from my subscribers is that they love the web interface -- which is good news for me, since I had received scores of complaints about the web interface on the previous hosting service. I had also used OneList about a year ago, and had noticed some glitches at that time. My impression is that they have worked very hard to fix the problems they'd had earlier, and reports that I've heard recently regarding OneList is that the service has improved dramatically. >To cut a long story short, I find it hard to believe that commercial >undertakings such as Onelist and Topica are spending all that money on >server capacity and jazzy hosting features just for the greater good of >humanity. > >So what's the deal? Money. :-) >Are we at Jliste crazy to be considering staying with a paid service? No, not at all. For some, a paid service is the right way to go; for others, a free service is the right choice. It seems to come down to whether you want to pay for the right to not have a "tag line" inserted a the bottom of the list messages, or banner advertising on the web site. For many, that's a small price to pay (or not pay, as the case may be If we are, how come the paid services are staying in business? They are staying in business because they are presumably providing an excellent service (such a lyris.net), and because there will always be list owners who want to have 100% control of everything that appears in messages on their lists and on their web sites. And please don't misconstrue my point -- there is nothing wrong with wanting to have 100% control over the content of your list and web site. But what works or is deemed necessary by one list owner might be entirely unacceptable (or just the wrong business model) to another. It really all comes down to a combination of personal preference and the expectations of your list members. And only you can guage those; we can't help you there. ;-) Best of luck with the list, David. __________________________________________________________________________ Vince Sabio Boy & His Sabre: vince@humournet.com Stop Internet Spam! From list-managers-owner Sun Apr 11 11:33:44 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA28187; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 11:15:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: from chi.spunge.org (www.spunge.org [209.100.230.195]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA28164 for ; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 11:15:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from window.spunge.org (window.spunge.org [209.100.230.194]) by chi.spunge.org (8.9.1/8.9.1) with SMTP id NAA04882; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 13:14:33 -0500 Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.19990411131430.009a4b60@spunge.org> X-Sender: spunge@spunge.org X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Light Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Sun, 11 Apr 1999 13:14:30 -0500 To: David Sharp From: Benji Spencer Subject: Re: Free services: Where's the catch? Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk David (and others) >What's the catch with these free email hosting services? You know, in a way I asked this myself. Why can't there be a place that will offer just as good of a service, but charge nothing (or very little) The services you mentioned (only knew of onelist) are a business, and are there to make money. Yes, your list through them does contain a little add, but they have the equipment/bandwidth needed (supposedly). However, Onelist doesn't fit everybody. That was one reason I started spunge.org. While the bandwidth is limited (33.6 modem link to the net), I try to provide just as good of a service as those businesses, at no cost. the sacrifice that is made, is the bandwidth, and I am not around 24/7 (I work and go to school besides run spunge.org). I use Majordomo (which I get free) and MajorCool (which is also free), and I think I provide just as good of a service as those who charge (and at times better). It isn't that hard what I do. it doesn't cost that much, however, people really appreciate it, and there is no real reason for charging a large mount of $$$ for it. if only there where more who seen it this way..... benji -------------------->Benji Spencer<-------------------- spunge@spunge.org http://www.spunge.org spunge@ripco.com http://www.ripco.com/~spunge ben@anduin.eldar.org http://www.eldar.org/~ben ** Finger ben@anduin.eldar.org for PGP public key ** ------------------->ICQ # 14089998<-------------------- From list-managers-owner Sun Apr 11 13:03:56 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA29194; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 12:43:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Kitten.mcs.com (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA29187 for ; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 12:43:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Venus.mcs.net (dattier@Venus.mcs.net [192.160.127.92]) by Kitten.mcs.com (8.8.7/8.8.2) with ESMTP id OAA12070; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 14:43:21 -0500 (CDT) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Venus.mcs.net (8.8.7/8.8.2) id OAA34407; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 14:43:20 -0500 (CDT) From: "David W. Tamkin" Message-Id: <199904111943.OAA34407@Venus.mcs.net> Subject: Re: Free services: Where's the catch? To: nemesis@paralynx.com (Mally) Date: Sun, 11 Apr 1999 14:43:20 -0500 (CDT) Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: from "Mally" at Apr 11, 99 05:10:28 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Type: text Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Mally wrote about Onelist, | The archives would worry me though. AFAIK, lists are archived whether you | want them to be or not. That's not true. If the listowner configures the list for no archiving, the list is not archived (though anything already in the archives remains there unless the listowner also deletes it). From list-managers-owner Sun Apr 11 18:03:36 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA01978; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 17:46:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ivan.iecc.com (ivan.iecc.com [208.31.42.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id RAA01971 for ; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 17:46:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 18414 invoked by uid 100); 11 Apr 1999 20:46:18 -0400 Date: Sun, 11 Apr 1999 20:46:18 -0400 (EDT) From: John R Levine To: "David W. Tamkin" cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Free services: Where's the catch? In-Reply-To: <199904111943.OAA34407@Venus.mcs.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > | The archives would worry me though. AFAIK, lists are archived whether you > | want them to be or not. > > That's not true. If the listowner configures the list for no archiving, > the list is not archived (though anything already in the archives remains > there unless the listowner also deletes it). Or unless one of the third party archives decides to do so. Some of my lists are archived at findmail.com via subscribed addresses there. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 From list-managers-owner Sun Apr 11 21:03:28 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA03733; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 20:50:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from bouvreuil.cybercable.fr (bouvreuil.cybercable.fr [212.198.3.12]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id UAA03723 for ; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 20:50:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 19533 invoked from network); 12 Apr 1999 05:50:39 +0200 Received: from d164.paris-174.cybercable.fr (HELO ?212.198.174.164?) (212.198.174.164) by bouvreuil.cybercable.fr with SMTP; 12 Apr 1999 03:50:39 -0000 X-Sender: dsharp@pop3.cybercable.fr Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Mon, 12 Apr 1999 05:49:05 +0200 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: David Sharp Subject: Re: Free services: Where's the catch? Cc: murr rhame , Miles Fidelman Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Many thanks for the various helpful suggestions I've received. murr rhame writes: >I doubt that you will find many service providers who are perfect. >100% uptime is extremely rare. 100% delivery doesn't happen on the >Internet. .../.... Most often, the delivery problems are at the receiving >end. Agreed. But one of the advantages of a list is that you can use it to compare notes with other members, and thereby determine, in a good number of cases, whether a given problem was the fault of the provider or whether it occurred somewhere down the line. One of the problems with a free service is that it's rather difficult to see what right you have to complain when it doesn't come up to scratch. Lyris sends us warnings whenever their server goes down for maintenance, or they suffer an outage. In some cases, they report problems that we wouldn't even have noticed if they hadn't told us about them. Miles Fidelman writes, regarding free services: > >D. You're stuck with their domain, which locks you in to their service >forever (with your own domain, you can change service providers whenever >you want), and worse, > That's a key point, and one I forgot to mention in my original post. Not only does your own domain give you the flexibility to move, but I feel that it also projects a more professional image. > >By the way, $500/month sounds awfully high - most ISPs charge around >$30/month for a list. ../... The $500 a month figure is an extrapolation on the basis of Jliste's current growth. We got a bit of a shock when the Lyris bill for March came in: traffic had more than doubled, and because of their flat fee system, the bill had gone up in proportion. Given our potential for growth, I can see us hitting that $500 figure quite soon if we stay with the same system. For comparison, I've so far looked mainly at two other services: SparkList , and a Web service provider I know which is on the point of launching its own list hosting service. Two things puzzle me: 1: Although both Web and list hosting services are billed on the basis of bandwidth occupation (either as per volume, or as per number of messages) the rates being charged by these commercial services seem much higher for lists than for Web services. One of the companies I'm looking at throws in up to 50Mb of list traffic per month with the basic Web hosting deal, then charges $US 13 for every 50Mb extra of list traffic. On the basis of an average message size of 3.4Kb, those 50Mb would come out to just over $17 on Lyris's rate plan. Compare this with the average Web hosting service. A lot of providers these days will allow you 5Gb of monthly data transfer - ie 100 x 50 Mb - in a basic $50 package. If I've not screwed up the calculations, that's about 4% of the first figure I quoted, and about 3% of the second. Why such a big difference? 2: I also note that providers such as Lyris offer few discounts for volume. Lyris's offer, in particularly, is desperately linear. Your traffic quadruples: the bill does too. As far as I can see, you need to be ready to hire a virtual server - at $1000 a month - before you begin to see any reductions in per-volume costs. Of the three offers I've looked at closely so far, only Sparklist has a reasonably degressive rate structure. I also find it strange that there are other services which charge a flat monthly fee (in the case of Esosoft as low as $5 a month), but with no volume-related charges at all. I wonder what the economics of those services are? My hunch is that the field of mailing list hosting has not yet seen the kind of competitive shakedown that has taken place in the Web hosting sector. In the latter you're much more likely to find similar for-payment packages pretty well everywhere, alongside free services such as Geocities, which thrust ads at you with almost every click. -- David Sharp, journaliste, France Tel (home) 331 42 64 35 94 - (office) 331 40 41 47 92 E-mail ICQ: 16881741 From list-managers-owner Sun Apr 11 22:18:37 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id WAA04539; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 22:11:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: from smtp2.vnet.net (smtp2.vnet.net [166.82.1.32]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id WAA04531 for ; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 22:11:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from lmd.vnet.net (lmd.vnet.net [166.82.1.41]) by smtp2.vnet.net (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id BAA18241; Mon, 12 Apr 1999 01:13:17 -0400 (EDT) Received: from katie.vnet.net (katie.vnet.net [166.82.1.7]) by lmd.vnet.net (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id BAA29002; Mon, 12 Apr 1999 01:11:48 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (murr@localhost) by katie.vnet.net (8.8.8+Sun/8.8.8) with ESMTP id BAA14570; Mon, 12 Apr 1999 01:11:46 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 12 Apr 1999 01:11:45 -0400 (EDT) From: murr rhame To: John R Levine cc: "David W. Tamkin" , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Free services: Where's the catch? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Sun, 11 Apr 1999, John R Levine wrote: > Or unless one of the third party archives decides to do so. Some > of my lists are archived at findmail.com via subscribed addresses > there. Third party archivers only archive free services? I doubt it. - murr - From list-managers-owner Mon Apr 12 17:15:18 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA06083; Mon, 12 Apr 1999 17:04:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from epithumia.math.uh.edu (epithumia.math.uh.edu [129.7.128.2]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id RAA06076 for ; Mon, 12 Apr 1999 17:04:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from tibbs@localhost) by epithumia.math.uh.edu (8.8.7/8.8.7) id TAA19352; Mon, 12 Apr 1999 19:03:15 -0500 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com From: tibbs@hpc.uh.edu Subject: And I thought Liszt/Tapioca were supposed to be doing it right Date: 12 Apr 1999 19:03:15 -0500 Message-ID: Lines: 9 User-Agent: Gnus/5.070065 (Pterodactyl Gnus v0.65) Emacs/20.3 Mime-Version: 1.0 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Well, I thought I had heard that they were doing things the right way. But what do I see when I check my mail? "Hi, we've added a bunch of your lists to our service without asking." !*&@@$&(*& What is it that these "services" don't get? Ask first and it's OK. Don't ask and I get pissed (in the American sense, not the British). -- Jason L Tibbitts III - tibbs@uh.edu - 713/743-3486 - 660PGH - 94 PC800 System Manager: University of Houston Department of Mathematics "I survived while Ruby died in Jackie's trashy fantasy..." From list-managers-owner Tue Apr 13 12:00:49 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA20704; Tue, 13 Apr 1999 11:53:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from scifi.squawk.com (scifi.squawk.com [208.235.116.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA20697 for ; Tue, 13 Apr 1999 11:53:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from tpad.squawk.com (root@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by scifi.squawk.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id OAA19577 for ; Tue, 13 Apr 1999 14:51:42 -0400 Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.19990413132006.03498d20@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: njs@127.0.0.1 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 13:20:06 -0400 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Nick Simicich Subject: Re: And I thought Liszt/Tapioca were supposed to be doing it right In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 07:03 PM 4/12/99 -0500, tibbs@hpc.uh.edu wrote: >Well, I thought I had heard that they were doing things the right way. But >what do I see when I check my mail? "Hi, we've added a bunch of your lists >to our service without asking." !*&@@$&(*& What is it that these >"services" don't get? Ask first and it's OK. Don't ask and I get pissed >(in the American sense, not the British). I'm back to getting daily spam from them. I've written to them and their providers a number of times and am getting nowhere. I believe that we need to see if we can't get topica put into the RBL. The reality is that they have a business that is based on spam, Commercial UBE. -- That which does not kill us, makes us stronger. That which does kill us makes us smell stronger, after a few days, anyway. Nick Simicich mailto:njs@scifi.squawk.com or (last choice) mailto:njs@us.ibm.com http://scifi.squawk.com/njs.html -- Stop by and Light Up The World! From list-managers-owner Tue Apr 13 18:15:25 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA24776; Tue, 13 Apr 1999 18:06:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ivan.iecc.com (ivan.iecc.com [208.31.42.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id SAA24769 for ; Tue, 13 Apr 1999 18:06:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 10892 invoked by uid 100); 13 Apr 1999 21:06:10 -0400 Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 21:06:10 -0400 (EDT) From: John R Levine To: Nick Simicich cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: And I thought Liszt/Tapioca were supposed to be doing it right In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19990413132006.03498d20@127.0.0.1> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > I'm back to getting daily spam from them. Liszt used to be fine until they got sold to this bozo. Anyone know any other good indices of mailing lists. The da Silva and Neou lists are fine as far as they go but they're tiny compared to Liszt. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 From list-managers-owner Tue Apr 13 23:36:07 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA28690; Tue, 13 Apr 1999 23:26:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id XAA28680 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Tue, 13 Apr 1999 23:26:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail.greatbasin.net (mail.greatbasin.net [207.228.35.39]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA28743 for ; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 12:09:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from default (rno-max2-44.gbis.net [207.228.60.172]) by mail.greatbasin.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id MAA00192 for ; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 12:09:21 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199904111909.MAA00192@mail.greatbasin.net> From: "Jim Poston" Organization: The Information Dirt Road To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Sun, 11 Apr 1999 12:09:43 -0700 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Free services: Where's the catch? Reply-to: jim.poston@bigfoot.com References: In-reply-to: X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.01d) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 11 Apr 99, at 5:10, Mally wrote: > AFAIK, lists are archived whether you want them to be or not. Small correction: ONElist gives the listowner the option to not keep archives at all. -- Jim jim.poston@usa.net <<< Ever notice how fast Windows runs? Neither did I... >>> From list-managers-owner Tue Apr 13 23:45:31 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA28879; Tue, 13 Apr 1999 23:29:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id XAA28871 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Tue, 13 Apr 1999 23:29:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from tymix.Tymnet.COM (tymix.tymnet.com [131.146.2.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id MAA03129 for ; Mon, 12 Apr 1999 12:26:56 -0700 (PDT) Received: by tymix.Tymnet.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA28106; Mon, 12 Apr 99 12:26:05 PDT Received: from tardis by Tymnet.COM (in.smtpd); 12 Apr 0 12:26:04 PDT Received: from romana.Tymnet.COM by tardis.tymnet.com (8.8.8+Sun/SMI-SVR4) id MAA19515; Mon, 12 Apr 1999 12:26:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: from romana by romana.Tymnet.COM (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id MAA07476; Mon, 12 Apr 1999 12:26:01 -0700 Message-Id: <199904121926.MAA07476@romana.Tymnet.COM> Date: Mon, 12 Apr 1999 12:26:00 -0700 (PDT) From: Joe Smith Reply-To: Joe Smith Subject: Re: Free services: Where's the catch? To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Md5: kcgYJteXa2PD5K9aGZlSIg== X-Mailer: dtmail 1.2.0 CDE Version 1.2 SunOS 5.6 sun4m sparc Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Vince Sabio wrote: > I had also used OneList about a year ago, and had noticed some glitches > at that time. My impression is that they have worked very hard to fix the > problems they'd had earlier, and reports that I've heard recently > regarding OneList is that the service has improved dramatically. The San Jose Mercury News had an article about ONElist on yesterday's Computing section. Modem Driver / David Plotnikoff talks about the guy to created ONElist. http://www.mercurycenter.com/premium/business/docs/modem11.htm -Joe Joe Smith MCI WorldCom, On-Net Design/Impl, Product Technical Support UNIX and Tech Sup: TYMNET Network, Xstream Packet Services (Public X.25) 2560 N 1st St, MS-5046/746, San Jose, CA 95131 Voice: 408-533-6220 = vnet 854-6220 Fax: 408-533-6702 = vnet 854-6702 From list-managers-owner Wed Apr 14 00:00:06 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA28675; Tue, 13 Apr 1999 23:26:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id XAA28665 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Tue, 13 Apr 1999 23:26:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: from proxy3.ba.best.com (proxy3.ba.best.com [206.184.139.14]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id JAA27170 for ; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 09:17:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: from corp.onelist.com (snoovler.vip.best.com [206.184.132.144]) by proxy3.ba.best.com (8.9.3/8.9.2/best.out) with ESMTP id JAA04886; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 09:17:09 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <3710C380.441FE7C6@corp.onelist.com> Date: Sun, 11 Apr 1999 08:45:04 -0700 From: Mark Fletcher Organization: ONElist X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.06 [en] (X11; I; Linux 2.0.34 i486) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM, david.sharp@afp.com Subject: Re: Free services: Where's the catch? References: <199904110800.BAA20144@honor.greatcircle.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk David Sharp wrote: > > > What's the catch with these free email hosting services? > I'm the Founder/CEO of ONElist. There's no catch. We are primarily advertiser supported. That means banner ads on the web site and text ads on the emails. If you don't want text ads on the emails, you can sign up for our No Ads option (http://www.onelist.com/info/noads.html). You also mentioned that you are a non-profit organization. If you send us some notification of that, we will turn off advertising on your list for free, as part of our program to help non-profits. As to confidentiality, we believe strongly in our users' privacy. We do not divulge email addresses. The demographic information that we request is completely optional. And any demographic information that you provide is only used in aggregate form. Also, please note that we also believe strongly that the email content sent through our service is the property of the people sending the messages. Our terms of service only asks for permission to redistribute the emails through the archives on our web site(and that's only if you specify that your list has archives). We send out over 12 million emails a day and we have a complete set of mailing list features, including advanced features like multiple moderators and monthly/bi-weekly automated mailings. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask. I will be out of the office most of this week, so the best bet for a quick answer is to ask our tech support group, at admin@onelist.com. We have a great tech support team, and they should be able to answer any questions you have. Thanks! Mark -- Mark Fletcher President/CEO, ONElist, Inc. markf@corp.onelist.com From list-managers-owner Wed Apr 14 00:25:33 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA29113; Tue, 13 Apr 1999 23:44:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dns.topica.com ([206.111.131.72]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id XAA29106 for ; Tue, 13 Apr 1999 23:44:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ariel (ts006d06.sjc-ca.concentric.net [206.173.235.18]) by dns.topica.com (8.8.7/8.8.5) with ESMTP id XAA15082 for ; Tue, 13 Apr 1999 23:43:57 -0700 Reply-To: From: "Ariel Poler" To: Subject: recent posts about Topica Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 23:48:37 -0700 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2212 (4.71.2419.0) Importance: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2014.211 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hello, My name is Ariel Poler and I am the CEO of Topica. I am not a regular subscriber to this list, but I was forwarded some of the recent posts regarding Topica, and I thought it was important to say a few words: First, I want to apologize to anyone who received unsolicited email from us that you considered inappropriate. It is definitely NOT our intention to send messages that are considered to be inappropriate (particularly by list owners). On the contrary, we have been working very hard for over one year to build a service that we hope is of great value to the list owner community, and have obtained a great deal of feedback from many list owners in doing so (some of whom I know are members of this list). While I realize this is somewhat ironic, the reason behind the "unsolicited " messages is our strong believe that list owners should control their lists' information. See, one of the services that we are offering is a public directory of email lists. While we have collected the information by working closely with existing public directories such as Liszt, PAML, and Tile.net, we want to make sure that owners are aware that their lists' information is in our directory, and that they have the opportunity to modify it, or even remove it. So we have started to contact list owners to give them such an opportunity. There is, of course, the catch: some of you obviously considered these messages to be inappropriate. So we are faced with the following challenge: how do make sure list owners are in control of the information that we have in our directory about their lists, without communicating with them about it? Our decision was to send one email to the owner of each list giving them the ability, on an ongoing basis, to modify or remove their list's information from our directory. Unfortunately, it is not always possible to determine when a single person is the owner of multiple lists, so some owners of multiple lists received multiple messages. For the same reasons, we have also been sending one email to the owner of a list the first time that someone submits a subscription request to their list through our service. We decided that it was important for list owners to be aware that their lists were in our directory, and that people could submit subscription requests through it. I would greatly appreciate your suggestions on how we can better balance keeping list owners informed and empowered, without sending email that some consider inappropriate. We have received very encouraging feedback from numerous list owners and subscribers regarding the value that we are providing with our directory and related services, so we need to balance this as well, i.e., making sure that we continue to provide significant value added to the email list community. Thank you. Sincerely, Ariel Poler Tel: 415-344-3811 CEO, Topica Inc. Fax: 415-344-0900 620 Folsom Street #300 Cell: 415-613-6098 San Francisco, CA 94107 ariel@get.topica.com _______________________________________________________________ Explore your favorite topic - http://www.topica.com From list-managers-owner Wed Apr 14 00:30:07 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA28746; Tue, 13 Apr 1999 23:27:00 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id XAA28736 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Tue, 13 Apr 1999 23:26:58 -0700 (PDT) Received: from pneuma.freshwind.com (pneuma.freshwind.com [207.40.103.25]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id AAA06153 for ; Mon, 12 Apr 1999 00:46:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (benji@localhost) by pneuma.freshwind.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with SMTP id CAA21912; Mon, 12 Apr 1999 02:39:14 -0500 X-Authentication-Warning: pneuma.freshwind.com: benji owned process doing -bs Date: Mon, 12 Apr 1999 02:39:14 -0500 (CDT) From: "Jenni \"Benji\" Baier" X-Sender: benji@pneuma.freshwind.com To: David Sharp cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, murr rhame , Miles Fidelman Subject: Re: Free services: Where's the catch? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > One of the companies I'm looking at throws in up to 50Mb of list traffic > per month with the basic Web hosting deal, then charges $US 13 for every > 50Mb extra of list traffic. On the basis of an average message size of > 3.4Kb, those 50Mb would come out to just over $17 on Lyris's rate plan. > > Compare this with the average Web hosting service. A lot of providers these > days will allow you 5Gb of monthly data transfer - ie 100 x 50 Mb - in a > basic $50 package. If I've not screwed up the calculations, that's about 4% > of the first figure I quoted, and about 3% of the second. Why such a big > difference? Mailing lists are strange creatures =o) Partially, I'm sure, its a straight supply/demand thing. Web hosting has become easy to do, pre-config'd packages make it easy for virtually anyone (no pun intended!) to offer virtual hosting and lots of bells and whistles with no technical know-how at all. The demand for mailing lists has not been nearly as great, and has generally not been from the same sort of technically challenged audience. Anyone can put up a website, and feel that they've accomplished something, even if it only gets three hits a month (and that's when they log in to check their counter). Not everyone can pull together a viable mailing list. People will charge what they think the market will support. If you cannot or will not run a list for yourself, and cannot or will not use a free service, what are you willing to pay? Economics aside, I've also heard other concerns about running mailing lists. Some providers are afraid of the possibly bad exposure lists can be. What if the client loads his/her SPAM database and uses the list to sent junk mail? The residual nightmare of getting off of various people's "black hole" lists could be frightening. Leaving the realm of paranoia, list servers can be a pain to manage, even if the individual list managers do a fairly good job of watching over their own lists. Error volume is a factor: misdirected mail that users inevitably send from time to time to the server's "main" address rather than the individual list owner's address, etc etc etc. > I also find it strange that there are other services which charge a flat > monthly fee (in the case of Esosoft > as low as $5 a month), but with no volume-related charges at all. I wonder > what the economics of those services are? There are services that do the same for web hosting. They usually have some exceptions or exclusions (strict AUP, for instance). The idea is that if your flat fee attracts enough people, averages will work in your favor since most web sites really only get a negligable amount of traffic. This probably carries over into the world of lists to some extent: lists tend to self-manage their volume. It has been my *general* observation that high volume discussion lists have fewer members than low volume distribution lists, but their total bandwidth consumption can be pretty much the same. There are exceptions... but hopefully the averages play out once again. > My hunch is that the field of mailing list hosting has not yet seen the > kind of competitive shakedown that has taken place in the Web hosting > sector. I think you're correct, but I also really don't foresee it happening anytime soon, if at all. Is this a mass-appeal industry? Hardly. Do the big players, with the potential for big lists, have the $$ to either do it themselves or outsource? Generally, yes. That doesn't breed really intense competition, IMHO. --jenni "benji" baier From list-managers-owner Wed Apr 14 04:15:17 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id EAA04541; Wed, 14 Apr 1999 04:13:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail.bna.bellsouth.net (mail.bna.bellsouth.net [205.152.80.21]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id EAA04530 for ; Wed, 14 Apr 1999 04:13:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from marlene (host-209-214-48-150.tys.bellsouth.net [209.214.48.150]) by mail.bna.bellsouth.net (8.8.8-spamdog/8.8.5) with SMTP id HAA03813 for ; Wed, 14 Apr 1999 07:12:33 -0400 (EDT) From: "Marlene Coldwell" To: "List Managers" Subject: UTF-7 Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 07:16:14 -0400 Message-ID: <001001be8668$35d317e0$0201a8c0@marlene> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 8.5, Build 4.71.2377.0 Importance: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Can anyone tell me what causes the UTF-7 attachment with certain emails, and HOW to turn it off, please?? I am close to having a flame-fest over this issue, and can't seem to find out what to do to get rid of it. My filters do not catch this as an attachment, as it does not show in the headers. Any advice appreciated! Marlene From list-managers-owner Wed Apr 14 07:30:37 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA07653; Wed, 14 Apr 1999 07:25:02 -0700 (PDT) Received: from eis-msg-014.jpl.nasa.gov (eis-msg-014.jpl.nasa.gov [137.78.160.189]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id HAA07643 for ; Wed, 14 Apr 1999 07:24:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Shadow-Castle (1Cust187.tnt14.lax3.da.uu.net [153.37.91.187]) by eis-msg-014.jpl.nasa.gov (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id HAA12911; Wed, 14 Apr 1999 07:24:32 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.19990414072436.007f1480@mgsw3.jpl.nasa.gov> X-Sender: kyle@mgsw3.jpl.nasa.gov X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 07:24:36 -0700 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com, ariel@get.topica.com From: Kyle Subject: Re: recent posts about Topica In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk [big snip] >I would greatly appreciate your suggestions on how we can better balance >keeping list owners informed and empowered, without sending email that some >consider inappropriate. How about not forcing someone to deal with such e-mail by not putting lists on your service unless the list owner asks them to be placed there? No unsolicited notifications. No need for notifications. No need to spend effort to stop something for which you never asked. Opt out is a cop out. [snip] >Sincerely, > >Ariel Poler Tel: 415-344-3811 >CEO, Topica Inc. Fax: 415-344-0900 >620 Folsom Street #300 Cell: 415-613-6098 >San Francisco, CA 94107 ariel@get.topica.com >_______________________________________________________________ >Explore your favorite topic - http://www.topica.com Kyle From list-managers-owner Wed Apr 14 08:19:00 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA08249; Wed, 14 Apr 1999 08:13:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ifi.uio.no (ifi.uio.no [129.240.64.2]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA08242 for ; Wed, 14 Apr 1999 08:13:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: from solva.ifi.uio.no (1368@solva.ifi.uio.no [129.240.64.20]) by ifi.uio.no (8.8.8/8.8.7/ifi0.2) with SMTP id RAA03460; Wed, 14 Apr 1999 17:12:40 +0200 (MET DST) Received: (from thomasg@localhost) by solva.ifi.uio.no ; Wed, 14 Apr 1999 17:12:40 +0200 Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 17:12:39 +0200 From: Thomas Gramstad Reply-To: thomasg@ifi.uio.no To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: And I thought Liszt/Tapioca were supposed to be doing it right In-Reply-To: John R Levine 's message of Tue, 13 Apr 1999 21:06:10 -0400 (EDT) References: Message-ID: Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk John Levine wrote: > Anyone know any other good indices of mailing lists. The da > Silva and Neou lists are fine as far as they go but they're tiny > compared to Liszt. Here's my list over indices. Additions welcome. http://www.NeoSoft.com/internet/paml/ http://www.liszt.com/ http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/ifla/I/training/listserv/lists.htm http://www.lsoft.com/ http://tile.net/listserv/ http://www.forumone.com/ http://www.geocities.com/Eureka/6146/index.html http://www.webcom.com/impulse/list.html http://everythingemail.net/discussion.html#search http://www.listsnet.com/ http://www.onelist.com/ http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/ http://www.topica.com http://pegasus.acs.ttu.edu/~liwtj/listserv.html http://www.acs.ryerson.ca/~journal/megasources.html Thomas Gramstad thomasg@ifi.uio.no "I'm ON it!" -- Natalie Raitano as Nikki Franco in _VIP_. http://www.spe.sony.com/tv/shows/vip/tbio_nf.html From list-managers-owner Wed Apr 14 09:33:55 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA08979; Wed, 14 Apr 1999 09:17:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: from epithumia.math.uh.edu (epithumia.math.uh.edu [129.7.128.2]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id JAA08969 for ; Wed, 14 Apr 1999 09:17:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from tibbs@localhost) by epithumia.math.uh.edu (8.8.7/8.8.7) id LAA03865; Wed, 14 Apr 1999 11:16:20 -0500 From: tibbs@hpc.uh.edu To: Cc: Subject: Re: recent posts about Topica References: Date: 14 Apr 1999 11:16:20 -0500 In-Reply-To: "Ariel Poler"'s message of "Tue, 13 Apr 1999 23:48:37 -0700" Message-ID: Lines: 38 User-Agent: Gnus/5.070065 (Pterodactyl Gnus v0.65) Emacs/20.3 Mime-Version: 1.0 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >>>>> "AP" == Ariel Poler writes: AP> So we are faced with the following challenge: how do make sure list AP> owners are in control of the information that we have in our directory AP> about their lists, without communicating with them about it? Ummm, how about just not putting their lists in your directory in the first place unless they ask for it? This is called "opt-in". It's a good thing. What you practice is "opt-out" which is a bad thing because unless whoever I sent my demand to actually followed it and removed my lists from your "service" I have to go to your server and clean up after you. AP> For the same reasons, we have also been sending one email to the owner AP> of a list the first time that someone submits a subscription request to AP> their list through our service. I don't want anyone doing anything to my lists through your "service". How difficult is that to understand? AP> We decided that it was important for list owners to be aware that their AP> lists were in our directory, and that people could submit subscription AP> requests through it. If the list owner went and added the list to your "service", they'd be aware of it and you wouldn't have this problem. But because you insist on forcing us to opt out, you have this dilemma. And if course, you end up pissing us off to boot. AP> so we need to balance this as well, i.e., making sure that we continue AP> to provide significant value added to the email list community. Thank AP> you. Do not add value to my lists. To me, you are adding profit to my lists. If I wanted anyone to make money off of my lists, it would be me, not you. -- Jason L Tibbitts III - tibbs@uh.edu - 713/743-3486 - 660PGH - 94 PC800 System Manager: University of Houston Department of Mathematics "I survived while Ruby died in Jackie's trashy fantasy..." From list-managers-owner Wed Apr 14 10:31:00 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA09710; Wed, 14 Apr 1999 10:21:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: from vjs.telephonet.com (vjs.telephonet.com [207.252.88.49]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA09700 for ; Wed, 14 Apr 1999 10:20:56 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [207.252.88.49] (207.252.88.49) by vjs.telephonet.com with ESMTP (Eudora Internet Mail Server 2.2); Wed, 14 Apr 1999 13:22:06 -0400 Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" X-Organization: Little to None X-Mailer: Eudora 4.0 for Cray T3E-1200 Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 13:21:57 -0400 To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Vince Sabio Subject: The Case Against C.A.S.E. Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk CASE: Clueless Anti-Spam Email Okay, so I made up the acronym -- but I've been dealing with enough of it lately that I think I need a shorthand for it. I don't know if any of you have ever been "caught" by a well- intentioned-but-not-terribly-bright automated anti-spam autoresponder, but I am now in the process of dealing with the fallout from one of them. Actually, *another* one of them. I have a subscriber on one of my mailing lists (we'll call him "Subscriber A") whose ISP ("ISP A") has a mail server that is somewhat misconfigured -- it reports the time zone as "-0600 (EST)". (More on this #later.) Subscriber A posted a message to the list, which was distributed in the normal course of events to Subscriber B at ISP B. Now, ISP B has what it thinks is a very clever anti-spam procmail filter: It runs down through all the well-known tests for spam, and if a message qualifies as spam, then the filter returns the message to the sender -- *and* to the abuse@ and postmaster@ addresses at (from what I can see) *every* domain that it can find in the header of the message. Which means that ISP A received a "notification" that his subscriber was supposedly spamming (he wasn't, of course), my hosting site received notification of a spam that was supposedly sent via one of my mailing lists, and a third party who was CCed on the original message *and* his ISP were notified that some unknown person somewhere was sending spam. Oh, and did I mention that the automated anti-spam message threatened legal action? Yeah, that's really helping to stir things up. So now everyone *and* his ISP have been threatened with legal action because someone's mail server is misconfigured. No, stay there -- it gets even better. Now, Subscriber A is completely perplexed about this, and understandably so -- so he fires off a "WTF?" back to the sender of the anti-spam message, ISP B. Very non-threatening, non-flaming; just requesting some clarification so could de-confuse himself. And he did what any heads-up subscriber wouold do in that situation -- he CCed the list owner. So, Subscriber A's WTF message *again* trips ISP B's spam filters, and here we go all over again, except that this time I'm being copied on the anti-spam message, and so is my ISP. (Luckily, my ISP knows me well enough to not go into adrenaline overdrive over something like this.) It is being sorted out, but what really irks me is that ISP B is refusing to admit that he has done anything wrong or that his anti-spam filter *really* needs to have a human in the loop before any threatening messages get sent out. He's blaming everything on ISP A's mail server (more on that #later), and congratulating himself for having such a clever anti-spam setup. Meanwhile, I just want to smack this guy upside his procmail filter. Okay, the fact that ISP A's mail server is misconfigured is bad, but is also entirely beside the point, as is the fact that the use of time zone names ("EST", etc.) instead of numeric offsets has been deprecated in RFC1123, and also the possible explanations why ISP A's MTA is reporting the time zone (not to mention an invalid combination of GMT offset and time zone identifier) in that fashion. ISP A has already responded by fixing the problem. These things happen, but should not result in the kind of situation that we have on our hands at the moment. What remains is the smoothing of all the ruffled feathers -- a task that, once again, I get to have the pleasure of handling, since ISP B refuses to take responsibility and notify the affected parties that it was just a false alarm and everyone can go home and get back to work. The last time I went through the nearly EXACT situation as this one, it took three days for everyone's blood pressure to return to normal -- and ISP B ended up blocking all mail from me to Subscriber B, and I had to route my messages through a different listmom in order to communicate with my own subscriber. (The good news is that this action on the part of ISP B pissed off Subscriber B to the point that he switched ISPs. A token move that probably was barely noticed by the ISP, but was still gratifying to me.) I haven't yet had my mail blocked by ISP B in this case, but he's about as bright as the last one, so it's probably imminent. And I'm wondering how many false alarms it will take for my ISP to drop me a note and ask WTF is going on over there. Did I mention that this is the third such incident in the recent past? Not all of them were misconfigured MTAs, but the end results have been nearly identical. Someone must have posted a notify-the-world procmail script somewhere prominent on a web site for clue-free ISPs. Of course, the problem isn't procmail, but procmail in the hands of idiots. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. And while I'm ing about brain-dead anti-spam filters, I'll throw this one into the mix: I recently went several rounds with a co-listmom's ISP. The listmom was unable to receive bounces and certain types of list server notifications for MONTHS -- they suddenly just dried up one day. While not receiving bounces is not necessarily a terrible thing , the server in this case is Lyris, which handles bounces internally -- so if we're receiving bounces, it's for a specific purpose. (Every once in a while, a subscriber runs into problems with mail delivery, so we have to bite the bullet and route the bounces to ourselves so we can actually *see* what's going on. It's often the only way to deal with an ISP who's claiming that the problem isn't at *his* end. Uh-huh.) So, in some cases, we actually *intend* and *need* to receive bounces. Well, after the listmom contacted his ISP, it turned out that the ISP had come up with a really nifty way of blocking spam -- simply refuse any message that has a null "mail from"! Pretty slick, huh? I tried throwing RFC821 at the ISP, but to no avail. That was several months ago, and the ISP has only recently realized the errors of his ways, and has removed the null return-path block. Chalk one up for the good guys; only took a few months of constant hounding. Well, that's about it. Thanks, I feel better now; I guess I can go back to smoothing the feathers in this latest mess without going unnecessarily ballistic on people who really genuinely deserve it. Meanwhile, what we really need an I.Q. test for ISPs ... __________________________________________________________________________ Vince Sabio Boy & His Sabre: vince@humournet.com Stop Internet Spam! From list-managers-owner Wed Apr 14 12:47:54 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA11504; Wed, 14 Apr 1999 12:32:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dns.topica.com ([206.111.131.72]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA11473 for ; Wed, 14 Apr 1999 12:31:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ariel (h80.n131.topica.com [206.111.131.80]) by dns.topica.com (8.8.7/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA30680 for ; Wed, 14 Apr 1999 12:30:40 -0700 Reply-To: From: "Ariel Poler" To: Subject: RE: recent posts about Topica Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 12:35:22 -0700 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2212 (4.71.2419.0) In-Reply-To: X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2014.211 Importance: Normal Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk A couple of people have suggested that we should not include any list information in our directory unless the list owner proactively contacts us and tells us to do so. I wanted to highlight that we are not building our directory from scratch, but by consolidating information from well known public directories. Several list owners from whom we originally got feedback suggested that we should not contact list owners at all, since their lists were already in these public directories. However, we found out that many owners were not aware of the fact that their lists were in these directories, and we felt it was important for them to know it (plus, we wanted to make it very easy for list owners to modify or delete their information). Probably a bigger issue with an approach that would only include lists whose owners proactively contact us is that we would not be able to offer what we believe is a valuable service to the email list community. Most people agree (I believe) that services like Yahoo!, Lycos and HotBot have made the Web a much better place. Y