From list-managers-owner Tue Jun 1 03:14:34 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id DAA11133; Tue, 1 Jun 1999 03:06:18 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mailgate.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de (nz40.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de [129.13.197.4]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id DAA11126 for ; Tue, 1 Jun 1999 03:06:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from torres.gf1.internal (mail@isdn216-198.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de [129.13.216.198]) by mailgate.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de with esmtp (Exim 2.04 #3) id 10olTv-0005yX-00; Tue, 1 Jun 1999 12:09:15 +0200 Received: from janeway.gf1.internal ([192.168.130.31]) by torres.gf1.internal with smtp (Exim 3.01-patchmh1 #1) id 10olTh-00069z-00; Tue, 01 Jun 1999 12:09:01 +0200 From: Marc.Haber-lists@gmx.de (Marc Haber) To: "David W. Tamkin" Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Automatic confirmations Date: Tue, 01 Jun 1999 10:09:01 GMT Organization: posting from University of Karlsruhe, Germany References: <199906010119.UAA47105@Mars.mcs.net> In-Reply-To: <199906010119.UAA47105@Mars.mcs.net> X-Mailer: Forte Agent 1.5/32.451 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Message-Id: Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Mon, 31 May 1999 20:19:08 +1900 (CDT), you wrote: >Very possible, Marc. After all, they were clueless enough to select = such >software in the first place. Hey, Exchange isn't _that_ bad if configured correctly. Greetings Marc --=20 -------------------------------------- !! No courtesy copies, please !! = ----- Marc Haber | " Questions are the | Mailadresse im = Header Karlsruhe, Germany | Beginning of Wisdom " | Fon: *49 721 966 32= 15 Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG "Rightful Heir" | Fax: *49 721 966 31= 29 From list-managers-owner Tue Jun 1 06:59:54 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA15688; Tue, 1 Jun 1999 06:52:49 -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 GAA15681 for ; Tue, 1 Jun 1999 06:52:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Jupiter.mcs.net (dattier@Jupiter.mcs.net [192.160.127.88]) by Kitten.mcs.com (8.8.7/8.8.2) with ESMTP id IAA24890 for ; Tue, 1 Jun 1999 08:56:57 -0500 (CDT) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Jupiter.mcs.net (8.8.7/8.8.2) id IAA13531 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Tue, 1 Jun 1999 08:56:57 -0500 (CDT) From: "David W. Tamkin" Message-Id: <199906011356.IAA13531@Jupiter.mcs.net> Subject: Re: Automatic confirmations Date: Tue, 1 Jun 1999 08:56:57 -0500 (CDT) Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com In-Reply-To: from "Marc Haber" at Jun 1, 99 10:09:01 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Type: text Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I had written, | >Very possible, Marc. After all, they were clueless enough to select such | >software in the first place. Marc Haber rejoined, | Hey, Exchange isn't _that_ bad if configured correctly. OK, then, the mail admins were clueless enough to select Lotus Notes or to misconfigure Exchange. Whatever, all the lists I've run have been for non-business purposes, and it took only one time that I got burned (I asked a site's postmaster about my trouble reaching a subscriber there and the subscriber raised hell with me for jeopardizing his job by ratting him out to management for what I didn't know to be misuse of his email access) for me to learn that when subscribers at corporate or university accounts can't be reached or their mailers cause problems, to cut them off instead of opening a can of worms. Subscribers at retail ISPs are another story; they're paying for their access and are entitled to get their email. But employees and students getting free email can't be choosers. From list-managers-owner Tue Jun 1 14:15:31 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA20554; Tue, 1 Jun 1999 14:05:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: from socrates.uophx.edu (socrates.uophx.edu [204.17.17.98]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA20545; Tue, 1 Jun 1999 14:05:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (sgmiller@localhost) by socrates.uophx.edu (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id OAA30467; Tue, 1 Jun 1999 14:17:19 -0700 Date: Tue, 1 Jun 1999 14:17:19 -0700 (MST) From: "Steven G. Miller" To: Majordomo-Users cc: List-Managers Subject: Messages with Attachments Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Running MD 1.94.4 RH 5.0 Perl 5.004 Sendmail 8.x Problem: All text messages seem to right through and out to the list, but I can't seem to send a message through with an attachment. Is this a sendmail problem or amajordomo issue? Steve From list-managers-owner Tue Jun 1 20:32:43 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA25282; Tue, 1 Jun 1999 20:20:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from vjs.org (vjs.telephonet.com [207.252.88.49]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id UAA25275 for ; Tue, 1 Jun 1999 20:20:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [207.252.88.49] (207.252.88.49) by vjs.org with ESMTP (Eudora Internet Mail Server 2.2); Tue, 1 Jun 1999 23:26:34 -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: Tue, 1 Jun 1999 23:25:59 -0400 To: "Steven G. Miller" From: Vince Sabio Subject: Re: Messages with Attachments Cc: List-Managers Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk ** Sometime around 5:17 PM -0400 6/1/99, Steven G. Miller sent everyone: >Running MD 1.94.4 >RH 5.0 >Perl 5.004 >Sendmail 8.x > >Problem: All text messages seem to right through and out to the list, but >I can't seem to send a message through with an attachment. Is this a >sendmail problem or amajordomo issue? Neither; it's a feature. ;-) __________________________________________________________________________ Vince Sabio Boy & His Sabre: vince-lists@vjs.org Stop Internet Spam! From list-managers-owner Tue Jun 1 21:48:04 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA26007; Tue, 1 Jun 1999 21:36:32 -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 VAA26000 for ; Tue, 1 Jun 1999 21:36:26 -0700 (PDT) Received: by tymix.Tymnet.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA07394; Tue, 1 Jun 99 21:40:44 PDT Received: from tardis by Tymnet.COM (in.smtpd); 1 Jun 0 21:40:43 PDT Received: from romana.Tymnet.COM by tardis.tymnet.com (8.8.8+Sun/SMI-SVR4) id VAA09611; Tue, 1 Jun 1999 21:40:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from jms@localhost) by romana.Tymnet.COM (8.9.1b+Sun/8.9.1) id VAA18619 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Tue, 1 Jun 1999 21:40:39 -0700 (PDT) Date: Tue, 1 Jun 1999 21:40:39 -0700 (PDT) From: Joe Smith Message-Id: <199906020440.VAA18619@romana.Tymnet.COM> To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Topica mentioned in newspaper article about WWII vets Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk E-mail list service links W.W. II veterans http://www.mercurycenter.com/premium/nation/docs/elists31.htm This article in the San Jose Mercury News has two points: 1) Veterans of World War II exchange memories via e-mail on the "Heavy Bombers" list hosted at Topica. 2) Can companies such as Topica turn free list-maintenance services into a viable business? "It's not a grass-roots thing any longer when you've got Microsoft and Aolscape playing in it." -Joe From list-managers-owner Wed Jun 2 04:17:35 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id EAA02849; Wed, 2 Jun 1999 04:07:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: from MAINE.maine.edu (maine.maine.edu [130.111.39.100]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id EAA02841 for ; Wed, 2 Jun 1999 04:07:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from polaris.umpi.maine.edu [130.111.208.87] by MAINE.maine.edu (IBM VM SMTP Level 310) via TCP with SMTP ; Wed, 02 Jun 1999 07:09:56 EDT Received: from POLARIS/SpoolDir by polaris.umpi.maine.edu (Mercury 1.43); 2 Jun 99 07:11:52 EST Received: from SpoolDir by POLARIS (Mercury 1.43); 2 Jun 99 07:11:22 EST Received: from albert (130.111.208.84) by polaris.umpi.maine.edu (Mercury 1.43); 2 Jun 99 07:11:20 EST From: "Anthony J. Albert" Organization: University of Maine at PI To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1999 07:11:19 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Messages with Attachments In-reply-to: <199906020800.BAA27988@honor.greatcircle.com> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.01d) Message-ID: <14B865A21990@polaris.umpi.maine.edu> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 2 Jun 99, at 1:00, List-Managers-Digest wrote: >Date: Tue, 1 Jun 1999 14:17:19 -0700 (MST) >From: "Steven G. Miller" >Subject: Messages with Attachments > >Running MD 1.94.4 >RH 5.0 >Perl 5.004 >Sendmail 8.x > >Problem: All text messages seem to right through and out to the list, but >I can't seem to send a message through with an attachment. Is this a >sendmail problem or amajordomo issue? > >Steve Most likely it's a Majordomo "issue" with the length of the attachment. This has been an infrequent problem with the lists I oversee. Majordomo doesn't give an error message for this; it just drops the email and attachment into /dev/null. In the configuration file for your list, look for the "maxlength" parameter. Frequently, this is set low, around 20,000 characters, meaning that an attachment of a file of approximately 13KB or larger is unlikely to go through. Change the parameter to a larger number, such as 200000, or 500000, and it will allow attachments of that size to be sent to the list. Beware, though, as this size limit is there for a reason. It takes significantly longer to send attachments to large numbers of subscribers. 1 message of 2KB * 100 subscribers = 200KB = approx. 1 sec to send on 10Base-T (@2.5MB/sec) 1 message of 2000KB * 100 sub. = 200000KB = 200MB = approx. 640 sec to send at 10Base-T (@2.5MB/sec), which is approximately ten minutes For large attachments, I suggest WWW or FTP publication of the file, and just send a URL in the email, pointing to the file. Anthony J. Albert ============================================================== Anthony J. Albert albert@polaris.umpi.maine.edu Systems and Software Support Specialist Postmaster Computer Services - University of Maine, Presque Isle Attention: the next meeting of the Time Travellers' Society will be last Tuesday. From list-managers-owner Wed Jun 2 08:31:40 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA05400; Wed, 2 Jun 1999 08:17:11 -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 IAA05393 for ; Wed, 2 Jun 1999 08:17:02 -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 RAA01898; Wed, 2 Jun 1999 17:21:24 +0200 (MET DST) Received: (from thomasg@localhost) by solva.ifi.uio.no ; Wed, 2 Jun 1999 17:21:23 +0200 Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1999 17:21:22 +0200 From: Thomas Gramstad Reply-To: thomasg@ifi.uio.no To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Automatic confirmations In-Reply-To: "David W. Tamkin" 's message of Tue, 1 Jun 1999 08:56:57 -0500 (CDT) References: <199906011356.IAA13531@Jupiter.mcs.net> Message-ID: Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk David W. Tamkin wrote: > Whatever, all the lists I've run have been for non-business > purposes, and it took only one time that I got burned (I asked a > site's postmaster about my trouble reaching a subscriber there > and the subscriber raised hell with me for jeopardizing his job > by ratting him out to management for what I didn't know to be > misuse of his email access) for me to learn that when > subscribers at corporate or university accounts can't be reached > or their mailers cause problems, to cut them off instead of > opening a can of worms. > > Subscribers at retail ISPs are another story; they're paying for > their access and are entitled to get their email. But employees > and students getting free email can't be choosers. I disagree with everything. ISP subscribers are often frivolous and clueless and they change e-mail addresses faster than a certain president change young secretaries. And they haven't paid ME anything, so I owe them nothing. University or corporate subscribers are at least serious enough to have a job or a study, and have more stable addresses. Their relationship to their employer is their business. Thomas Gramstad thomasg@ifi.uio.no "Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents, for these only gave life, those the art of living well." -- Aristotle From list-managers-owner Thu Jun 3 08:12:54 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA22736; Thu, 3 Jun 1999 07:54:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sws5.ctd.ornl.gov (sws5.ctd.ornl.gov [128.219.128.125]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id HAA22728 for ; Thu, 3 Jun 1999 07:54:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 189592 invoked by uid 3995); 3 Jun 1999 14:59:13 -0000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <14166.38977.661432.2089@sws5.ctd.ornl.gov> Date: Thu, 3 Jun 1999 10:59:13 -0400 (EDT) From: Dave Sill To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Messages with Attachments In-Reply-To: <14B865A21990@polaris.umpi.maine.edu> References: <199906020800.BAA27988@honor.greatcircle.com> <14B865A21990@polaris.umpi.maine.edu> X-Mailer: VM 6.71 under 21.1 "20 Minutes to Nikko" XEmacs Lucid (patch 2) Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab, Oak Ridge, Tenn., USA X-Face: "p~Q]mg{;e*}YR|)&Q/&Q\*~5UWfZX34;5M wrote: >On 2 Jun 99, at 1:00, List-Managers-Digest wrote: >>Date: Tue, 1 Jun 1999 14:17:19 -0700 (MST) >>From: "Steven G. Miller" >>Subject: Messages with Attachments >> >>Running MD 1.94.4 >>RH 5.0 >>Perl 5.004 >>Sendmail 8.x >> >>Problem: All text messages seem to right through and out to the list, but >>I can't seem to send a message through with an attachment. What happens? Does it bounce, or does the attachment/message get corrupted? >>Is this a >>sendmail problem or amajordomo issue? Almost certainly a majordomo issue. > Most likely it's a Majordomo "issue" with the length of the >attachment. No, it's more likely to be due to the fact that "resend" strips MIME header fields when resending to moderated lists, resulting in what appears, to the recipients, to be a garbled message. -Dave From list-managers-owner Fri Jun 4 16:13:35 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA16607; Fri, 4 Jun 1999 16:06:34 -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 QAA16600 for ; Fri, 4 Jun 1999 16:06:29 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost by tcp.com (8.9.0/8.6.10) with ESMTP id QAA27825 for ; Fri, 4 Jun 1999 16:11:21 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1999 16:11:20 -0700 (PDT) From: James Lick To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: FYI: listquest.com Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Heads up. Watch out for listquest.com. I received a query from them asking if I wanted to let them archive my lists, immediately followed by subscription requests (which were rejected as they attached some sort of image file to the request). Don't know their intentions, but it doesn't look good. ---- James Lick ---- jlick@drivel.com ---- http://drivel.com/ ---- From list-managers-owner Fri Jun 4 19:13:36 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA18128; Fri, 4 Jun 1999 19:08:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ma-1.rootsweb.com (ma-1.rootsweb.com [209.192.148.153]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA18121 for ; Fri, 4 Jun 1999 19:08:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from twp@localhost) by ma-1.rootsweb.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id WAA08522 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Fri, 4 Jun 1999 22:13:19 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1999 22:13:19 -0400 From: Tim Pierce To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: HTML demangler for mailing lists Message-ID: <19990604221319.L72837@ma-1.rootsweb.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.1i Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk [ I tried posting this a couple of times before, but it never showed up, maybe because the message was too long with source code enclosed. ] There's considerable demand for a tool that will strip out the HTML portions of multipart messages and leave only text/plain, but as far as I can tell, no such tool exists. So I wrote one. Get it at http://www.rootsweb.com/~twp/unhtml.c. This program reads a message on standard input and prints a demangled version on standard output. If the message has a content-type of `multipart/alternative', the body is discarded and replaced with the first text/plain subpart that can be found. If the message isn't multipart/alternative, or if it contains no text/plain subparts, the original message is passed through unmodified. For example, it can easily be hooked into SmartList in rc.local.s00 (and .r00): :0 wf * ^Content-Type: multipart | unhtml It is not guaranteed to be bug-free and should be considered beta software, at best. For what it's worth, it's been running in production on RootsWeb's mail servers for several days (an excellent torture test) and the initial bugs seem to have been shaken out. Anyway, I give it unto the world for them what wants it. Corrections and fixes welcomed. -- Regards, Tim Pierce RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative system obfuscator and hack-of-all-trades From list-managers-owner Fri Jun 4 22:28:51 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id WAA19742; Fri, 4 Jun 1999 22:16:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dragoncat.net (herne.dragoncat.net [216.122.4.136]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id WAA19735 for ; Fri, 4 Jun 1999 22:15:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (jtraub@localhost) by dragoncat.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id WAA06686 for ; Fri, 4 Jun 1999 22:21:18 -0700 Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1999 22:21:18 -0700 (PDT) From: JT To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: HTML demangler for mailing lists In-Reply-To: <19990604221319.L72837@ma-1.rootsweb.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Fri, 4 Jun 1999, Tim Pierce wrote: > [ I tried posting this a couple of times before, but it never showed > up, maybe because the message was too long with source code > enclosed. ] > > There's considerable demand for a tool that will strip out the HTML > portions of multipart messages and leave only text/plain, but as far > as I can tell, no such tool exists. So I wrote one. Get it at > http://www.rootsweb.com/~twp/unhtml.c. Amusingly enough, code to do this is in the Listar mailing list manager core. It also strips out OTHER mime types (like gifs and such as well). The reason I mention is the comment about no such tool existing :) --JT -- [-------------------------------------------------------------------------] [ Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty. ] [ It's hard to seize the day when you must first grapple with the morning ] [-------------------------------------------------------------------------] From list-managers-owner Sat Jun 5 04:55:06 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id EAA26430; Sat, 5 Jun 1999 04:37:29 -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 EAA26423 for ; Sat, 5 Jun 1999 04:37:22 -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 HAA17631; Sat, 5 Jun 1999 07:41:59 -0400 Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.19990605074149.03b50410@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: njs@127.0.0.1 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Sat, 05 Jun 1999 07:41:49 -0400 To: Tim Pierce From: Nick Simicich Subject: Re: HTML demangler for mailing lists Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <19990604221319.L72837@ma-1.rootsweb.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 10:13 PM 6/4/99 -0400, Tim Pierce wrote: >[ I tried posting this a couple of times before, but it never showed > up, maybe because the message was too long with source code > enclosed. ] > >There's considerable demand for a tool that will strip out the HTML >portions of multipart messages and leave only text/plain, but as far >as I can tell, no such tool exists. So I wrote one. Get it at >http://www.rootsweb.com/~twp/unhtml.c. I thought so as well, several months ago, so I wrote demime, a perl script that not only strips out the html alternative sections, but renders it if the only alternative section is html, renders plain text, removes attachments and so forth. http://scifi.squawk.com/demime.html -- 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 Jun 5 06:45:05 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA27257; Sat, 5 Jun 1999 06:34:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ma-1.rootsweb.com (ma-1.rootsweb.com [209.192.148.153]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id GAA27250 for ; Sat, 5 Jun 1999 06:34:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from twp@localhost) by ma-1.rootsweb.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id JAA14198; Sat, 5 Jun 1999 09:39:30 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 5 Jun 1999 09:39:30 -0400 From: Tim Pierce To: Nick Simicich Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: HTML demangler for mailing lists Message-ID: <19990605093930.A14133@ma-1.rootsweb.com> References: <19990604221319.L72837@ma-1.rootsweb.com> <3.0.5.32.19990605074149.03b50410@127.0.0.1> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.1i In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19990605074149.03b50410@127.0.0.1>; from Nick Simicich on Sat, Jun 05, 1999 at 07:41:49AM -0400 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Sat, Jun 05, 1999 at 07:41:49AM -0400, Nick Simicich wrote: > At 10:13 PM 6/4/99 -0400, Tim Pierce wrote: > > > >There's considerable demand for a tool that will strip out the HTML > >portions of multipart messages and leave only text/plain, but as far > >as I can tell, no such tool exists. So I wrote one. Get it at > >http://www.rootsweb.com/~twp/unhtml.c. > > I thought so as well, several months ago, so I wrote demime, a perl script > that not only strips out the html alternative sections, but renders it if > the only alternative section is html, renders plain text, removes > attachments and so forth. http://scifi.squawk.com/demime.html Thanks for reminding me. I didn't mean to dismiss your work. I just needed a very lightweight solution, since the load on a busy list server can get pretty extreme. I can't fire up Perl every time someone posts a message. A precompiled tool is pretty much the only way to go, and I couldn't find one written in C anywhere. (Thanks to the fellow who pointed me at Listar; I'll take a look at that.) -- Regards, Tim Pierce RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative system obfuscator and hack-of-all-trades From list-managers-owner Sun Jun 6 01:25:15 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id AAA06968; Sun, 6 Jun 1999 00:58:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id AAA06960 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 6 Jun 1999 00:58:00 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ma-1.rootsweb.com (ma-1.rootsweb.com [209.192.148.153]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id HAA10238 for ; Fri, 4 Jun 1999 07:31:12 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from twp@localhost) by ma-1.rootsweb.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id KAA03302 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Fri, 4 Jun 1999 10:35:53 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1999 10:35:53 -0400 From: Tim Pierce To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: HTML demangler for mailing lists Message-ID: <19990604103552.Z72837@ma-1.rootsweb.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.1i Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk [ I sent this last night, but, what timing, included the source code as an attachment. Please forgive me if this creates any reduplication. ] There's considerable demand for a tool that will strip out the HTML portions of multipart messages and leave only text/plain, but as far as I can tell, no such tool exists. So I wrote one. This program reads a message on standard input and prints a demangled version on standard output. If the message has a content-type of `multipart/alternative', the body is discarded and replaced with the first text/plain subpart that can be found. If the message isn't multipart/alternative, or if it contains no text/plain subparts, the original message is passed through unmodified. For example, it can easily be hooked into SmartList in rc.local.s00 (and .r00): :0 wf * ^Content-Type: multipart | unhtml It is not guaranteed to be bug-free and should be considered beta software, at best. For what it's worth, it's been running in production on RootsWeb's mail servers for several days (an excellent torture test) and the initial bugs seem to have been shaken out. Anyway, I give it unto the world for them what wants it. Corrections and fixes welcomed. Regards, Tim Pierce RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative system obfuscator and hack-of-all-trades -------------------- >snip here< -------------------- /* * unhtml: parse a MIME multipart message and, if `multipart/alternative', * discard all but the `text/plain' part. * * This code is in the public domain except where noted otherwise. * * Tim Pierce * 3 June 1999 */ #include #include #include struct list { struct message *data; struct list *next; }; /* * The `message' struct is used to represent a MIME multipart message, * as defined in RFC 2045 and RFC 2046. * * The `header' and `preamble' fields are flat text arrays containg * the raw text of the message header and preamble (any text preceding * the first body part). In the case of a single-part message, the * `preamble' field is used to store the whole body. * * The `epilogue' field stores any text following the last body part. * * The `content_type' field contains the value of the message's * Content-Type header, minus any parameters: for example, * "text/plain". It is NULL if the message lacks a Content-Type * header. The `boundary' field contains the value of the `boundary' * parameter to the Content-Type field, if present. * * The `hsize' parameter is the size of the header, in bytes. The * `bsize' parameter is the size of the body, in bytes. These * parameters are not presently used and may be discarded. */ struct message { char *header; char *preamble; /* text (if any) preceding the first body-part */ char *epilogue; /* text (if any) following the last body-part */ char *content_type; char *boundary; int is8bit; /* does this message contain 8bit data? */ int hsize; /* bytes allocated for hdr (may be more than necessary) */ int bsize; /* bytes allocated for body (may be more than necessary) */ struct list *parts; }; struct message *mime_parse (char *body); void mime_write (struct message *msg); void mime_warn (char *s); void mime_fatal (char *s); void mime_destroy (struct message *msg); int check_msgtype (struct message *msg, char *type); void getheader (struct message *msg, char *hdrname, char **hdrvalp, int *hdrlen); char *next_boundary (char *body, char *boundary); int add_subpart (struct message *msg, struct message *part); void print_msg_info (struct message *msg, int indent); void mime_decode_qp (struct message *msg); void mime_decode_b64 (char *buf); void mime_output_qp (char *text); int main (argc, argv) int argc; char **argv; { struct message *msg; int len, c, last_char, bi, bsize; char *p, *body; if (argc > 1) { if (freopen (argv[1], "r", stdin) == NULL) { perror ("unhtml: freopening standard input"); exit(1); } } /* Read the message. */ bi = 0; body = (char *) malloc (sizeof(char) * 1000); if (body == NULL) { perror ("unhtml: could not malloc memory for body"); exit(1); } while ((len = read (fileno(stdin), body+bi, 1000)) == 1000) { bi += 1000; body = (char *) realloc (body, sizeof(char) * (bi+1000)); if (body == NULL) { perror ("unhtml: could not realloc memory for body"); exit(1); } } bsize = bi + len; body[bsize] = '\0'; msg = mime_parse (body); /* * Here's the important stuff: walk through the parts of a * multipart/alternative and look for a text/plain attachment. * If we find one, rewrite the headers of the parent message * (this is ugly) and output the text/plain body. */ if (msg->content_type && !strncasecmp (msg->content_type, "multipart/alternative", 21)) { struct list *p; for (p = msg->parts; p != NULL; p = p->next) { if (p->data->content_type == NULL || !strncasecmp (p->data->content_type, "text/plain", 10)) { /* XXX: Rewrite the headers. This is clumsy, and also * doesn't handle Content-Type or Content-Length if they're * the first headers in the message. */ char *cp; for (cp = msg->header; *cp; ++cp) { putchar (*cp); /* Skip Content-Length and Content-Transfer-Encoding. */ if (*cp == '\n' && (!strncasecmp (cp+1, "Content-Length:",15) || !strncasecmp (cp+1, "Content-Transfer-Encoding:", 26))) { do { cp = strchr (cp+1, '\n'); } while (cp != NULL && isspace(cp[1])); if (cp == NULL) break; } /* Rewrite Content-Type. */ if (*cp == '\n' && !strncasecmp (cp+1, "Content-Type:", 13)) { char *hp; int hlen; if (p->data->content_type) printf ("Content-Type: %s\n", p->data->content_type); /* Skip to next header. */ do { cp = strchr (cp+1, '\n'); } while (cp != NULL && isspace(cp[1])); if (cp == NULL) break; } } putchar ('\n'); puts (p->data->preamble); break; } } if (p != NULL) return 0; } /* * If we got here, either the message wasn't multipart/alternative * or it didn't have a text/plain component. In either case we * give up and write the original message to stdout. */ fputs (body, stdout); return 0; } /* * mime_parse: process an RFC 2046 multipart message and return * a message structure with all the necessary fields filled in. * * The BODY argument is a character array containing the raw text of the * message to be parsed. * * In the event of a fatal system error (should only happen in the * case of insufficient memory) or a fatal MIME parsing error, a * message will be printed on standard error and the return value * will be NULL. */ struct message * mime_parse (body) char *body; { char *p, *bodyp; int len; struct message *msg; /* Initialize the message. */ msg = (struct message *) malloc (sizeof(struct message)); if (msg == NULL) { perror ("unhtml: mime_parse could not malloc new message struct"); exit(1); } msg->header = NULL; msg->preamble = NULL; msg->epilogue = NULL; msg->content_type = NULL; msg->boundary = NULL; msg->parts = NULL; msg->is8bit = 0; /* Get the header. */ /* Special case for message with zero-length header. */ if (body[0] == '\n') { msg->hsize = 0; msg->header = (char *) malloc(sizeof(char)); if (msg->header == NULL) { perror ("unhtml: mime_parse could not malloc header buffer"); return NULL; } msg->header[0] = '\0'; bodyp = body + 1; } else { bodyp = strstr (body, "\n\n"); if (bodyp == NULL) { mime_fatal ("no message header found"); return NULL; } msg->hsize = bodyp - body + 1; msg->header = (char *) malloc (sizeof(char) * (msg->hsize+1)); if (msg->header == NULL) { perror ("unhtml: mime_parse could not malloc header buffer"); return NULL; } strncpy (msg->header, body, msg->hsize); msg->header[msg->hsize] = '\0'; bodyp += 2; } /* Find the content-type. */ getheader (msg, "Content-Type", &p, &len); if (p != NULL) { msg->content_type = (char *) malloc (sizeof(char) * (len + 1)); if (msg->content_type == NULL) { perror ("unhtml: mime_parse could not malloc Content-Type buffer"); mime_destroy (msg); return NULL; } strncpy (msg->content_type, p, len); msg->content_type[len] = '\0'; } /* * If this is a message/rfc822, then the body is an encapsulated * message. Parse it, attach the result to the current message, * and we're done. */ if (msg->content_type && !strcasecmp (msg->content_type, "message/rfc822")) { msg->parts = (struct list *) malloc (sizeof(struct list)); if (msg->parts == NULL) { perror ("unhtml: mime_parse could not malloc attachment list"); return NULL; } msg->parts->data = mime_parse (bodyp); msg->parts->next = NULL; return msg; } /* Find the message boundary. */ if (msg->content_type && !strncasecmp (msg->content_type, "multipart/", 10)) { /* Skip to next semicolon and see what keyword follows it. */ p = msg->content_type; while ((p = strchr (p, ';')) != NULL) { ++p; p += strspn (p, " \t\v\r\n"); if (strncasecmp (p, "boundary", 8) == 0) { char *dest; p += 8 + strspn (p+8, " \t\v\r\n"); if (*p++ != '=') { mime_fatal ("expected `=' after `boundary' parameter"); mime_destroy (msg); return NULL; } p += strspn (p, " \t\v\r\n"); dest = msg->boundary = (char *) malloc (strlen(p)); if (dest == NULL) { perror ("unhtml: mime_parse could not malloc boundary"); mime_destroy (msg); return NULL; } /* If next char is a quote, read the following quoted-string. */ if (*p == '"') { ++p; while (*p != '\0' && *p != '"') { if (*p == '\\') ++p; *dest++ = *p; ++p; } } else /* Generic non-special characters. */ { while (*p != '\0' && !strchr ("()<>@,;:\\\"/[]?=", *p)) { *dest++ = *p; ++p; } } *dest = '\0'; break; } } if (msg->boundary == NULL) { mime_fatal ("Content-Type lacks required `boundary' parameter"); mime_destroy (msg); return NULL; } } /* Break up multiparts. */ if (check_msgtype (msg, "multipart/")) { char *nextpart; struct message *part; /* Preamble. */ p = next_boundary (bodyp, msg->boundary); if (p == NULL) msg->preamble = strdup (bodyp); else { int psize = p - bodyp - strlen(msg->boundary) - 3; /* Special case: a boundary line may occur at the very beginning of the body, which means that no newline precedes it and psize is negative. */ if (psize < 0) psize = 0; msg->preamble = (char *) malloc (sizeof(char) * (psize+1)); if (msg->preamble == NULL) { perror ("unhtml: mime_parse could not malloc preamble buffer"); mime_destroy (msg); return NULL; } strncpy (msg->preamble, bodyp, psize); msg->preamble[psize] = '\0'; } /* Scan to each boundary and parse the body part contained therein. */ while (p != NULL && strncmp (p, "--\n", 3) != 0) { nextpart = next_boundary (++p, msg->boundary); if (nextpart == NULL) { char buf[512]; snprintf (buf, sizeof buf, "no terminating `%s' boundary found", msg->boundary); mime_warn (buf); break; } else { char *part_end = nextpart - strlen(msg->boundary) - 3; char c = *part_end; /* XXX: Parsing a body part should not require munging the buffer passed to mime_parse. */ *part_end = '\0'; part = mime_parse (p); *part_end = c; if (part == NULL) { mime_destroy (msg); return NULL; } if (!add_subpart (msg, part)) { mime_destroy (msg); return NULL; } } p = nextpart; } /* Get epilogue. */ if (p != NULL) { while (*p++ != '\n') ; if ((msg->epilogue = strdup(p)) == NULL) { perror ("unhtml: mime_parse could not strdup message epilogue"); mime_destroy (msg); return NULL; } } } else /* not multipart */ { msg->preamble = strdup (bodyp); if (msg->preamble == NULL) { perror ("unhtml: mime_parse could not strdup message body"); mime_destroy (msg); return NULL; } } /* Decode the body (preamble), if appropriate. */ getheader (msg, "Content-Transfer-Encoding", &p, &len); if (p != NULL) { if (!strncasecmp (p, "quoted-printable", len)) mime_decode_qp (msg); else if (!strncasecmp (p, "base64", len)) mime_decode_b64 (msg->preamble); else if (strncasecmp (p, "7bit", 4) != 0 && strncasecmp (p, "8bit", 4) != 0) mime_warn ("unknown Content-Transfer-Encoding"); } return msg; } /* * check_msgtype: check the type of a MIME message structure and return 1 if * the message is of the desired type, 0 otherwise. */ int check_msgtype (msg, type) struct message *msg; char *type; { return (msg->content_type && !strncasecmp (msg->content_type, type, strlen(type))); } /* * getheader: examine a MIME message for a particular header, and * record the location of that header's value (following the header name) * and its length (excluding the trailing newline). * * The MSG argument is a message structure containing a parsed MIME message. * The HDRNAME argument is the name of the desired header, e.g. "Content-Type". * The HDRVALP argument stores a pointer to the beginning of the header * contents, if that header is found in the message. * The HDRLEN argument stores the length of the header contents. */ void getheader (msg, hdrname, hdrvalp, hdrlen) struct message *msg; char *hdrname; char **hdrvalp; int *hdrlen; { char *p, *hvp; int hdrnamelen, hvlen; *hdrvalp = NULL; *hdrlen = 0; hdrnamelen = strlen(hdrname); p = msg->header; while (p != NULL) { if (strncasecmp (p, hdrname, hdrnamelen) == 0) { hvp = p + hdrnamelen; if (*hvp++ != ':') /* colon must follow header name */ continue; while (*hvp != '\0' && isspace(*hvp)) ++hvp; for (hvlen = 0; hvp[hvlen] != '\0'; ++hvlen) { if (hvp[hvlen] == '\n' && !isspace(hvp[hvlen+1])) { *hdrvalp = hvp; *hdrlen = hvlen; return; } } } p = strchr (p, '\n'); if (p) ++p; } } /* * next_boundary: find the next MIME multipart boundary in a message. * The return value is a pointer to the end of the boundary text, * or NULL if no boundary can be found in this message. * * The BODY argument is a character array containing the message body. * The BOUNDARY argument is a character array containing the boundary * delimiter. * * Because the return value points to the end of the boundary, it * will point to `\n' if this is an ordinary boundary or `--\n' if * it is a final boundary. */ char * next_boundary (body, boundary) char *body; char *boundary; { char *p; /* For efficiency reasons, look for the boundary first and then examine the characters around it. */ p = strstr (body, boundary); if (p != NULL && strncmp (p-3, "\n--", 3) == 0) return p + strlen(boundary); return NULL; } /* * add_subpart: append one message to the list of sub-parts for another * message. * * The argument MSG is a message structure representing a multipart message. * The argument PART is another message (possibly multipart) which is to * be added to MSG's list of sub-parts. * * Return 1 on success. If a fatal error arises, return 0. */ int add_subpart (msg, part) struct message *msg; struct message *part; { struct list *p; if (msg->parts == NULL) { msg->parts = (struct list *) malloc (sizeof(struct list)); if (msg->parts == NULL) { perror ("unhtml: add_subpart could not malloc attachment list"); return 0; } msg->parts->data = part; msg->parts->next = NULL; } else { for (p = msg->parts; p->next != NULL; p = p->next) ; p = p->next = (struct list *) malloc (sizeof(struct list)); if (p == NULL) { perror ("unhtml: add_subpart could not malloc attachment buffer"); return 0; } p->data = part; p->next = NULL; } return 1; } void mime_write (msg) struct message *msg; { if (msg->header) { fputs (msg->header, stdout); putc ('\n', stdout); } /* message/rfc822 needs special handling. */ if (msg->content_type && !strncasecmp (msg->content_type, "message/rfc822", 14)) { mime_write (msg->parts->data); return; } /* XXX: watch out for 8bit data here. */ fputs (msg->preamble, stdout); if (msg->parts != NULL) { struct list *p; for (p = msg->parts; p != NULL; p = p->next) { printf ("\n--%s\n", msg->boundary); mime_write (p->data); } printf ("\n--%s--\n", msg->boundary); fputs (msg->epilogue, stdout); } } void mime_warn (s) char *s; { fprintf (stderr, "MIME parser: warning: %s\n", s); } void mime_fatal (s) char *s; { fprintf (stderr, "MIME parser: fatal: %s\n", s); } void mime_destroy (msg) struct message *msg; { struct list *p, *q; if (msg->header != NULL) free (msg->header); if (msg->preamble != NULL) free (msg->preamble); if (msg->epilogue != NULL) free (msg->epilogue); if (msg->content_type != NULL) free (msg->content_type); if (msg->boundary != NULL) free (msg->boundary); p = msg->parts; while (p != NULL) { if (p->data != NULL) mime_destroy (p->data); q = p; p = p->next; free (q); } } void print_msg_info (msg, indent) struct message *msg; int indent; { char indbuf[80]; indbuf[indent--] = '\0'; while (indent >= 0) indbuf[indent--] = ' '; printf ("%sHeader:\n", indbuf); printf ("%s--BEGIN--\n", indbuf); printf ("%s\n", msg->header); printf ("%s--END--\n", indbuf); printf ("%sContent-Type: %s\n", indbuf, msg->content_type); printf ("%sBoundary: %s\n", indbuf, msg->boundary); printf ("%s----------------------------------------\n", indbuf); if (msg->parts != NULL) { struct list *p; for (p = msg->parts; p != NULL; p = p->next) { print_msg_info (p->data, indent + 4); } } } int hex2dec_char(ch) char ch; { if (isdigit(ch)) return ch-'0'; else if (isupper(ch)) return ch-'A'+10; else return ch-'a'+10; } /* * mime_decode_qp: convert the preamble of MSG from a quoted-printable * encoding to raw text. */ void mime_decode_qp (msg) struct message *msg; { unsigned char *src, *dst; dst = src = msg->preamble; while (*src != '\0') { if (*src == '=') { if (*++src == '\n') { ++src; continue; } else { int hi, lo; hi = hex2dec_char(*src++); lo = hex2dec_char(*src); *dst = hi*16 + lo; if (*dst > 0x7f) msg->is8bit = 1; } } else *dst = *src; ++dst, ++src; } } void mime_output_qp (text) char *text; { /* XXX: write this. */ } /* * The char64 macro and `mime_decode_b64' routine are taken from * metamail 2.7, which is copyright (c) 1991 Bell Communications * Research, Inc. (Bellcore). The following license applies to all * code below this point: * * Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this material * for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided * that the above copyright notice and this permission notice * appear in all copies, and that the name of Bellcore not be * used in advertising or publicity pertaining to this * material without the specific, prior written permission * of an authorized representative of Bellcore. BELLCORE * MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS ABOUT THE ACCURACY OR SUITABILITY * OF THIS MATERIAL FOR ANY PURPOSE. IT IS PROVIDED "AS IS", * WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES. */ static char index_64[128] = { -1,-1,-1,-1, -1,-1,-1,-1, -1,-1,-1,-1, -1,-1,-1,-1, -1,-1,-1,-1, -1,-1,-1,-1, -1,-1,-1,-1, -1,-1,-1,-1, -1,-1,-1,-1, -1,-1,-1,-1, -1,-1,-1,62, -1,-1,-1,63, 52,53,54,55, 56,57,58,59, 60,61,-1,-1, -1,-1,-1,-1, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,10, 11,12,13,14, 15,16,17,18, 19,20,21,22, 23,24,25,-1, -1,-1,-1,-1, -1,26,27,28, 29,30,31,32, 33,34,35,36, 37,38,39,40, 41,42,43,44, 45,46,47,48, 49,50,51,-1, -1,-1,-1,-1 }; #define char64(c) (((c) < 0 || (c) > 127) ? -1 : index_64[(c)]) void mime_decode_b64 (src) char *src; { char *dst; int c1, c2, c3, c4; int newline = 1, DataDone = 0; dst = src; while ((c1 = *src++) != '\0') { if (isspace(c1)) { if (c1 == '\n') { newline = 1; } else { newline = 0; } continue; } if (DataDone) continue; newline = 0; do { c2 = *src++; } while (c2 != '\0' && isspace(c2)); do { c3 = *src++; } while (c3 != '\0' && isspace(c3)); do { c4 = *src++; } while (c4 != '\0' && isspace(c4)); if (c2 == '\0' || c3 == '\0' || c4 == '\0') { fprintf(stderr, "Warning: base64 decoder saw premature EOF!\n"); return; } if (c1 == '=' || c2 == '=') { DataDone=1; continue; } c1 = char64(c1); c2 = char64(c2); *dst++ = (c1<<2) | ((c2&0x30)>>4); if (c3 == '=') DataDone = 1; else { c3 = char64(c3); *dst++ = ((c2&0XF) << 4) | ((c3&0x3C) >> 2); if (c4 == '=') DataDone = 1; else { c4 = char64(c4); *dst++ = ((c3&0x03) <<6) | c4; } } } *dst = '\0'; } From list-managers-owner Sun Jun 6 01:40:16 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id AAA06918; Sun, 6 Jun 1999 00:57:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id AAA06908 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 6 Jun 1999 00:57:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ma-1.rootsweb.com (ma-1.rootsweb.com [209.192.148.153]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA01426 for ; Thu, 3 Jun 1999 21:17:42 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from twp@localhost) by ma-1.rootsweb.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id AAA00157; Fri, 4 Jun 1999 00:21:59 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1999 00:21:58 -0400 From: Tim Pierce To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Cc: SmartList@informatik.rwth-aachen.de Subject: HTML demangler for mailing lists Message-ID: <19990604002158.N72837@ma-1.rootsweb.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=y0Ed1hDcWxc3B7cn X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.1i Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk --y0Ed1hDcWxc3B7cn Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii There's considerable demand for a tool that will strip out the HTML portions of multipart messages and leave only text/plain, but as far as I can tell, no such tool exists. So I wrote one. This program reads a message on standard input and prints a demangled version on standard output. If the message has a content-type of `multipart/alternative', the body is discarded and replaced with the first text/plain subpart that can be found. If the message isn't multipart/alternative, or if it contains no text/plain subparts, the original message is passed through unmodified. For example, it can easily be hooked into SmartList in rc.local.s00 (and .r00): :0 wf * ^Content-Type: multipart | unhtml It is not guaranteed to be bug-free and should be considered beta software, at best. For what it's worth, it's been running in production on RootsWeb's mail servers for several days (an excellent torture test) and the initial bugs seem to have been shaken out. Anyway, I give it unto the world for them what wants it. Corrections and fixes welcomed. -- Regards, Tim Pierce RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative system obfuscator and hack-of-all-trades --y0Ed1hDcWxc3B7cn Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="unhtml.c" /* * unhtml: parse a MIME multipart message and, if `multipart/alternative', * discard all but the `text/plain' part. * * This code is in the public domain except where noted otherwise. * * Tim Pierce * 3 June 1999 */ #include #include #include struct list { struct message *data; struct list *next; }; /* * The `message' struct is used to represent a MIME multipart message, * as defined in RFC 2045 and RFC 2046. * * The `header' and `preamble' fields are flat text arrays containg * the raw text of the message header and preamble (any text preceding * the first body part). In the case of a single-part message, the * `preamble' field is used to store the whole body. * * The `epilogue' field stores any text following the last body part. * * The `content_type' field contains the value of the message's * Content-Type header, minus any parameters: for example, * "text/plain". It is NULL if the message lacks a Content-Type * header. The `boundary' field contains the value of the `boundary' * parameter to the Content-Type field, if present. * * The `hsize' parameter is the size of the header, in bytes. The * `bsize' parameter is the size of the body, in bytes. These * parameters are not presently used and may be discarded. */ struct message { char *header; char *preamble; /* text (if any) preceding the first body-part */ char *epilogue; /* text (if any) following the last body-part */ char *content_type; char *boundary; int is8bit; /* does this message contain 8bit data? */ int hsize; /* bytes allocated for hdr (may be more than necessary) */ int bsize; /* bytes allocated for body (may be more than necessary) */ struct list *parts; }; struct message *mime_parse (char *body); void mime_write (struct message *msg); void mime_warn (char *s); void mime_fatal (char *s); void mime_destroy (struct message *msg); int check_msgtype (struct message *msg, char *type); void getheader (struct message *msg, char *hdrname, char **hdrvalp, int *hdrlen); char *next_boundary (char *body, char *boundary); int add_subpart (struct message *msg, struct message *part); void print_msg_info (struct message *msg, int indent); void mime_decode_qp (struct message *msg); void mime_decode_b64 (char *buf); void mime_output_qp (char *text); int main (argc, argv) int argc; char **argv; { struct message *msg; int len, c, last_char, bi, bsize; char *p, *body; if (argc > 1) { if (freopen (argv[1], "r", stdin) == NULL) { perror ("unhtml: freopening standard input"); exit(1); } } /* Read the message. */ bi = 0; body = (char *) malloc (sizeof(char) * 1000); if (body == NULL) { perror ("unhtml: could not malloc memory for body"); exit(1); } while ((len = read (fileno(stdin), body+bi, 1000)) == 1000) { bi += 1000; body = (char *) realloc (body, sizeof(char) * (bi+1000)); if (body == NULL) { perror ("unhtml: could not realloc memory for body"); exit(1); } } bsize = bi + len; body[bsize] = '\0'; msg = mime_parse (body); /* * Here's the important stuff: walk through the parts of a * multipart/alternative and look for a text/plain attachment. * If we find one, rewrite the headers of the parent message * (this is ugly) and output the text/plain body. */ if (msg->content_type && !strncasecmp (msg->content_type, "multipart/alternative", 21)) { struct list *p; for (p = msg->parts; p != NULL; p = p->next) { if (p->data->content_type == NULL || !strncasecmp (p->data->content_type, "text/plain", 10)) { /* XXX: Rewrite the headers. This is clumsy, and also * doesn't handle Content-Type or Content-Length if they're * the first headers in the message. */ char *cp; for (cp = msg->header; *cp; ++cp) { putchar (*cp); /* Skip Content-Length and Content-Transfer-Encoding. */ if (*cp == '\n' && (!strncasecmp (cp+1, "Content-Length:",15) || !strncasecmp (cp+1, "Content-Transfer-Encoding:", 26))) { do { cp = strchr (cp+1, '\n'); } while (cp != NULL && isspace(cp[1])); if (cp == NULL) break; } /* Rewrite Content-Type. */ if (*cp == '\n' && !strncasecmp (cp+1, "Content-Type:", 13)) { char *hp; int hlen; if (p->data->content_type) printf ("Content-Type: %s\n", p->data->content_type); /* Skip to next header. */ do { cp = strchr (cp+1, '\n'); } while (cp != NULL && isspace(cp[1])); if (cp == NULL) break; } } putchar ('\n'); puts (p->data->preamble); break; } } if (p != NULL) return 0; } /* * If we got here, either the message wasn't multipart/alternative * or it didn't have a text/plain component. In either case we * give up and write the original message to stdout. */ fputs (body, stdout); return 0; } /* * mime_parse: process an RFC 2046 multipart message and return * a message structure with all the necessary fields filled in. * * The BODY argument is a character array containing the raw text of the * message to be parsed. * * In the event of a fatal system error (should only happen in the * case of insufficient memory) or a fatal MIME parsing error, a * message will be printed on standard error and the return value * will be NULL. */ struct message * mime_parse (body) char *body; { char *p, *bodyp; int len; struct message *msg; /* Initialize the message. */ msg = (struct message *) malloc (sizeof(struct message)); if (msg == NULL) { perror ("unhtml: mime_parse could not malloc new message struct"); exit(1); } msg->header = NULL; msg->preamble = NULL; msg->epilogue = NULL; msg->content_type = NULL; msg->boundary = NULL; msg->parts = NULL; msg->is8bit = 0; /* Get the header. */ /* Special case for message with zero-length header. */ if (body[0] == '\n') { msg->hsize = 0; msg->header = (char *) malloc(sizeof(char)); if (msg->header == NULL) { perror ("unhtml: mime_parse could not malloc header buffer"); return NULL; } msg->header[0] = '\0'; bodyp = body + 1; } else { bodyp = strstr (body, "\n\n"); if (bodyp == NULL) { mime_fatal ("no message header found"); return NULL; } msg->hsize = bodyp - body + 1; msg->header = (char *) malloc (sizeof(char) * (msg->hsize+1)); if (msg->header == NULL) { perror ("unhtml: mime_parse could not malloc header buffer"); return NULL; } strncpy (msg->header, body, msg->hsize); msg->header[msg->hsize] = '\0'; bodyp += 2; } /* Find the content-type. */ getheader (msg, "Content-Type", &p, &len); if (p != NULL) { msg->content_type = (char *) malloc (sizeof(char) * (len + 1)); if (msg->content_type == NULL) { perror ("unhtml: mime_parse could not malloc Content-Type buffer"); mime_destroy (msg); return NULL; } strncpy (msg->content_type, p, len); msg->content_type[len] = '\0'; } /* * If this is a message/rfc822, then the body is an encapsulated * message. Parse it, attach the result to the current message, * and we're done. */ if (msg->content_type && !strcasecmp (msg->content_type, "message/rfc822")) { msg->parts = (struct list *) malloc (sizeof(struct list)); if (msg->parts == NULL) { perror ("unhtml: mime_parse could not malloc attachment list"); return NULL; } msg->parts->data = mime_parse (bodyp); msg->parts->next = NULL; return msg; } /* Find the message boundary. */ if (msg->content_type && !strncasecmp (msg->content_type, "multipart/", 10)) { /* Skip to next semicolon and see what keyword follows it. */ p = msg->content_type; while ((p = strchr (p, ';')) != NULL) { ++p; p += strspn (p, " \t\v\r\n"); if (strncasecmp (p, "boundary", 8) == 0) { char *dest; p += 8 + strspn (p+8, " \t\v\r\n"); if (*p++ != '=') { mime_fatal ("expected `=' after `boundary' parameter"); mime_destroy (msg); return NULL; } p += strspn (p, " \t\v\r\n"); dest = msg->boundary = (char *) malloc (strlen(p)); if (dest == NULL) { perror ("unhtml: mime_parse could not malloc boundary"); mime_destroy (msg); return NULL; } /* If next char is a quote, read the following quoted-string. */ if (*p == '"') { ++p; while (*p != '\0' && *p != '"') { if (*p == '\\') ++p; *dest++ = *p; ++p; } } else /* Generic non-special characters. */ { while (*p != '\0' && !strchr ("()<>@,;:\\\"/[]?=", *p)) { *dest++ = *p; ++p; } } *dest = '\0'; break; } } if (msg->boundary == NULL) { mime_fatal ("Content-Type lacks required `boundary' parameter"); mime_destroy (msg); return NULL; } } /* Break up multiparts. */ if (check_msgtype (msg, "multipart/")) { char *nextpart; struct message *part; /* Preamble. */ p = next_boundary (bodyp, msg->boundary); if (p == NULL) msg->preamble = strdup (bodyp); else { int psize = p - bodyp - strlen(msg->boundary) - 3; /* Special case: a boundary line may occur at the very beginning of the body, which means that no newline precedes it and psize is negative. */ if (psize < 0) psize = 0; msg->preamble = (char *) malloc (sizeof(char) * (psize+1)); if (msg->preamble == NULL) { perror ("unhtml: mime_parse could not malloc preamble buffer"); mime_destroy (msg); return NULL; } strncpy (msg->preamble, bodyp, psize); msg->preamble[psize] = '\0'; } /* Scan to each boundary and parse the body part contained therein. */ while (p != NULL && strncmp (p, "--\n", 3) != 0) { nextpart = next_boundary (++p, msg->boundary); if (nextpart == NULL) { char buf[512]; snprintf (buf, sizeof buf, "no terminating `%s' boundary found", msg->boundary); mime_warn (buf); break; } else { char *part_end = nextpart - strlen(msg->boundary) - 3; char c = *part_end; /* XXX: Parsing a body part should not require munging the buffer passed to mime_parse. */ *part_end = '\0'; part = mime_parse (p); *part_end = c; if (part == NULL) { mime_destroy (msg); return NULL; } if (!add_subpart (msg, part)) { mime_destroy (msg); return NULL; } } p = nextpart; } /* Get epilogue. */ if (p != NULL) { while (*p++ != '\n') ; if ((msg->epilogue = strdup(p)) == NULL) { perror ("unhtml: mime_parse could not strdup message epilogue"); mime_destroy (msg); return NULL; } } } else /* not multipart */ { msg->preamble = strdup (bodyp); if (msg->preamble == NULL) { perror ("unhtml: mime_parse could not strdup message body"); mime_destroy (msg); return NULL; } } /* Decode the body (preamble), if appropriate. */ getheader (msg, "Content-Transfer-Encoding", &p, &len); if (p != NULL) { if (!strncasecmp (p, "quoted-printable", len)) mime_decode_qp (msg); else if (!strncasecmp (p, "base64", len)) mime_decode_b64 (msg->preamble); else if (strncasecmp (p, "7bit", 4) != 0 && strncasecmp (p, "8bit", 4) != 0) mime_warn ("unknown Content-Transfer-Encoding"); } return msg; } /* * check_msgtype: check the type of a MIME message structure and return 1 if * the message is of the desired type, 0 otherwise. */ int check_msgtype (msg, type) struct message *msg; char *type; { return (msg->content_type && !strncasecmp (msg->content_type, type, strlen(type))); } /* * getheader: examine a MIME message for a particular header, and * record the location of that header's value (following the header name) * and its length (excluding the trailing newline). * * The MSG argument is a message structure containing a parsed MIME message. * The HDRNAME argument is the name of the desired header, e.g. "Content-Type". * The HDRVALP argument stores a pointer to the beginning of the header * contents, if that header is found in the message. * The HDRLEN argument stores the length of the header contents. */ void getheader (msg, hdrname, hdrvalp, hdrlen) struct message *msg; char *hdrname; char **hdrvalp; int *hdrlen; { char *p, *hvp; int hdrnamelen, hvlen; *hdrvalp = NULL; *hdrlen = 0; hdrnamelen = strlen(hdrname); p = msg->header; while (p != NULL) { if (strncasecmp (p, hdrname, hdrnamelen) == 0) { hvp = p + hdrnamelen; if (*hvp++ != ':') /* colon must follow header name */ continue; while (*hvp != '\0' && isspace(*hvp)) ++hvp; for (hvlen = 0; hvp[hvlen] != '\0'; ++hvlen) { if (hvp[hvlen] == '\n' && !isspace(hvp[hvlen+1])) { *hdrvalp = hvp; *hdrlen = hvlen; return; } } } p = strchr (p, '\n'); if (p) ++p; } } /* * next_boundary: find the next MIME multipart boundary in a message. * The return value is a pointer to the end of the boundary text, * or NULL if no boundary can be found in this message. * * The BODY argument is a character array containing the message body. * The BOUNDARY argument is a character array containing the boundary * delimiter. * * Because the return value points to the end of the boundary, it * will point to `\n' if this is an ordinary boundary or `--\n' if * it is a final boundary. */ char * next_boundary (body, boundary) char *body; char *boundary; { char *p; /* For efficiency reasons, look for the boundary first and then examine the characters around it. */ p = strstr (body, boundary); if (p != NULL && strncmp (p-3, "\n--", 3) == 0) return p + strlen(boundary); return NULL; } /* * add_subpart: append one message to the list of sub-parts for another * message. * * The argument MSG is a message structure representing a multipart message. * The argument PART is another message (possibly multipart) which is to * be added to MSG's list of sub-parts. * * Return 1 on success. If a fatal error arises, return 0. */ int add_subpart (msg, part) struct message *msg; struct message *part; { struct list *p; if (msg->parts == NULL) { msg->parts = (struct list *) malloc (sizeof(struct list)); if (msg->parts == NULL) { perror ("unhtml: add_subpart could not malloc attachment list"); return 0; } msg->parts->data = part; msg->parts->next = NULL; } else { for (p = msg->parts; p->next != NULL; p = p->next) ; p = p->next = (struct list *) malloc (sizeof(struct list)); if (p == NULL) { perror ("unhtml: add_subpart could not malloc attachment buffer"); return 0; } p->data = part; p->next = NULL; } return 1; } void mime_write (msg) struct message *msg; { if (msg->header) { fputs (msg->header, stdout); putc ('\n', stdout); } /* message/rfc822 needs special handling. */ if (msg->content_type && !strncasecmp (msg->content_type, "message/rfc822", 14)) { mime_write (msg->parts->data); return; } /* XXX: watch out for 8bit data here. */ fputs (msg->preamble, stdout); if (msg->parts != NULL) { struct list *p; for (p = msg->parts; p != NULL; p = p->next) { printf ("\n--%s\n", msg->boundary); mime_write (p->data); } printf ("\n--%s--\n", msg->boundary); fputs (msg->epilogue, stdout); } } void mime_warn (s) char *s; { fprintf (stderr, "MIME parser: warning: %s\n", s); } void mime_fatal (s) char *s; { fprintf (stderr, "MIME parser: fatal: %s\n", s); } void mime_destroy (msg) struct message *msg; { struct list *p, *q; if (msg->header != NULL) free (msg->header); if (msg->preamble != NULL) free (msg->preamble); if (msg->epilogue != NULL) free (msg->epilogue); if (msg->content_type != NULL) free (msg->content_type); if (msg->boundary != NULL) free (msg->boundary); p = msg->parts; while (p != NULL) { if (p->data != NULL) mime_destroy (p->data); q = p; p = p->next; free (q); } } void print_msg_info (msg, indent) struct message *msg; int indent; { char indbuf[80]; indbuf[indent--] = '\0'; while (indent >= 0) indbuf[indent--] = ' '; printf ("%sHeader:\n", indbuf); printf ("%s--BEGIN--\n", indbuf); printf ("%s\n", msg->header); printf ("%s--END--\n", indbuf); printf ("%sContent-Type: %s\n", indbuf, msg->content_type); printf ("%sBoundary: %s\n", indbuf, msg->boundary); printf ("%s----------------------------------------\n", indbuf); if (msg->parts != NULL) { struct list *p; for (p = msg->parts; p != NULL; p = p->next) { print_msg_info (p->data, indent + 4); } } } int hex2dec_char(ch) char ch; { if (isdigit(ch)) return ch-'0'; else if (isupper(ch)) return ch-'A'+10; else return ch-'a'+10; } /* * mime_decode_qp: convert the preamble of MSG from a quoted-printable * encoding to raw text. */ void mime_decode_qp (msg) struct message *msg; { unsigned char *src, *dst; dst = src = msg->preamble; while (*src != '\0') { if (*src == '=') { if (*++src == '\n') { ++src; continue; } else { int hi, lo; hi = hex2dec_char(*src++); lo = hex2dec_char(*src); *dst = hi*16 + lo; if (*dst > 0x7f) msg->is8bit = 1; } } else *dst = *src; ++dst, ++src; } } void mime_output_qp (text) char *text; { /* XXX: write this. */ } /* * The char64 macro and `mime_decode_b64' routine are taken from * metamail 2.7, which is copyright (c) 1991 Bell Communications * Research, Inc. (Bellcore). The following license applies to all * code below this point: * * Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this material * for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided * that the above copyright notice and this permission notice * appear in all copies, and that the name of Bellcore not be * used in advertising or publicity pertaining to this * material without the specific, prior written permission * of an authorized representative of Bellcore. BELLCORE * MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS ABOUT THE ACCURACY OR SUITABILITY * OF THIS MATERIAL FOR ANY PURPOSE. IT IS PROVIDED "AS IS", * WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES. */ static char index_64[128] = { -1,-1,-1,-1, -1,-1,-1,-1, -1,-1,-1,-1, -1,-1,-1,-1, -1,-1,-1,-1, -1,-1,-1,-1, -1,-1,-1,-1, -1,-1,-1,-1, -1,-1,-1,-1, -1,-1,-1,-1, -1,-1,-1,62, -1,-1,-1,63, 52,53,54,55, 56,57,58,59, 60,61,-1,-1, -1,-1,-1,-1, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,10, 11,12,13,14, 15,16,17,18, 19,20,21,22, 23,24,25,-1, -1,-1,-1,-1, -1,26,27,28, 29,30,31,32, 33,34,35,36, 37,38,39,40, 41,42,43,44, 45,46,47,48, 49,50,51,-1, -1,-1,-1,-1 }; #define char64(c) (((c) < 0 || (c) > 127) ? -1 : index_64[(c)]) void mime_decode_b64 (src) char *src; { char *dst; int c1, c2, c3, c4; int newline = 1, DataDone = 0; dst = src; while ((c1 = *src++) != '\0') { if (isspace(c1)) { if (c1 == '\n') { newline = 1; } else { newline = 0; } continue; } if (DataDone) continue; newline = 0; do { c2 = *src++; } while (c2 != '\0' && isspace(c2)); do { c3 = *src++; } while (c3 != '\0' && isspace(c3)); do { c4 = *src++; } while (c4 != '\0' && isspace(c4)); if (c2 == '\0' || c3 == '\0' || c4 == '\0') { fprintf(stderr, "Warning: base64 decoder saw premature EOF!\n"); return; } if (c1 == '=' || c2 == '=') { DataDone=1; continue; } c1 = char64(c1); c2 = char64(c2); *dst++ = (c1<<2) | ((c2&0x30)>>4); if (c3 == '=') DataDone = 1; else { c3 = char64(c3); *dst++ = ((c2&0XF) << 4) | ((c3&0x3C) >> 2); if (c4 == '=') DataDone = 1; else { c4 = char64(c4); *dst++ = ((c3&0x03) <<6) | c4; } } } *dst = '\0'; } --y0Ed1hDcWxc3B7cn-- From list-managers-owner Mon Jun 7 06:10:37 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA29544; Mon, 7 Jun 1999 06:01:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: from FSM-1.PICA.ARMY.MIL (fsm-1.pica.army.mil [129.139.96.87]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id GAA29537 for ; Mon, 7 Jun 1999 06:01:01 -0700 (PDT) Date: Mon, 7 Jun 99 9:06:39 EDT From: Info-LabVIEW List Maintainer To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Yahoo error msg query Message-ID: <9906070906.aa17762@fsm-1.fsm-1.pica.army.mil> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Anyone have a clue what the heck this one means? I'm _guessing_ it's some sort of transient problem, although I must admit that I'd never seen it before last week, and now I seem to get them on a fairly regular basis. Date: 7 Jun 1999 05:41:29 -0700 From: MAILER-DAEMON@yahoo.com To: owner-bmwmc-digest@lists.ibmwr.org Subject: failed delivery Message from yahoo.com. Unable to deliver message to the following address(es). : preline: fatal: command not found : preline: fatal: command not found : preline: fatal: command not found : preline: fatal: command not found : preline: fatal: command not found : preline: fatal: command not found : preline: fatal: command not found : preline: fatal: command not found : preline: fatal: command not found : preline: fatal: command not found : preline: fatal: command not found : preline: fatal: command not found : preline: fatal: command not found : preline: fatal: command not found : preline: fatal: command not found : preline: fatal: command not found --- Original message follows. Return-Path: The original message is over 5k. Message truncated to 1K. Received: from europe.std.com (199.172.62.20) by mta102.yahoomail.com with SMTP; 7 Jun 1999 05:41:27 -0700 Received: by europe.std.com (STD1.2/BZS-8-1.0) [...] Tom Coradeschi, Info-LabVIEW List Maintainer http://k-whiner.pica.army.mil/info-labview/info-labview.html From list-managers-owner Mon Jun 7 09:56:06 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA01867; Mon, 7 Jun 1999 09:46:15 -0700 (PDT) Received: from claude.akamai.com (access.akamai.com [4.17.143.9]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id JAA01860 for ; Mon, 7 Jun 1999 09:46:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from dshaw@localhost) by claude.akamai.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) id MAA13815 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Mon, 7 Jun 1999 12:51:47 -0400 Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1999 12:51:47 -0400 From: David Shaw To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Yahoo error msg query Message-ID: <19990607125147.B13586@jabberwocky.com> Mail-Followup-To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM References: <9906070906.aa17762@fsm-1.fsm-1.pica.army.mil> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.5i In-Reply-To: <9906070906.aa17762@fsm-1.fsm-1.pica.army.mil>; from Info-LabVIEW List Maintainer on Mon, Jun 07, 1999 at 09:06:39AM -0400 X-PGP-Fingerprint: 3CB3B415/2048/4D 96 83 18 2B AF BE 45 D0 07 C4 07 51 37 B3 18 X-URL: http://www.jabberwocky.com/ X-Phase-Of-Moon: The Moon is Waning Crescent (45% of Full) X-Current-Email-Backlog: 451 X-Pointless-Random-Number: 57 X-Silly-Header: It sure is. X-Time-Til-Y2K: 29 weeks, 4 days, 12 hours, 9 minutes, 9 seconds Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Mon, Jun 07, 1999 at 09:06:39AM -0400, Info-LabVIEW List Maintainer wrote: > Anyone have a clue what the heck this one means? I'm _guessing_ it's some > sort of transient problem, although I must admit that I'd never seen it > before last week, and now I seem to get them on a fairly regular basis. I have no particular information about it aside to say that I've also been getting them. I figured it was just Yahoo feeling the pain of providing a free, and heavily loaded, service :) David -- David Shaw | dshaw@jabberwocky.com | WWW http://www.jabberwocky.com/ +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence." - Jeremy S. Anderson From list-managers-owner Mon Jun 7 11:25:29 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA02877; Mon, 7 Jun 1999 11:20:45 -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 LAA02870 for ; Mon, 7 Jun 1999 11:20:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 11491 invoked by uid 100); 7 Jun 1999 14:25:57 -0400 Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1999 14:25:57 -0400 (EDT) From: John R Levine To: Info-LabVIEW List Maintainer cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Yahoo error msg query In-Reply-To: <9906070906.aa17762@fsm-1.fsm-1.pica.army.mil> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > Anyone have a clue what the heck this one means? Yahoo seems to have made a teensy config error that hosed mail to all of their gazillion free mail accounts. Maybe they'll notice and fix it, although discussions on other lists about how hard it is to contact a live human at Yahoo don't give me great hope. > : > preline: fatal: command not found 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 Mon Jun 7 21:25:35 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA09723; Mon, 7 Jun 1999 21:23:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA09716 for ; Mon, 7 Jun 1999 21:23:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id VAA33402 ; Mon, 7 Jun 1999 21:28:09 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1999 21:27:13 -0700 To: John R Levine , Info-LabVIEW List Maintainer From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Yahoo error msg query Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > Yahoo seems to have made a teensy config error that hosed mail to all of > their gazillion free mail accounts. Maybe they'll notice and fix it, > although discussions on other lists about how hard it is to contact a live > human at Yahoo don't give me great hope. Even more fun -- it's intermittent. I'm only seeing it on some mail. And THAT tells me that ONE of their servers is screwed up, and until they figure it out and find which server is blowing its cookies, it'll continue. Because most of my mail seems to be going through okay, but every so often, it dumps on a given message. Since they have multiple, round-robinned MX hosts, all you need is one flakey machine to make your day... -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + Snakes and trees aren't natural enemies -- but if the tree attacks first... (Ranger Gord, The Red Green Show) From list-managers-owner Tue Jun 8 16:46:30 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA06139; Tue, 8 Jun 1999 16:40:24 -0700 (PDT) Received: from bigtime.blank.org (bigtime.blank.org [139.167.64.222]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id QAA06130 for ; Tue, 8 Jun 1999 16:40:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 1716 invoked by uid 500); 8 Jun 1999 23:39:33 -0000 Message-ID: <19990608193933.P12737@blank.org> Date: Tue, 8 Jun 1999 19:39:33 -0400 From: "Nathan J. Mehl" To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: dear lord. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.93.2i Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Will the person who thought that it would be a bright idea for ibm.net's bounce messages to have the same "From" and "To" lines of the message being bounced please kill themselves in the name of all that is holy? Thank you, that is all. -n (no, I'm not kidding. they're really doing this.) ------------------------------------------------------ "Hunting porn on the Internet combines the best of art photography (pictures of people's private parts) with the excitement of video games (hunt, click, hunt, click, click, dirty pictures -- score!)." (--Dan Savage) ------------------------------------------ From list-managers-owner Sat Jun 12 15:12:29 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA13402; Sat, 12 Jun 1999 14:50:24 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id OAA13392 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sat, 12 Jun 1999 14:50:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: from polaris.coppernet.zm (polaris.zccm.zm [194.130.159.16]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id AAA02485 for ; Sat, 12 Jun 1999 00:17:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost by polaris.coppernet.zm with SMTP (1.38.193.5/16.2) id AA22374; Sat, 12 Jun 1999 09:12:59 +0200 Message-Id: <3762087A.4562@coppernet.zm> Date: Sat, 12 Jun 1999 09:12:58 +0200 From: Wilbroad Chisanga Kasopa X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (X11; I; HP-UX A.09.04 9000/867) Mime-Version: 1.0 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Seeking a solution Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hello, I am having problems with the footer message. I have created info files for the mailing lists but the files are not attached to the messages sent. The footer message only works when I include this message in the config files, when I include any attachment to my message the footer message dissappears. I am running Majordomo-1.94.4. The permissions seem to be alright. Anyone with a solution? Wilbroad. -- Wilbroad C Kasopa, url: http://www.coppernet.zm Corporate IT, e:mail: kasopaw@coppernet.zm P O Box 20172, FAX#:+260 2 245437 KITWE - ZAMBIA. Voice:+260 2 245200 :=)(=: I am in the Real Africa :=)(=: http://www.africa-insites.com/zambia From list-managers-owner Fri Jun 25 19:57:32 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA07416; Fri, 25 Jun 1999 19:43:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mushi.colo.neosoft.com (mushi.colo.neosoft.com [206.109.6.82]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id TAA07409 for ; Fri, 25 Jun 1999 19:43:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 22712 invoked from network); 26 Jun 1999 02:43:05 -0000 Received: from bonkers.neosoft.com (HELO bonkers.taronga.com) (206.109.2.48) by mushi.colo.neosoft.com with SMTP; 26 Jun 1999 02:43:05 -0000 Received: (from arielle@localhost) by bonkers.taronga.com (8.9.1/8.9.1) id VAA08218 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Fri, 25 Jun 1999 21:41:57 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from arielle) From: Stephanie da Silva Message-Id: <199906260241.VAA08218@bonkers.taronga.com> Subject: Teachers instructing students to join lists for coursework To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 21:41:57 -0500 (CDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Type: text Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Very recently, I received a piece of email that went: "I'm a student and for an assignment I'm supposed to j0in a listserv (sic). I have no idea what this is, so will you please tell me everything I need to know? [she'd also filled out the submit form on the PAML a couple times, so I got some random junk as an accompaniment.] Unfortunately, I had just woken up and not even having had my first Diet Coke of the day, chastised her somewhat severely. Was kind of funny, I referred to her instructor as "moronic". However, I do think her instructor is being rather lax if she's directing her students to go j0in a mailing list without telling them what one is, how to zubscribe, how to unzubscribe, plus failing to explain the distinction between terms like "mailing list" and "LISTSERV". Student passed my mail to teacher, her response is below. It appears she thinks this practice is acceptable and does not consider the impact it makes upon list owners. However, since she says she'll remove one's "group" from their course, please feel free to email her requesting she remove yours. Forwarded message: > From bcox@bunny.chaffey.cc.ca.us Fri Jun 25 19:19:57 1999 > Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 10:52:44 +0100 > From: Beverly Cox > Subject: (no subject) > To: arielle@Taronga.COM > Message-id: <3773516C.9D05DBAD@chaffey.cc.ca.us> > Organization: Chaffey College > MIME-version: 1.0 > X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.05 [en] (WinNT; I) > Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit > > Who are you? AND what listserv do you proctor? I will try not to have my > students j0in unprofessional groups in the future. You are the first > proctor who ever complained. I apologize for my 'moronic' behavior. I > will forward your message to all my 'moronic' cohorts here and in the > Cal State system where I work so we do not make the mistake of including > your group in our course work. My apologies again. Beverly Cox From list-managers-owner Fri Jun 25 22:27:32 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id WAA08895; Fri, 25 Jun 1999 22:22:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id WAA08888 for ; Fri, 25 Jun 1999 22:22:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id WAA36654 ; Fri, 25 Jun 1999 22:18:45 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <199906260241.VAA08218@bonkers.taronga.com> References: <199906260241.VAA08218@bonkers.taronga.com> Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 22:17:51 -0700 To: Stephanie da Silva , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Teachers instructing students to join lists for coursework Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 9:41 PM -0500 6/25/99, Stephanie da Silva wrote: > Student passed my mail to teacher, her response is below. It > appears she thinks this practice is acceptable and does not consider > the impact it makes upon list owners. Oh, heck. this stuff is old hat. it's just new that they're doing it at listservers. There are teachers who assign coursework without worrying about the impact on others (didn't we all have a teacher in college who for some reason assumed their class was the only one you were taking that semester?) We see these kind of requests on a regular basis, where teachers assign students to do some research on stuff. Since we run a hockey-history oriented web site, we get a lot of canadian kids writing us to answer questions (or write their paper for them...). Occasionally, we get one where the requests are somewhat over the top. We deal with those either by discussing it with the teacher directly, or by random cases of intermittent deafness. But in general, if you're running public resources, it shouldn't surprise you that they get used as a resource. And occasionally, someone has a different idea of what acceptable use is. Teachers are, in general, horribly underworked and overpaid. I'm generally willing to cut them some slack because they're doing a tough job in a culture where an athlete could make enough in a year to fund many schools, while the teacher is there paying for pencils out of their own pocket because the school has no budget. (but there are limits). In a case like this, I'd simply point the user at my list documentation. If the list documentation isn't good enough to walk them through it, it needs to be fixed. if they simply want me to do it for them, then the user needs to be fixed, and I'd treat it like any user who thinks I'm their paid servant... Yes, the instructor ought to be more proactive about stuff like this, but most likely, tey're already doing 60-70 hour weeks, and I can understand if they don't necessarily agree with me on it. By the way, if she's at cc.ca.us that's a Community College campus, aka a junior college or 2 year school. Wchih means she's quite far down the teaching totem pole, so to speak, and you should keep that in mind as well. Some people teach at those schools because they teach part time or teach something they really care for (my mother loves the local CC for their art classes, for instance). But most people teach there because they haven't gotten the degrees or the ability to teach at a higher level.... -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + Snakes and trees aren't natural enemies -- but if the tree attacks first... (Ranger Gord, The Red Green Show) From list-managers-owner Sat Jun 26 01:29:24 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id BAA10286; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 01:03:11 -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 BAA10279 for ; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 01:03:05 -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 BAA03075; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 01:03:21 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <37748949.E77A8DC7@postmodern.com> Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1999 01:03:22 -0700 From: "Michael C. Berch" Reply-To: mcb@postmodern.com Organization: Postmodern Consulting, California USA X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.6 (Macintosh; U; PPC) X-Accept-Language: en-US MIME-Version: 1.0 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Teachers instructing students to join lists for coursework References: <199906260241.VAA08218@bonkers.taronga.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Well, the content of the letters notwithstanding, I think Stephanie has earned her new nickname of "The Proctor"... :-) I'm now waiting for someone to found the List-Proctors mailing list. -- Michael C. Berch mcb@postmodern.com From list-managers-owner Sat Jun 26 01:42:32 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id BAA10322; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 01:09:29 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mushi.colo.neosoft.com (mushi.colo.neosoft.com [206.109.6.82]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id BAA10315 for ; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 01:09:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 6948 invoked from network); 26 Jun 1999 08:08:52 -0000 Received: from bonkers.neosoft.com (HELO bonkers.taronga.com) (206.109.2.48) by mushi.colo.neosoft.com with SMTP; 26 Jun 1999 08:08:52 -0000 Received: (from arielle@localhost) by bonkers.taronga.com (8.9.1/8.9.1) id DAA14198; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 03:07:44 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from arielle) From: Stephanie da Silva Message-Id: <199906260807.DAA14198@bonkers.taronga.com> Subject: Re: Teachers instructing students to join lists for coursework To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1999 03:07:43 -0500 (CDT) Cc: bcox@bunny.chaffey.cc.ca.us X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Type: text Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Chuck as usual very graciously intonates: > Oh, heck. this stuff is old hat. it's just new that they're doing it > at listservers. There are teachers who assign coursework without > worrying about the impact on others ... > > Yes, the instructor ought to be more proactive about stuff like this, > but most likely, tey're already doing 60-70 hour weeks, and I can > understand if they don't necessarily agree with me on it. > > By the way, if she's at cc.ca.us that's a Community College campus, > aka a junior college or 2 year school. ... But most > people teach there because they haven't gotten the degrees or the > ability to teach at a higher level.... Well, yes, I knew this stuff already. :-P It's just I know the people on this list are clever enough to figure all this stuff out that I don't have to spell it out for them. :-) Although I disagree with you about it's new about mailing lists and MLM's. I've been seeing this sort of stuff for years from Introduction to the Internet 101, Lesson 4 - Exercise 2: Go to this ftp/web site that has a lot of mailing lists referenced, find a random list, s*bscr*be, uns*bscr*be, then provide a printout with evidence of your doing so, etc, etc. But my point was (I should have made it better) is that this teacher thinks it's okay because no one has complained to her about it! So maybe if she got a few list owners explaining that it's not a very swift practice and why, she might see the light. I tend to sound confrontational even when I'm not trying to be, so I always think there's someone out there who can do say more eloquently than I can. From list-managers-owner Sat Jun 26 11:00:39 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA18643; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 10:50:24 -0700 (PDT) Received: from shell7.ba.best.com (shell7.ba.best.com [206.184.139.138]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA18634 for ; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 10:50:15 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from cnorman@localhost) by shell7.ba.best.com (8.9.3/8.9.2/best.sh) id KAA12391; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 10:50:34 -0700 (PDT) Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1999 10:50:34 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199906261750.KAA12391@shell7.ba.best.com> From: Cyndi Norman To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM CC: cnorman@best.com In-reply-to: <199906260241.VAA08218@bonkers.taronga.com> (message from Stephanie da Silva on Fri, 25 Jun 1999 21:41:57 -0500 (CDT)) Subject: Re: Teachers instructing students to join lists for coursework Reply-to: cnorman@best.com Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk From: Stephanie da Silva Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 21:41:57 -0500 (CDT) Very recently, I received a piece of email that went: "I'm a student and for an assignment I'm supposed to j0in a listserv (sic). I have no idea what this is, so will you please tell me everything I need to know? Sheesh...that's particulary bad if they ask you what a listserv is. I've had plenty who just joined then left. Really pissed me off back when I was doing the list by hand. My policy (which I really need to put on my website) is that students are welcome to join for the CONTENT of the list (many do) as long as they unsub themselves when they are done. I do not "allow" (in quotes because I have no control over it) students to join and leave merely for practice in joining and leaving lists. Though this isn't much worse than all the letters I get from students (and sometimes parents!!) saying "I have to write a paper on the immune system, please send me information. It's due on Tuesday." Never mind that my list/site is not about the immune system (it's a support group for people with illness related to the immune system...big difference...and very obvious to anyone who reads the front page of the site or the list blurb). I always write back explaining that I am not paid to help them but their librarian is and that's where they should go (if I get a truely specific and related question I will answer it...I also answer personal questions, no matter how silly ("should I take antibiotics for my viral infection?")). The responses I get from my polite letters are truely amazing. Some of the students yell at me or give me a sarcastic "thanks for helping." Some say their teachers required them to do the research on the internet (which is fine if they actually look up webpages and read them). Worst of all, many of the students indicate they have written large numbers of people for help (they thank me for at least giving them the curtosy of a reply, unlike all the others, despite how unhelpful I was). I think the worst example I've ever seen was on rec.gardens where a European parent wrote asking people to tell her what Plains Indians ate before Europeans arrived. This was for her child's school report. I wrote saying: send your child to the local library and stop doing their homework for them. Cyndi -- _______________________________________________________________________________ "There's nothing wrong with me. Maybe there's Cyndi Norman something wrong with the universe." (ST:TNG) cyndi@consultclarity.com http://www.consultclarity.com/ _________________ Owner of the Immune Website & Lists http://www.immuneweb.org/ From list-managers-owner Sat Jun 26 13:15:25 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA19794; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 13:06:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail.frostburg.edu (mail.frostburg.edu [131.118.64.250]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA19787 for ; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 13:06:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: from 209.201.108.81 (dial108x81.gcnet.net) by mail.frostburg.edu (Sun Internet Mail Server sims.3.5.1998.08.08.00.06) with ESMTP id <0FDY00D4KABSTL@mail.frostburg.edu> for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 16:02:20 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1999 16:05:41 +0100 From: Bill Southerly Subject: Re: Moderating and off-topic posts To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Reply-to: e2pysou@fre.fsu.umd.edu Message-id: <3774EC3F.ABF67C33@fre.fsu.umd.edu> Organization: Frostburg State University MIME-version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.01 (Macintosh; I; PPC) Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit References: X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I wanted to expand this discussion that occurred last month on how to deal with off-topic posts and posters. I run an unmoderated list that deals with the teaching of psychology and has anywhere from 500-1500 subscribers depending on the time of year. It seems I always have one person who tends to ask questions that are in that grey area of whether it is legitimate for the group (when you are dealing with the teaching of human behavior you can make a logical case for almost anything) and seems to be worded in order to stir up controversy for the sake of controversy. This person quickly develops strong supporters in the group for his right to offer these type of questions (e.g., the free speech arguments) and logical arguments why they are related to the groups discussion of teaching (e.g., these are the type of questions students often ask) and strong non-supporters who reject anything the person says as useless or in some instances racist, sexist, etc (though in each instance the statements are open to interpretation). We then typically start into a discussion of whether this person should be able to ask these type of questions. This happens every few months and we are in the middle of one now. Any suggestions or experiences in dealing with the type of subscriber that seems to know how to play the edge and generate this type of off-topic discussion that focuses on them and not the primary focus of the group? Thanks. Bill ********************************************************* * * * TIPS LISTOWNER - CONTACT DIRECTLY IF YOU HAVE PROBLEMS * * BILL SOUTHERLY INTERNET: BSOUTHERLY@FROSTBURG.EDU * * DEPT. OF PSYCHOLOGY E2PYTIPS@FRE.FSU.UMD.EDU * * FROSTBURG STATE UNIVERSITY TIPSOWNER@FRE.FSU.UMD.EDU * * FROSTBURG, MARYLAND USA 21532 PHONE : (301) 687-4778 * * * ********************************************************** From list-managers-owner Sat Jun 26 15:45:45 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA21550; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 14:51:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id OAA21540 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 14:51:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sendmail.kirkland.com (sendmail.kirkland.com [137.169.20.245]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA03762 for ; Fri, 25 Jun 1999 13:38:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mkleiman ([137.169.215.53] (may be forged)) by sendmail.kirkland.com (2.5 Build 2640 (Berkeley 8.8.6)/8.8.4) with SMTP id PAA28801 for ; Fri, 25 Jun 1999 15:38:45 -0500 Reply-To: From: "Matthew N. Kleiman" To: Subject: Long Lines Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 15:41:21 -0500 Message-ID: <000301bebf4b$166012c0$35d7a989@mkleiman.chicago.kirkland.com> 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 4.71.2173.0 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3110.3 Importance: Normal Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I recently coded a "robomoderator" to reject attachments, html encoding, vacation notices, etc. Without much additional thought, I also programmed the robomoderator to reject any message with any line longer than 80 characters (excluding headers). To my surprise, this has been the most common problem "solved" by the robomoderator ... approximately 1 in 30 messages sent to the list have long lines. I've always believed that a well-behaved email client will wrap long lines before sending email, on the premise that some email programs don't have a word wrap feature. I simply assumed it was the _sender's_ obligation to wrap long lines, not the recipient's. However, upon further research, the internet email protocals clearly permit line lengths up to 1000 characters (rfc 821). This perhaps suggests that it's the _recipient's_ job to wrap long lines, not the sender's. On the other hand, even if long lines are "legal," that doesn't necessarily make them "polite." The recipient may not have a word wrap function, or the recipient's program may break long lines at incorrect places, impairing legibility. I'm fairly confident that every modern email program has a word wrap function, so imposing this rule on list subscribers should not impose a great burden. At the same time, I hate to see subscriber's messages get bounced, especially novices, to whom the 80 character limitation may seem arbitrary and make little sense given modern email clients. (After all, how many of you know the *original* derivation of the 80 character rule of thumb? Answer at the end of this email.) So, without a clear rule to guide me, I'm curious whether other list managers have a rule/policy on long lines and why. Any input would be appreciated. - Matt (Only half credit if you said that old computer terminals had 80 character screen widths ... full credit if you said that standard computer punch cards had 80 columns.) Matthew N. Kleiman * Chicago * Illinois * mailto:matt@berner.org Author * Bernese Mountain Dog Home Page * http://www.berner.org/ Administrator * berner-l@prairienet.org * Berner-L Mailing List Questions? Need help? * http://www.berner.org/faq * Berner-L FAQ From list-managers-owner Sat Jun 26 17:32:26 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA23133; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 17:11:20 -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 RAA23126 for ; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 17:11:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from katie.vnet.net (katie.vnet.net [166.82.1.7]) by smtp2.vnet.net (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id UAA01581; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 20:12:15 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (murr@localhost) by katie.vnet.net (8.9.1a/8.8.8) with ESMTP id UAA07004; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 20:11:41 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: katie.vnet.net: murr owned process doing -bs Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1999 20:11:41 -0400 (EDT) From: murr rhame To: Bill Southerly cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Moderating and off-topic posts In-Reply-To: <3774EC3F.ABF67C33@fre.fsu.umd.edu> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Sat, 26 Jun 1999, Bill Southerly wrote: > ... This person quickly develops strong supporters in the group > for his right to offer these type of questions (e.g., the free > speech arguments) and logical arguments why they are related to > the groups discussion of teaching (e.g., these are the type of > questions students often ask) ... Note that the following is my opinion based on my experience running my own discussion lists. There are very few universal solutions, appropriate for all mailing lists. Each list admin should do what is best for their own particular situation. The first thing to remember is that, in most cases, the list admin is the boss. Most mailing lists are not democracies. The admin doesn't have to answer to anyone or make apologies for their decisions. This is not to say that all admins can act capriciously. If you are too heavy handed, your subscribers will go elsewhere. Typically, the list admin is the host of invited guests who are on the admin's turf. Act accordingly. Personally, I don't have much sympathy for folks who insist that they have an absolute and unconstrained right to free speech. There are almost always limits to freedom of speech. First amendment rights have never been interpreted as the right to say anything, anywhere, any time, particularly when the speech is at someone else's expense. You can't hijack the forum of your choice to do with as you please either online or off. If you doubt this principle, go to a public event and demand the right to make a completely off-topic speech. This won't cut it at a basket ball game, a theatrical production, a rock concert, a church service or even most political rallies. Similar rules apply to most administered online forums. The admin can set the agenda (charter) and enforce the agenda if need be. Most of the time, I've found that diplomacy by private email can steer a list away from off-topic threads. Occasionally, a public announcement is needed. On one extraordinary occasion an exceptionally ugly flame war forced me to switch one of my lists to full-blown, software controlled, moderation for a few days. The exact method used to guide a list is not as important as establishing guidelines. Take care in defining a charter for your list. Specify both the topics which are appropriate and areas that are off topic. The tricky part is to write in a manner that is not so vague that you can't understand it and is not too specific as to be overly confining. You should also specify list netiquette guidelines in a similar manner. Once you have the charter, publish it on the list. Mail it to every new subscriber. Let it be known that the charter is "the law of the land" for your mailing list. If you need a starting place, I can send a sample list charter. Ask via private email . - murr - From list-managers-owner Sat Jun 26 17:43:36 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA23222; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 17:26:49 -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 RAA23215 for ; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 17:26:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: from katie.vnet.net (katie.vnet.net [166.82.1.7]) by smtp1.vnet.net (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id UAA11087; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 20:27:35 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (murr@localhost) by katie.vnet.net (8.9.1a/8.8.8) with ESMTP id UAA07608; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 20:27:11 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: katie.vnet.net: murr owned process doing -bs Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1999 20:27:11 -0400 (EDT) From: murr rhame To: "Matthew N. Kleiman" cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Filtering [Was: Long Lines] In-Reply-To: <000301bebf4b$166012c0$35d7a989@mkleiman.chicago.kirkland.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I recently switched to Lyris software from Listproc 6.0c. Lyris has has fairly comprehensive filtering capabilities. Hadn't been able to tinker with filters before. I fiter: max consecutive lines of quotes, "Re: ListName Digest" in the subject line, HTML and binaries. Haven't tried to capture long lines. I have noticed a trend. The filters see to work pretty well as "errogance detectors." The only complaints I've had so far are from subscribers who are "too busy to trim quotes" or "haven't got time to type in a subject line." On the other hand, they don't seem to mind wasting the time of several hundred other list subscribers. - murr - From list-managers-owner Sat Jun 26 18:36:47 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA23685; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 18:12:33 -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 SAA23676 for ; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 18:12:27 -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 UAA17814 for ; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 20:12:51 -0500 (CDT) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Venus.mcs.net (8.8.7/8.8.2) id UAA05270 for List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 20:12:51 -0500 (CDT) From: "David W. Tamkin" Message-Id: <199906270112.UAA05270@Venus.mcs.net> Subject: Re: Long Lines Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1999 20:12:51 -0500 (CDT) Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <000301bebf4b$166012c0$35d7a989@mkleiman.chicago.kirkland.com> from "Matthew N. Kleiman" at Jun 25, 99 03:41:21 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Type: text Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Matthew Kleiman wrote, | At the same time, I hate to see subscriber's messages get bounced, | especially novices, to whom the 80 character limitation may seem | arbitrary and make little sense given modern email clients. You can always reprogram your robomoderator to divert posts for your atten- tion, rather than rejecting them, if their only violation is being too wide. One thing to keep in mind is that expecting the recipient to handle word wrap makes it impossible to send tabular or columnar data: the recipient has to accept the sender's formatting, and the sender has to be responsible for formatting the body correctly. | So, without a clear rule to guide me, I'm curious whether other list | managers have a rule/policy on long lines and why. Since I have only one remaining list and I moderate it, my list's receipt for submissions adds another paragraph if the post is too wide, explaining that it will take a little extra time, since even if everything else in the post is just fine, the moderator will still have to edit it to fix the text width. Usually posters who receive it don't comment; some have apologized. None, so far, have responded unkindly. I used to have procmail filter them through fmt, but the versions of fmt to which I had access and my skill with their options were not enough to keep it from making the text less legible than it started out, so now I load them into vi and apply fmt by hand or rearrange a few line lengths here and there to get them within seventy-nine columns. Some of my members have mail clients or editors that will dutifully keep their new text narrow, but their cited text from earlier posts is sacrosanct, and if it was seventy-eight columns or wider, adding a two-column citation (such as "> ") will make it eighty columns wide and trigger my "too wide" addendum to the receipt. Those whose editors or mailers act that way get used to the notification when they post follow-ups to others' articles. BTW, your claim that the screen width originated with punch cards gave me a laugh: have you never heard of paper or typewriters? Eighty pica-sized cha- racters and two quarter-inch margins just fill the width of 8.5" stationery. From list-managers-owner Sat Jun 26 19:22:07 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA24058; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 18:59:24 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ma-1.rootsweb.com (ma-1.rootsweb.com [209.192.148.153]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id SAA24051 for ; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 18:59:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from twp@localhost) by ma-1.rootsweb.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id VAA53908; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 21:59:33 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1999 21:59:33 -0400 From: Tim Pierce To: "Matthew N. Kleiman" Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Long Lines Message-ID: <19990626215933.L31609@ma-1.rootsweb.com> References: <000301bebf4b$166012c0$35d7a989@mkleiman.chicago.kirkland.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.1i In-Reply-To: <000301bebf4b$166012c0$35d7a989@mkleiman.chicago.kirkland.com>; from Matthew N. Kleiman on Fri, Jun 25, 1999 at 03:41:21PM -0500 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Fri, Jun 25, 1999 at 03:41:21PM -0500, Matthew N. Kleiman wrote: > > I've always believed that a well-behaved email client will wrap long > lines before sending email, on the premise that some email programs > don't have a word wrap feature. I simply assumed it was the _sender's_ > obligation to wrap long lines, not the recipient's. > > However, upon further research, the internet email protocals clearly > permit line lengths up to 1000 characters (rfc 821). This perhaps > suggests that it's the _recipient's_ job to wrap long lines, not the > sender's. I think it suggests that the authors of the SMTP standard didn't want to constrain the format of message bodies any more than necessary. RFC 822, which actually defines the structure of an Internet message, places no restrictions on the lengths of lines in the message body. > On the other hand, even if long lines are "legal," that doesn't > necessarily make them "polite." The recipient may not have a word wrap > function, or the recipient's program may break long lines at incorrect > places, impairing legibility. I'm fairly confident that every modern > email program has a word wrap function, so imposing this rule on list > subscribers should not impose a great burden. Most of them do, but they don't generally restrict the wordwrap to 80 columns. You can resize an editing window to 120 columns and it'll happily wrap your lines to that length, without even warning you. -- Regards, Tim Pierce RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative system obfuscator and hack-of-all-trades From list-managers-owner Sat Jun 26 20:51:05 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA25070; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 20:40:26 -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 UAA25062 for ; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 20:40:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 14633 invoked by uid 100); 26 Jun 1999 23:40:49 -0400 Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1999 23:40:48 -0400 (EDT) From: John R Levine To: murr rhame cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Filtering [Was: Long Lines] In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > I have noticed a trend. The filters see to work pretty well as > "errogance detectors." The only complaints I've had so far are from > subscribers who are "too busy to trim quotes" or "haven't got time to > type in a subject line." On the other hand, they don't seem to mind > wasting the time of several hundred other list subscribers. I have a long standing policy in the comp.compilers newsgroup, which I hand-moderate, that if it's not important enough for the author to make his message usable, it's not important enough for me, either. I don't get many arguments. 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 Sat Jun 26 21:05:49 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA25194; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 20:47:51 -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 UAA25187 for ; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 20:47:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 14887 invoked by uid 100); 26 Jun 1999 23:48:16 -0400 Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1999 23:48:16 -0400 (EDT) From: John R Levine To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Moderating and off-topic posts In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >> ... This person quickly develops strong supporters in the group >> for his right to offer these type of questions (e.g., the free >> speech arguments) ... After a lot of years moderating both newsgroups and mailing lists, I've come to a fairly hard-nosed position where I give people one warning and if they don't get the hint, I kick them off the list. As others have noted, the Internet has plenty of fora for free speech, and your list is not one of them. Also through experience I've discovered that it is a bad idea to permit discussions of list management policy on the list, although it's OK in private mail. This may seem awfully fascistic, but the reality is that someone has to be in charge of your list, and if it's not you, it'll be the loudest and most persistently obnoxious people on the list. If you're in a generous mood you can create a parallel unmoderated whatever-discuss list where people who have nothing better to do than to complain about your moderation policy can do so in a place where you don't have to read about it. 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 Sat Jun 26 21:20:50 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA25255; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 20:51:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ctc.swva.net (ctc.swva.net [165.166.123.19]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id UAA25240 for ; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 20:51:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: from default (pem-2.swva.net [208.140.224.114]) by ctc.swva.net (8.9.0/8.9.0) with SMTP id XAA02504 for ; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 23:51:32 -0400 Message-Id: <199906270351.XAA02504@ctc.swva.net> From: "Bernie Cosell" Organization: Fantasy Farm Fibers To: Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1999 23:51:26 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Long Lines Reply-to: bernie@fantasyfarm.com In-reply-to: <000301bebf4b$166012c0$35d7a989@mkleiman.chicago.kirkland.com> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.11) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 25 Jun 99, at 15:41, Matthew N. Kleiman wrote: > I recently coded a "robomoderator" ... > ...to reject any message with any line longer > than 80 characters (excluding headers). To my surprise, this has been > the most common problem "solved" by the robomoderator ... approximately > 1 in 30 messages sent to the list have long lines. > > I've always believed that a well-behaved email client will wrap long > lines before sending email, on the premise that some email programs > don't have a word wrap feature. I simply assumed it was the _sender's_ > obligation to wrap long lines, not the recipient's. > > However, upon further research, the internet email protocals clearly > permit line lengths up to 1000 characters (rfc 821). This perhaps > suggests that it's the _recipient's_ job to wrap long lines, not the > sender's. Actually, you missed a part of that section. That section of RFC 821 [= STD 10] is the "minimum maximum". Yes, long lines are permitted, as they should be: the *transport* machinery shouldn't impose unnecessary arbitrary limits on the package it is transporting. The place you're looking at is: > 4.5.3. SIZES > > There are several objects that have required minimum maximum > sizes. > [...] And it goes on to say that: > **************************************************** > * * > * TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT POSSIBLE, IMPLEMENTATION * > * TECHNIQUES WHICH IMPOSE NO LIMITS ON THE LENGTH * > * OF THESE OBJECTS SHOULD BE USED. * > * * > **************************************************** a limitation here [for SMTP] would preclude *all*other* possible internal data formats using SMTP for its transport, and so it, quite properly, should be generous [or unlimited!]. Now, if you go a level down, into the message within the wrapper, you turn to RFC 822 [STD-11] and things are a bit stranger. Still: as it should be, the RFCs are fairly careful *not* to constrain the format overly, lest it cripple future uses for email, but to my reading we can make some deductions about what was intended... Consider that the header field is explictly set up with machinery for "folding" and having continuation lines, when it could easily have been specified to be [and indeed, it is specified to be handled *as*if* it were] a single line with the header-tag at its beginning. Clearly they expected those header fields to be wrapped explicitly in the message, whereas if they had merely had intended arbitrarily-long-lines they wouldn't have bothered [and indeed, it'd make parsing 822 headers easier NOT to have to deal with continuations..:o)]. You look farther on to the definition of "linear white space" and you see that the spec makes a distinction between the semantics of "SPACE" and "FOLDING" -- clearly [IMO] the intent for the semantics of LWSP that is _not_ a CR is different from an actual CRLF. More indications, to my reading, that their -intent- was for regular text with CRLFs indicating where new lines should begin, but with _allowances_ for other, fancier, data formats... At a practical level, another problem with wrapping long lines at the reader's end is that it is, in general, not really possible to do it quite right unless you have something like
tags available to give the reader's client a clue *NOT* to mess with text that _has_ been formatted [it is rather WAAY too much of an restriction on email to mandate that _only_ unformatted, microsoft-style "paragraphs" should be sent!]. E.g., I get system messages with unix log snippets in it and histograms [basically, ascii-ized graphs], and all the nice neat columns are rather thouroughly trashed if my mail client folds gratuitously. I also get things with macsyma-generated equations in them [where superscripts and fractions and such are done via multi-line prints, like: 2 2 2 x + y = z and you havne't seen a MESS until you've seen some of _that_ stuff re- wrapped by the reader's client! :o)] > At the same time, I hate to see subscriber's messages get bounced, > especially novices, to whom the 80 character limitation may seem > arbitrary and make little sense given modern email clients. (After all, > how many of you know the *original* derivation of the 80 character rule > of thumb? Answer at the end of this email.) I do know that, but your derivation has it wrong: the reason for the 80- char rule *IS* the size of terminals [both hardcopy [e.g., TTYs] and CRTs ["glass TTYs and their descendents]]. The fact that Teletype corp may have been looking elsewhere when they decided to make the platen on the KSR33 be 80 characters wide isn't really relevant... *Those*devices*, for whatever reason, *did* standarize on 80 chars and the constraints on email is *NOT* a homage to the IBM 407, but rather the reality of what the terminals *had* standardized on. [and yes, I know there were a few terminals of other sizes [I think my old TI silent 700 only had 72 char lines, and I used an IBM 2741 that had lots more than 80... but overwhelmingly, 80 was the number...] Moreover, the proper limitation is *less* than 80 characters. For example, RFC 1855 [the netiquette RFC] simply says: > - Limit line length to fewer than 65 characters and end a line > with a carriage return. good advice then, good advice now... /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From list-managers-owner Sat Jun 26 21:51:49 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA25621; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 21:24:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA25613 for ; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 21:24:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id VAA37164 ; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 21:24:24 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1999 21:20:24 -0700 To: murr rhame , Bill Southerly From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Moderating and off-topic posts Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 8:11 PM -0400 6/26/99, murr rhame wrote: > Personally, I don't have much sympathy for folks who insist that they > have an absolute and unconstrained right to free speech. Far as I'm concerned, they do. they have the absolute and unconstrained right to start their own mailing list and post whatever they want on it -- on their own nickel. Long as it's my nickel and my list, they have to abide by my rules. They don't like it, they can run a competing list. If they run it better, my list dies. Darwin wins. Fortunately, the net is a big place, and nobody has a monopoly on anything. And the users will vote iwth their feet (virtually). And when I get into these fights, that's exactly what I tell these people. I even let them publicize the new list on my lists, because if I can't survive a little competition, I don't deserve to run the list anyway. (and frankly, 99% of the time, the only people who leave are ones I wish would leave anyway....) -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + The Jedi that I admire most met up with Darth Maul and now he's toast... (Weird Al Yankovic - The Saga Begins) From list-managers-owner Sat Jun 26 21:55:43 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA25765; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 21:40:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail1.voyager.net (mail1.voyager.net [209.153.128.76]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA25756 for ; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 21:40:48 -0700 (PDT) From: jimstyer@voyager.net Received: from LOCALNAME (as3-29.btck.mi.net-link.net [207.89.141.30]) by mail1.voyager.net (8.9.1/Voyager-MailX) with SMTP id AAA25311 for ; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 00:45:03 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 27 Jun 1999 00:45:03 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <2.2.16.19990627003748.4eaf9c12@pop.voyager.net> X-Sender: jimstyer@pop.voyager.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: I'm a new subscriber; seeking input Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I have lurked here for a few weeks before writing this. I run/own/operate/adminster/whatever a 200+ subscriber unmoderated list for babershop harmony singers in Michigan, and am an active participant in our international harmony society list of 2000+. I may start a new list later this year as a special-interest subset of our international list. I started two years ago, read a document on user and list owner commands, wrote the FAQ/charter myself and have simply learned by doing since then. In joining this list (saw it referenced in Yahoo magazine ... with no hyphen in the e-dress!), I'm hoping to learn over time whether I'm doing things right and how I can do them better. Would anyone with experience in small lists consisting of non-professionals be interested in reading my FAQ and making suggestions for condensing, changing, adding? With not much comparative criteria to go on, I sometimes think it's too long (18K) and may not be simple enough in some cases for people who aren't computer-literate. As they say, "please respond privately, not to the list." tanx muchly, jim styer, Battle Creek MI, PioNet administrator-- jimstyer@voyager.net Pioneer District, Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America, Inc. (SPEBSQSA) 34,000 US+Canada members plus 10 international affiliates. From list-managers-owner Sat Jun 26 22:05:55 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA25620; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 21:24:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA25605 for ; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 21:23:58 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id VAA37124 ; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 21:24:22 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <199906270112.UAA05270@Venus.mcs.net> References: <199906270112.UAA05270@Venus.mcs.net> Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1999 21:16:39 -0700 To: "David W. Tamkin" From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Long Lines Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 8:12 PM -0500 6/26/99, David W. Tamkin wrote: > You can always reprogram your robomoderator to divert posts for your atten- > tion, rather than rejecting them, if their only violation is being too wide. simply run them through a filter that formats them if you want -- use fmt. If you're really sharp, only run the long paragraphs through... > | So, without a clear rule to guide me, I'm curious whether other list > | managers have a rule/policy on long lines and why. > > Since I have only one remaining list and I moderate it, my list's receipt > for submissions adds another paragraph if the post is too wide, I don't even think about it. Most mail clients these days do the "right" thing with this stuff. As HTML-based email becomes more accepted and endemic, the issue will continue to disappear. And the number of complaints I get about this is pretty close to zero. I honestly think it's a non-issue (even though for stuff I want to make sure is cleanly formatted, like e-newsletters, they get pre-formatted before going out. i'd say another year, and we won't bother with that, either) -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + The Jedi that I admire most met up with Darth Maul and now he's toast... (Weird Al Yankovic - The Saga Begins) From list-managers-owner Sat Jun 26 22:20:52 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA25727; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 21:37:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail.gci-net.com (mail.gci-net.com [208.2.166.101]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id VAA25720 for ; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 21:37:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ip165.tuc167.gci-net.com (ip165.tuc167.gci-net.com [208.2.167.165]) by mail.getasite.com (NTMail 3.03.0017/1d.aawt) with ESMTP id sa712418 for ; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 21:38:22 -0700 Message-ID: <3775AAE5.966EDF23@getasite.com> Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1999 21:39:01 -0700 From: Cheryl K Weller Reply-To: admin@getasite.com Organization: GET-A-SITE Internet Architects X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (Win98; I) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM CC: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Teachers instructing students to join lists for coursework References: <199906260241.VAA08218@bonkers.taronga.com> Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------FC36ABAFA3BE89EB07903D00" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------FC36ABAFA3BE89EB07903D00 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="------------2DA827B99BCA45434E52BABD" --------------2DA827B99BCA45434E52BABD Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Chuq, I just have to put in my 2 cents worth. First, I am a teacher (with a Ph.D.) - and taught with that degree for a few years at a "junior" or community college because there were no openings at any of the colleges or universities in my town (formerly of Pittsburgh) -- guess no one was ready to die yet, so the openings were slim to none. I am now happily working in a private high school academy setting in the southwest -- still overworked and underpaid -- but satisfied. As a teacher of both English and Computers, however, I never gave (nor do I know) any of my students an assignment without considering the ramifications -- I taught several courses on using the Internet for research and definitely discussed the usefulness of newsgroups, but definitely cautioned and instructed my students how to find an appropriate one for their research field, and how to zub and unzub. Finally, I am a co-administrator of a list, so I do know what a pain "neophytes" can be. Thanks for letting me "spout." Cheryl Chuq Von Rospach wrote: (snipped) > There are teachers who assign coursework without worrying about the impact on > others. > Teachers are, in general, horribly underworked and overpaid. > By the way, if she's at cc.ca.us that's a Community College campus, > aka a junior college or 2 year school. Wchih means she's quite far > down the teaching totem pole, so to speak, and you should keep that > in mind as well. > But most people teach there because they haven't gotten the degrees or the > ability to teach at a higher level.... ***************************************************************** GET-A-SITE Internet Architects ~ http://www.getasite.com ~ UPDATED!!! "Building Big Business for Small Companies" Host of the BizWomen List's Home Website ~ http://www.getasite.com/bizwomen/bizwomen.htm **************************************************************** "Life is a Journey. It is not what you attain at the end of it that counts, but what you become along the way." ***************************************************************** --------------2DA827B99BCA45434E52BABD Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Chuq,

I just have to put in my 2 cents worth.  First, I am a teacher (with a Ph.D.) - and taught with that degree for a few years at a "junior" or community college because there were no openings at any of the colleges or universities in my town (formerly of Pittsburgh) -- guess no one was ready to die yet, so the openings were slim to none.  I am now happily working in a private high school academy setting in the southwest -- still overworked and underpaid -- but satisfied.

As a teacher of both English and Computers, however, I never gave (nor do I know) any of my students an assignment without considering the ramifications -- I taught several courses on using the Internet for research and definitely discussed the usefulness of newsgroups, but definitely cautioned and instructed my students how to find an appropriate one for their research field, and how to zub and unzub.

Finally, I am a co-administrator of a list, so I do know what a pain "neophytes" can be.

Thanks for letting me "spout."

Cheryl

Chuq Von Rospach wrote:  (snipped)

There are teachers who assign coursework without worrying about the impact on others.
Teachers are, in general, horribly underworked and overpaid.
By the way, if she's at cc.ca.us that's a Community College campus,
aka a junior college or 2 year school. Wchih means she's quite far
down the teaching totem pole, so to speak, and you should keep that
in mind as well.
But most people teach there because they haven't gotten the degrees or the
ability to teach at a higher level....
*****************************************************************
GET-A-SITE Internet Architects ~ http://www.getasite.com ~ UPDATED!!!
"Building Big Business for Small Companies"

Host of the BizWomen List's Home Website ~
http://www.getasite.com/bizwomen/bizwomen.htm
****************************************************************
"Life is a Journey.  It is not what you attain at the end
of it that counts, but what you become along the way."
*****************************************************************
  --------------2DA827B99BCA45434E52BABD-- --------------FC36ABAFA3BE89EB07903D00 Content-Type: text/x-vcard; charset=us-ascii; name="webmaster.vcf" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Description: Card for Cheryl K Weller Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="webmaster.vcf" begin:vcard n:Weller;Cheryl tel;pager:520-218-2141 tel;fax:520-745-4666 tel;work:520-745-4668 x-mozilla-html:FALSE url:http://www.getasite.com org:GET-A-SITE Internet Architects version:2.1 email;internet:webmaster@getasite.com title:Owner/CEO adr;quoted-printable:;;6011 E. 23rd Street=0D=0ASuite 1A;Tucson;AZ;85711;US fn:Cheryl Weller end:vcard --------------FC36ABAFA3BE89EB07903D00-- From list-managers-owner Sat Jun 26 23:49:15 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA26639; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 23:29:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail6.svr.pol.co.uk (mail6.svr.pol.co.uk [195.92.193.212]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id XAA26632 for ; Sat, 26 Jun 1999 23:29:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from modem-57.protactinium.dialup.pol.co.uk ([62.136.45.57] ident=cc047) by mail6.svr.pol.co.uk with esmtp (Exim 2.12 #1) id 10y8S2-0002Xd-00; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 07:30:02 +0100 Date: Sun, 27 Jun 1999 07:29:57 +0100 (BST) From: Jeffrey Goldberg X-Sender: cc047@arpad.thegreen.private Reply-To: Jeffrey Goldberg To: Bill Southerly cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Moderating and off-topic posts In-Reply-To: <3774EC3F.ABF67C33@fre.fsu.umd.edu> 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 On Sat, 26 Jun 1999, Bill Southerly wrote: > This person quickly develops strong supporters in the group for > his right to offer these type of questions (e.g., the free speech arguments) > and logical arguments why they are related to the groups discussion of > teaching (e.g., these are the type of questions students often ask) and strong > non-supporters who reject anything the person says as useless or in some > instances racist, sexist, etc (though in each instance the statements are > open to interpretation). We then typically start into a discussion of whether > this person should be able to ask these type of questions. This happens every > few months and we are in the middle of one now. Ban discussion of what is appropriate to the list manager only. State that policy in the Welcome message, and periodically repost that and other policy statements. Remind people (again in the policy intro) that while you want open and free discussion, the list itself is not a democracy but a benevolant dictatorship. If people feel that you are being unfair or they want a wider discussion, they are free to set up other lists. -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 Sun Jun 27 06:18:21 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA02780; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 06:01:42 -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 GAA02773 for ; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 06:01:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: from katie.vnet.net (katie.vnet.net [166.82.1.7]) by smtp1.vnet.net (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id JAA10233; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 09:02:28 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (murr@localhost) by katie.vnet.net (8.9.1a/8.8.8) with ESMTP id JAA14901; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 09:02:05 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: katie.vnet.net: murr owned process doing -bs Date: Sun, 27 Jun 1999 09:02:05 -0400 (EDT) From: murr rhame To: Jeffrey Goldberg cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Moderating and off-topic posts 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, 27 Jun 1999, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote: > Ban discussion of what is appropriate to the list manager only. [snip] Several folks have mentioned that they ban list policy discussions on their lists. I don't. I've never had a problem with this. As with many topics, I might limit the discussion if it was uncivil or too repetitive. So far, this hasn't been a problem. Anyone care to share a few war stories? Am I tempting fate? - murr - From list-managers-owner Sun Jun 27 08:18:18 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA03843; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 08:11:29 -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 IAA03836 for ; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 08:11:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 5723 invoked by uid 100); 27 Jun 1999 11:11:54 -0400 Date: Sun, 27 Jun 1999 11:11:53 -0400 (EDT) From: John R Levine To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Teachers instructing students to join lists for coursework In-Reply-To: <3775AAE5.966EDF23@getasite.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Sat, 26 Jun 1999, Cheryl K Weller wrote: >

As a teacher of both English and Computers, however, I never gave > (nor do I know) any of my students an assignment without considering the > ramifications ... Exactly. I run autoresponders for people who read my books, and now and then I get a blast of messages from a school somewhere all saying things like "I have to do this for Mr. Jones class". I can live with that, it's a mail robot, but now and then they start demanding human responses, or something. I even have some test mailing lists specifically for people to try subscribing and unsubscribing to. I suppose it doesn't occur to some teachers that out at the other end of the wire are individual volunteers, not a huge faceless bureaucracy, but if they just asked before student-bombing us, I expect nobody would have any objection. 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 Jun 27 08:33:18 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA03924; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 08:22:18 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA03917 for ; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 08:22:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id IAA11324 ; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 08:22:09 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Sun, 27 Jun 1999 08:00:34 -0700 To: murr rhame , Jeffrey Goldberg From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Moderating and off-topic posts Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 9:02 AM -0400 6/27/99, murr rhame wrote: > Several folks have mentioned that they ban list policy discussions on > their lists. I don't. I've never had a problem with this. I don't specifically ban topic discussions, but I usually try to have them privately and off-list, by asking everyone interested in contacting me so we can set something up. I'm not against a list examining it's navel, so to speak, but I much prefer meta-discussions to go on off-list, so that the list itself stays focussed on the topic, not arguments about what the topic is. If the list is unhappy or grumpy, though, it's probably better to let it all air out and get over with than try to corner it. It's a judgement call. But in general, I try to keep the list focussed and not discussing meta-issues on the list, because they have a nasty tendency to crowd out what the list is there for in the first place (and the meta issues are usually where the nasty flamewars come from. Not the topic issues themselves). -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + The Jedi that I admire most met up with Darth Maul and now he's toast... (Weird Al Yankovic - The Saga Begins) From list-managers-owner Sun Jun 27 09:19:10 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA04380; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 09:11:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ma-1.rootsweb.com (ma-1.rootsweb.com [209.192.148.153]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id JAA04373 for ; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 09:11:42 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from twp@localhost) by ma-1.rootsweb.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id MAA62742; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 12:11:46 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 27 Jun 1999 12:11:46 -0400 From: Tim Pierce To: Chuq Von Rospach Cc: "David W. Tamkin" , List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Long Lines Message-ID: <19990627121146.U31609@ma-1.rootsweb.com> References: <199906270112.UAA05270@Venus.mcs.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.1i In-Reply-To: ; from Chuq Von Rospach on Sat, Jun 26, 1999 at 09:16:39PM -0700 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Sat, Jun 26, 1999 at 09:16:39PM -0700, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > I don't even think about it. Most mail clients these days do the > "right" thing with this stuff. As HTML-based email becomes more > accepted and endemic, the issue will continue to disappear. This is not likely to happen at least until the HTML-based mailers become better at interpreting their own junk. For example, AOL's mailer chokes and dies a flaming death if it receives a digest containing HTML body parts. Bugs like this will need to get fixed before the masses accept HTML mail. It's not yet clear to me that they will get fixed at all. -- Regards, Tim Pierce RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative system obfuscator and hack-of-all-trades From list-managers-owner Sun Jun 27 10:15:26 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA04934; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 10:11:52 -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 KAA04914 for ; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 10:11:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: from katie.vnet.net (katie.vnet.net [166.82.1.7]) by smtp1.vnet.net (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id NAA22092; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 13:12:41 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (murr@localhost) by katie.vnet.net (8.9.1a/8.8.8) with ESMTP id NAA17644; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 13:12:18 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: katie.vnet.net: murr owned process doing -bs Date: Sun, 27 Jun 1999 13:12:18 -0400 (EDT) From: murr rhame To: Chuq Von Rospach cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Moderating and off-topic posts 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, 27 Jun 1999, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: [snip] > If the list is unhappy or grumpy, though, it's probably better to > let it all air out and get over with than try to corner it. It's a > judgement call. But in general, I try to keep the list focussed > and not discussing meta-issues on the list, because they have a > nasty tendency to crowd out what the list is there for in the > first place (and the meta issues are usually where the nasty > flamewars come from. Not the topic issues themselves). Discussing list policy on-list certainly has a lot of flame war potential. There is also a good chance that the list admin will be to target of those flames. If you normally bust people for flaming, it can be awkward if the flaming was directed at you. (conflict of interest, winning the argument through abuse of power, etc.) I'm pretty thick skinned. I'm a bit more tolerent of abusive language that is directed at me than I am of similar remarks directed at a $ubscriber. So far, meta-discussions have been worth the risks. Some policy debates have been spirited but not too uncivil. On-list policy discussions give me the chance to gauge the quality of my work... I rarely receive frank criticism by private email. Folks appear to be more blunt when they have the rest of the $ubscribers as an audience. As Chung mentioned, on-list policy discussions also give the $ubscribers a chance to air things out. They have the opportunity to see what other $ubscribers feel about how the list should be run. IMHO, such discussions are useful on several levels. I'm sure that most lists have a few "problem $ubscribers" who believe the list MUST be run EXACTLY their way. I'm chatting about policy issues with one of my more self-centered $ubscribers by private email this weekend. A meta-discussion about my setup choices for the new Lyris server is currently running on-list as well... I haven't said anything in the public debate so far. The subscribers seem to be working out their differences pretty well without my input. I used to quickly to make a public reply to any on-list mention of list policy. Lately, I'm more likely to see how the group discussion goes before I decide if a public announcement is needed. - murr - Late breaking news: Fancisco Franco is still dead. Disco still sucks. From list-managers-owner Sun Jun 27 11:00:53 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA05345; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 10:51:25 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA05338 for ; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 10:51:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id KAA11274 ; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 10:51:48 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <19990627121146.U31609@ma-1.rootsweb.com> References: <199906270112.UAA05270@Venus.mcs.net> <19990627121146.U31609@ma-1.rootsweb.com> Date: Sun, 27 Jun 1999 10:51:27 -0700 To: Tim Pierce , Chuq Von Rospach From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Long Lines Cc: "David W. Tamkin" , List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 12:11 PM -0400 6/27/99, Tim Pierce wrote: > This is not likely to happen at least until the HTML-based mailers > become better at interpreting their own junk. And the chances of this stuff not being taken care of is, oh, about zero. So get ready for it, because it's getting ready with or without you... -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + The Jedi that I admire most met up with Darth Maul and now he's toast... (Weird Al Yankovic - The Saga Begins) From list-managers-owner Sun Jun 27 11:15:36 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA05410; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 10:59:51 -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 KAA05403 for ; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 10:59:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Mercury.mcs.net (dattier@Mercury.mcs.net [192.160.127.80]) by Kitten.mcs.com (8.8.7/8.8.2) with ESMTP id NAA17598 for ; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 13:00:21 -0500 (CDT) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Mercury.mcs.net (8.8.7/8.8.2) id NAA58065 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 13:00:21 -0500 (CDT) From: "David W. Tamkin" Message-Id: <199906271800.NAA58065@Mercury.mcs.net> Subject: Re: Long Lines To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Date: Sun, 27 Jun 1999 13:00:20 -0500 (CDT) In-Reply-To: from "Chuq Von Rospach" at Jun 26, 99 09:16:39 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Type: text Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I had posted, addressing Matthew Kleiman, T> You can always reprogram your robomoderator to divert posts for your atten- T> tion, rather than rejecting them, if their only violation is being too wide. Chuq Von Rospach quoted that paragraph from my post, including only my name and not Matthew's, and he responded, V> simply run them through a filter that formats them if you want -- use V> fmt. If you're really sharp, only run the long paragraphs through... Just to make sure it's clear, that paragraph from Chuq's post was additional advice for Matthew, and "you" does not address the person whom he named. As I explained before, I've tried automatically running them through fmt and had pretty poor results, mostly with cited text and with indentations at the start of a paragraph (fmt has options to handle that, but I could never get them to work as I hoped they would) so now I do it by hand. My list has a few members who simply cannot grasp the idea of breaking their paragraphs into lines, and all their posts land in the over-width folder. From list-managers-owner Sun Jun 27 11:32:20 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA05321; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 10:48:39 -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 KAA05314 for ; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 10:48:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Mercury.mcs.net (dattier@Mercury.mcs.net [192.160.127.80]) by Kitten.mcs.com (8.8.7/8.8.2) with ESMTP id MAA17296 for ; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 12:49:10 -0500 (CDT) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Mercury.mcs.net (8.8.7/8.8.2) id MAA57958 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 12:49:09 -0500 (CDT) From: "David W. Tamkin" Message-Id: <199906271749.MAA57958@Mercury.mcs.net> Subject: Re: Teachers instructing students to join lists for coursework Date: Sun, 27 Jun 1999 12:49:09 -0500 (CDT) Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: from "John R Levine" at Jun 27, 99 11:11:53 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Type: text Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk John Levine wrote, | ... but if they just asked before student-bombing | us, I expect nobody would have any objection. Well, I would, but it would be far milder than if they'd gone ahead without asking. Having never found a mailing list management package that did things the way I like, I've always run my lists (of which one and its sublist survive) with my own routines, and being no programmer I never had enough faith in my ability to automate a way to tell for sure who was sending a message. Therefore anything that would edit the membership rolls, such as joining, quitting, or changing an address, I choose to handle personally. But that's the only reason. I wouldn't mind either if I had the processes automated. So on the one occasion when someone did ask me as a student who had to join a list for a class, I answered, "If you're actually interested in the topic of this list and you're willing to commit to remain subscribed for a full month, all right. But if you're just looking to fulfill your assignment, please find a list where joining and quitting are automated and do not require someone else to do the work. In fact, even if you are interested in this list's topic and you want to read our mail, I would suggest that you also find a list where joining and quitting are automated, because I suspect that one goal of the assignment is to show that you can send proper commands to a bot to get it to do what you want." The student agreed and reamined on the list until the end of the school year. From list-managers-owner Sun Jun 27 13:44:19 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA07080; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 13:31:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: from smtp2.ihug.co.nz (tk2.ihug.co.nz [203.29.160.14]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA07073 for ; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 13:31:26 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ihug.co.nz (p13-max11.wlg.ihug.co.nz [209.78.48.13]) by smtp2.ihug.co.nz (8.9.3/8.9.3/Debian/GNU) with ESMTP id IAA16717 for ; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 08:32:00 +1200 Message-ID: <37768A98.67699E36@ihug.co.nz> Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 08:33:28 +1200 From: Olwen Williams X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (Win98; I) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Moderating and off-topic posts References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I had major problems with my list when I set the list to reply-to sender. Flame wars and a rift in the list etc. I was accused of limiting people's rights under US law (I'm in NZ and my list was housed in NZ at the time so that amused me). Then when I put a block on the name of an organization that was leading to OT discussion I had another fight with people leaving the list. As you might guess there was another problem when I went to fully moderated. But then it was easier to limiy, but thare was still another rival nomod version of the list created because "people didn't want someone reading every word". murr rhame wrote: > > On Sun, 27 Jun 1999, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote: > > > Ban discussion of what is appropriate to the list manager only. > > [snip] > > Several folks have mentioned that they ban list policy discussions on > their lists. I don't. I've never had a problem with this. As with > many topics, I might limit the discussion if it was uncivil or too > repetitive. So far, this hasn't been a problem. Anyone care to share > a few war stories? Am I tempting fate? > > - murr - From list-managers-owner Sun Jun 27 16:14:48 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA08676; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 16:06:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gw.tssi.com (gw.tssi.com [198.147.197.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id QAA08669 for ; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 16:05:59 -0700 (PDT) Received: from celery.tssi.com (nolan@celery.tssi.com [198.147.197.6]) by gw.tssi.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id SAA28732 for ; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 18:06:35 -0500 Received: (from celery.tssi.com) by celery.tssi.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id SAA11132 for list-managers@GreatCircle.com; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 18:06:34 -0500 From: Mike Nolan Message-Id: <199906272306.SAA11132@celery.tssi.com> Subject: Re: Moderating and off-topic posts To: list-managers@GreatCircle.com (List Managers) Date: Sun, 27 Jun 1999 18:06:33 -0500 (CDT) Reply-To: nolan@tssi.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk murr rhame wrote: > > Several folks have mentioned that they ban list policy discussions on > their lists. I don't. I've never had a problem with this. I've never banned it, but I have always made it clear that any policy changes are at the sole discretion of the list manager, me. Sometimes it helps to discuss the rationale behind policies, some of which have stood me in good stead for over 7 years. It seems that certain topics need to be re-explained once or twice a year, copyright being one of them. My ban (with automatic detection) on binary attachments kept my list from propagating the Happy99 virus earlier this year. (I haven't seen any of the nastier e-mail viruses.) I've probably had a half dozen or so people leave because they didn't agree with the List Nazi, and one because of a difference of opinion on how close to copyright infringement is permissable. (He's a lawyer and surprisingly enough was willing to go closer to the line than I felt comfortable with. So, he mostly stopped posting.) -- Mike Nolan From list-managers-owner Sun Jun 27 17:59:47 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA09533; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 17:46:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail1.voyager.net (mail1.voyager.net [209.153.128.76]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id RAA09518 for ; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 17:46:18 -0700 (PDT) From: jimstyer@voyager.net Received: from LOCALNAME (as4-50.btck.mi.net-link.net [207.89.141.179]) by mail1.voyager.net (8.9.1/Voyager-MailX) with SMTP id UAA15329 for ; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 20:50:45 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 27 Jun 1999 20:50:45 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <2.2.16.19990627204326.3ce709e0@pop.voyager.net> X-Sender: jimstyer@pop.voyager.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Long Lines Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 01:00 PM 6/27/99 -0500, David W. Tamkin wrote: >My list has a few members who simply cannot grasp the idea of breaking their >paragraphs into lines, and all their posts land in the over-width folder. On my small list of 200 subscribers and avg 4 msgs per day, posts with long lines come thru every so often. But, in two years, NO ONE has ever commented on that. When forms or tabular matter is posted, I usually am the one to do it and I set up the spacing and line length before I send it. I have no idea how the L-Soft software my host is using might be able to deal with long-line posts. However, I wouldn't want to hold back, let alone delete, a post just because a subscriber didn't realize he was sending with long lines. But I didn't even realize it was a problem for anyone until I began reading the comments here. --jim styer, PioNet operator-- jimstyer@voyager.net From list-managers-owner Sun Jun 27 18:14:52 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA09534; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 17:46:31 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail1.voyager.net (mail1.voyager.net [209.153.128.76]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id RAA09526 for ; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 17:46:21 -0700 (PDT) From: jimstyer@voyager.net Received: from LOCALNAME (as4-50.btck.mi.net-link.net [207.89.141.179]) by mail1.voyager.net (8.9.1/Voyager-MailX) with SMTP id UAA15345 for ; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 20:50:47 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 27 Jun 1999 20:50:47 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <2.2.16.19990627204329.38f788ce@pop.voyager.net> X-Sender: jimstyer@pop.voyager.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Moderating and off-topic posts Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 01:12 PM 6/27/99 -0400, murr rhame wrote: >I used to >quickly to make a public reply to any on-list mention of list policy. >Lately, I'm more likely to see how the group discussion goes before I >decide if a public announcement is needed. I am quite pleased that the two lists I'm directly involved in (2000 and 200 subscribers) are petty much self-correcting. If an off-topic thread continues for a day or two, someone invariably jumps in to remind the list that it's off topic. In one case this past week on the larger list, one fellow began filing an early-morning poem each day. He is very creative and the poetry is quite well-done. Many expressed their thanks, saying it brightened their mornings when they logged on. But it was off-topic! I suggesed that he try to wax poetic with on-topic subjects; he said this was too creatively limiting. Based on the public response, he publicly agreed to file the poetry privately to anyone who requests. The smaller list that I administer also is generally self-correcting, or the problem peters out after a few days. Off-topic posts are rare. I stay out of it unless it's to correct factual errors or to cut off personal derision. Even then, I try to do it with a smile. Only once in two years have I sent a major public post strongly reminding subscribers of list policy; at that time, I also unilatterally instituted a policy that I would unsubscribe a person at least temporarily if he refused to comply with a private warning. This I made general, and did not specifically refer to the offending posters. No one objected to the new provision -- and I have never had to use it. (I do post quit a bit to my own list, but those usually do not involve list policy or list operation. It happens that I also post a lot of informational material about activities of our organization.) So, I get the impression here that any problems with off-topic discussions or list policy on my list are relatively minor. Maybe that's because the list is comprised of many people who know each other as individuals and often see each other at twice-yearly conventions, rather than just being e-mail addresses out there in cyberspace. jim styer, PioNet operator jimstyer@voyager.net From list-managers-owner Sun Jun 27 18:30:57 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA09543; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 17:49:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id RAA09536 for ; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 17:49:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id RAA22498 ; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 17:49:56 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <37768A98.67699E36@ihug.co.nz> References: <37768A98.67699E36@ihug.co.nz> Date: Sun, 27 Jun 1999 17:48:28 -0700 To: Olwen Williams , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Moderating and off-topic posts Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 8:33 AM +1200 6/28/99, Olwen Williams wrote: > I had major problems with my list when I set the list to reply-to > sender. Flame wars and a rift in the list etc. I was accused of > limiting people's rights under US law (I'm in NZ and my list was housed > in NZ at the time so that amused me). Here's a technique that I find very useful for situations like this. Run a user survey. Ask everyone to send you feedback privately (where people can't be coerced by intimidation, but odn't say that). Find out what all of the users think, instead of the ones that are loud and noisy. One of three things will happen: 1) you'll find out they're right. If so, admit it and change. 2) you'll find out it's one or two loud, noisy people, and most people don't agree with them. Then you can point out they don't have a mandate, and close the issue down. 3) you'll find out (and this is quite common) that nobody cares, except the couple of people who started it. And in that case, it becomes a judgement call, and you're in charge. If there isn't a large group of people who want a change, there's no reason to change it (there are three reasons to change something: because new technology makes it feasible to do now, because your users (not just one or two users) want it that way, or because you, as list admin, feel it's the right thing to do. If neither of the latter two are true, don't do it. Just because a couple of users are screaming for something doesn't mean they speak for the user base in general -- and in fact, they probably don't. User surveys are one way to get this issue out of a subjective "I wanna!" "I dun wanna!" fight into a more objective one, because you can tell what the users as a group want. It's really useful getting the users involved, but it's not something that I'd use to manage every little detail. But if there's an issue of importance or one where it's unclear just where the right answer lies (or where you KNOW what the answer will be, but can't get the losing side to shut up....), a quick "tell me what you think" survey can really help clear the air. Just play it straight and don't ask any question you aren't willing to live with if they surprise you... ("70 percent of users want the reply-to changed, but I'm leaving it that way anyway...") If it's not negotiable, say so. But if you know your subscriber base, you'll rarely be surprised how they answer (and,f or the record, reply-to is one of the more common fights I see on lists, and invariably, the ones that insist it has to be set as reply-to-list are the louder contingent, but I have NEVER run a list where they spoke for the majority. Most people prefer reply-to being left unset, so the user can choose. I've surveyed on that one issue half a dozen times or more, and never had more than a token percentage of people who wanted it.) -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + The Jedi that I admire most met up with Darth Maul and now he's toast... (Weird Al Yankovic - The Saga Begins) From list-managers-owner Sun Jun 27 19:14:45 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA10327; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 19:04:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ligarius-fe0.ultra.net (ligarius-fe0.ultra.net [146.115.8.189]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA10320 for ; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 19:04:18 -0700 (PDT) Received: from voyager (d145.dial-4.cmb.ma.ultra.net [209.6.67.145]) by ligarius-fe0.ultra.net (8.8.8/ult/n20340/mtc.v2) with SMTP id WAA10305 for ; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 22:04:57 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <2.2.32.19990628020505.00c7b1ac@pop.ma.ultranet.com> X-Sender: stanr@pop.ma.ultranet.com X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (32) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 27 Jun 1999 22:05:05 -0400 To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Stan Ryckman Subject: Re: Long Lines Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 09:16 PM 6/26/99 -0700, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: >I don't even think about it. Most mail clients these days do the >"right" thing with this stuff. As HTML-based email becomes more >accepted and endemic, the issue will continue to disappear. Too bad... HTML in email makes a great spam indicator (though not by itself, it gets high weight). That's simply because SHOUTING IN CAPS didn't work for them, so the spammers are trying to use this for attention now. My impression in mailing lists is that, other than the clueless, HTML posters are similar to spammers-- they think if they become loud enough, colorful enough, using big enough fonts, then people will suddenly start listening to the nonsense they wish to spout. And aside from that, I really hate wasting 10K to store 2K of content. (Multipart/alternative isn't quite so bad, because the unwanted HTML part can be filtered out and tossed by the recipient; though I don't think things like list digests can leave it in and still have it be usefully removable later.) Cheers, Stan From list-managers-owner Mon Jun 28 00:31:16 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id AAA02152; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 00:24:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: from godai.maison-otaku.net (godai.maison-otaku.net [216.122.4.241]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id AAA02145 for ; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 00:24:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (loki@localhost) by godai.maison-otaku.net (8.7.4/8.7.3) with ESMTP id AAA20686 for ; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 00:25:17 -0700 X-Authentication-Warning: godai.maison-otaku.net: loki owned process doing -bs Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 00:25:16 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeremy Blackman To: list-managers@GreatCircle.com Subject: Re: Long Lines In-Reply-To: <2.2.16.19990627204326.3ce709e0@pop.voyager.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Sun, 27 Jun 1999 jimstyer@voyager.net wrote: > I have no idea how the L-Soft software my host is using might be able > to deal with long-line posts. However, I wouldn't want to hold back, let > alone delete, a post just because a subscriber didn't realize he was > sending with long lines. As a brief side-note, having list software force wraps can mess up a number of other mail features, such as RFC822 headers - not all mail programs do the 'wrap to next line, indent with tab' method of formatting mail headers. Sure, you could limit it to mail body, but then you run into problems when people forward a message with a program like PINE that doesn't wrap anything - including headers - in forwarded messages. I looked at several ways of dealing with this in Listar, but finally decided that it was really an issue that belongs in the mail client, not in the listserver. --Loki loki@maison-otaku.net / jeremy@lith.com / loki@lithtech.com From list-managers-owner Mon Jun 28 08:45:31 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA09404; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 08:44:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gw.tssi.com (gw.tssi.com [198.147.197.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA09397 for ; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 08:44:02 -0700 (PDT) Received: from celery.tssi.com (nolan@celery.tssi.com [198.147.197.6]) by gw.tssi.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id KAA06324 for ; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 10:44:46 -0500 Received: (from celery.tssi.com) by celery.tssi.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id KAA19920 for list-managers@GreatCircle.com; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 10:44:45 -0500 From: Mike Nolan Message-Id: <199906281544.KAA19920@celery.tssi.com> Subject: Re: Moderating and off-topic posts To: list-managers@GreatCircle.com (List Managers) Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 10:44:44 -0500 (CDT) Reply-To: nolan@tssi.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > Run a user survey. Ask everyone to send you feedback privately (where > people can't be coerced by intimidation, but odn't say that). Find > out what all of the users think, instead of the ones that are loud > and noisy. I've done this a couple of times, and there are always a few users who wind up replying to the list anyway, some because that's the only address they have in their address book, others because they feel their response is 'important' enough to go to everybody. Do you try to trap these, Chuq? I'm running mostly unmoderated lists, though on my more active lists I now divide users into two classes, those I can trust to stay on topic and within posting rules, and those that I cannot. All posts from the latter are reviewed by me for compliance with the guidelines before being distributed. And over 2/3 of my traffic comes from the former group. I've also found that on technical issues, such as Reply-To or the envelope address, most of my users don't understand what the question is in the first place, and probably don't ever want to, either. When technically aware users want to discuss things like this, I suggest it go off-list quickly. -- Mike Nolan From list-managers-owner Mon Jun 28 09:45:23 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA09924; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 09:39:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: from kachina.jetcafe.org (kachina.jetcafe.org [205.147.43.2]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id JAA09917 for ; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 09:39:02 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ee-nt (eckert@netcom9.netcom.com [192.100.81.119]) by kachina.jetcafe.org (8.9.1/8.9.1) with SMTP id JAA22440; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 09:39:33 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.19990628090003.009ad4a0@pop.climber.org> X-Sender: eckert@pop.climber.org X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 09:00:03 -0700 To: e2pysou@fre.fsu.umd.edu From: SRE Subject: Re: Moderating and off-topic posts Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <3774EC3F.ABF67C33@fre.fsu.umd.edu> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 04:05 PM 6/26/99 +0100, Bill Southerly wrote: >open to interpretation). We then typically start into a discussion of whether >this person should be able to ask these type of questions. This happens every >few months and we are in the middle of one now. > >Any suggestions or experiences in dealing with the type of subscriber that >seems to know how to play the edge and generate this type of off-topic >discussion that focuses on them and not the primary focus of the group? After several years and several attempts, what works for me is to have a "list-issues" list on my server. I tell people to discuss how the list is operated on the issues list and NOT on the main discussion list, then I configure the server to bounce messages which continue the thread. The bounce message gives instructions on how to sign up for the issues list. It's not moderation when you do it that way, it's just telling people which room to hold their discussion in (like the library telling people to be quiet in the stacks but not in the bathroom). VERY different telling people to shut up vs. telling them to move the discussion. SRE mailto:eckert@climber.org | http://www.climber.org/eckert/ Info on peak climbing email lists mailto:info@climber.org Civility suffers much in the name of liberty taken in vain. From list-managers-owner Mon Jun 28 09:59:54 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA10035; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 09:49:52 -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 JAA10027 for ; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 09:49:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from katie.vnet.net (katie.vnet.net [166.82.1.7]) by smtp1.vnet.net (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id MAA28813 for ; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 12:50:54 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (murr@localhost) by katie.vnet.net (8.9.1a/8.8.8) with ESMTP id MAA12953 for ; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 12:50:31 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: katie.vnet.net: murr owned process doing -bs Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 12:50:31 -0400 (EDT) From: murr rhame To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: List Admin References Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Mauri Collins and Zane L. Berge have put together a fairly nice web page of moderator and list admin references. http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~mpc3/moderators.html - murr - From list-managers-owner Mon Jun 28 10:59:51 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA10810; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 10:52:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail.proper.com (mail.proper.com [206.86.127.224]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA10803 for ; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 10:52:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from aum (ip11.proper.com [165.227.249.11]) by mail.proper.com (8.8.8/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA28472; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 10:49:42 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <4.2.0.56.19990628104838.0203a680@mail.imc.org> X-Sender: paulh@mail.imc.org X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.2.0.56 (Beta) Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 10:49:44 -0700 To: , From: Paul Hoffman / IMC Subject: Re: Long Lines In-Reply-To: <000301bebf4b$166012c0$35d7a989@mkleiman.chicago.kirkland.c om> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Before you go thwacking messages with long lines, you should read . I believe that this has (or is about to be) an IETF standard. In essence, it says that long lines are not only acceptable, but (when labelled) a Good Thing. --Paul Hoffman, Director --Internet Mail Consortium From list-managers-owner Mon Jun 28 14:15:59 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA13645; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 14:04:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ctc.swva.net (ctc.swva.net [165.166.123.19]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA13637 for ; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 14:04:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from default (pem05-36.swva.net [208.140.224.100]) by ctc.swva.net (8.9.0/8.9.0) with SMTP id RAA02194 for ; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 17:05:16 -0400 Message-Id: <199906282105.RAA02194@ctc.swva.net> From: "Bernie Cosell" Organization: Fantasy Farm Fibers To: Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 17:04:56 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Long Lines Reply-to: bernie@fantasyfarm.com In-reply-to: <4.2.0.56.19990628104838.0203a680@mail.imc.org> References: <000301bebf4b$166012c0$35d7a989@mkleiman.chicago.kirkland.c om> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.11) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 28 Jun 99, at 10:49, Paul Hoffman / IMC wrote: > Before you go thwacking messages with long lines, you should read > . I believe that this has (or is > about to be) an IETF standard. In essence, it says that long lines are not > only acceptable, but (when labelled) a Good Thing. Perhaps I didn't read it carefully enough --- could you point me at the 'Good Thing' part? What I read was stuff like: > When generating Format=Flowed text, lines SHOULD be shorter than 80 > characters. As suggested values, any paragraph longer than 79 > characters in total length could be wrapped using lines of 72 or fewer > characters. While the specific line length used is a matter of > aesthetics and preference, longer lines are more likely to require > rewrapping and to encounter difficulties with older mailers. It has > been suggested that 66 character lines are the most readable. Which makes is sure sound that even in the new world of "flowed" text mailers that send out 300-char-long-lines for entire paragraphs would be "Bad Things". [Yes, I know it says "SHOULD" and not "MUST" -- that's why they're just 'Bad' and not 'Banned'] /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From list-managers-owner Mon Jun 28 14:32:43 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA13790; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 14:17:06 -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 OAA13783 for ; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 14:16:56 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 10563 invoked by uid 100); 28 Jun 1999 17:17:43 -0400 Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 17:17:43 -0400 (EDT) From: John R Levine To: Paul Hoffman / IMC cc: matt@berner.org, List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Long Lines In-Reply-To: <4.2.0.56.19990628104838.0203a680@mail.imc.org> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > Before you go thwacking messages with long lines, you should read > . I believe that this has (or is > about to be) an IETF standard. In essence, it says that long lines are not > only acceptable, but (when labelled) a Good Thing. But it also says that they should be sent folded at 79 characters or less and rewrapped for display. I just read it, it's actually a nice hack to permit fancy MUAs to make the text look nice while having it still look reasonable with simple MUAs that just dump the text to an xterm. 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 Mon Jun 28 14:49:05 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA14004; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 14:37:39 -0700 (PDT) Received: from smtp.pobox.com (smtp.pobox.com [208.210.124.39]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA13997 for ; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 14:37:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from 130.244.157.22 (dialup54-4-13.swipnet.se [130.244.54.205]) by smtp.pobox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0A1182F7F7; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 17:38:19 -0400 (EDT) Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <4.2.0.56.19990628104838.0203a680@mail.imc.org> References: <4.2.0.56.19990628104838.0203a680@mail.imc.org> X-Face: 'A:7f522lYi,ww(,Re=p]v0|H9>vZuBBP';$x.ac2RJu=x|qoh@ys&y0gYYKR 9CoV8S*B%D`m;z+,mUzsF*"a>/1bxFVneCUF`F+e?D6h[}%{B3\J1K`+%Zr'p{CIb@p. E%bN(C/RXa=%>ASWO>'&%$C(dKCC{\Z$"Fhs*vCm%*0f{+ug&i', , From: Bo Bjulen Subject: Re: Long Lines Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk *** Paul Hoffman / IMC: >Before you go thwacking messages with long lines, you should read >. I believe that this has >(or is about to be) an IETF standard. In essence, it says that long >lines are not only acceptable, but (when labelled) a Good Thing. Using this format they are a Good Thing since messages are not *sent* with long lines. Receiving MTAs which understands the format will unwrap the messages but all others will see it as word wrapped. This message, and Paul Hoffman's, used this forma (Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed). Bo -- Bo Bjulen From list-managers-owner Mon Jun 28 17:16:43 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA15416; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 17:11:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ctc.swva.net (ctc.swva.net [165.166.123.19]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id RAA15409 for ; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 17:11:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: from default (pem05-36.swva.net [208.140.224.100]) by ctc.swva.net (8.9.0/8.9.0) with SMTP id UAA19754 for ; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 20:12:21 -0400 Message-Id: <199906290012.UAA19754@ctc.swva.net> From: "Bernie Cosell" Organization: Fantasy Farm Fibers To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 20:11:35 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Long Lines Reply-to: bernie@fantasyfarm.com In-reply-to: References: <4.2.0.56.19990628104838.0203a680@mail.imc.org> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.11) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 28 Jun 99, at 23:36, Bo Bjulen wrote: > *** Paul Hoffman / IMC: > > >Before you go thwacking messages with long lines, you should read > >. I believe that this has > >(or is about to be) an IETF standard. In essence, it says that long > >lines are not only acceptable, but (when labelled) a Good Thing. > > Using this format they are a Good Thing since messages are not *sent* > with long lines. Ah, a sematic usage which I guessed I missed... where you use the term "long line" I guess I use the term "paragraph" so I misunderstood... > .. Receiving MTAs which understands the format will > unwrap the messages but all others will see it as word wrapped. Yes, it is an excellent spec, IMO! There are two important things which it very neatly deals with, clever stuff all: allowing folk who want to "flow" text on their own to get along with folk who want to display it directly; and second [an important one not to be missed [even though MS managed to]] that the spec _has_ to cleanly embrace embedded text that cannot/shouldnot be flowed, no matter _what_ the reader wants to do, [e.g., intentionally long lines (as from Unix log files, which I seem to get too many of via email..:o), preformatted tables, other forms of degererate "ascii art" :o)] Kudos! [now if the HTML-likers can come up with as reasonable, well thought through and accommodating a spec, I might even not be one of the luddite anti-html'ers.] /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From list-managers-owner Mon Jun 28 18:30:57 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA16010; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 18:21:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id SAA16003 for ; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 18:21:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id SAA29396 ; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 18:22:25 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <199906281544.KAA19920@celery.tssi.com> References: <199906281544.KAA19920@celery.tssi.com> Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 17:58:51 -0700 To: nolan@tssi.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM (List Managers) From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Moderating and off-topic posts Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >> Run a user survey. Ask everyone to send you feedback privately (where >> people can't be coerced by intimidation, but odn't say that). > I've done this a couple of times, and there are always a few users who > wind up replying to the list anyway, > Do you try to trap these, Chuq? Nope. But I don't count them, either. I consider them discussions of the survey or suggestions to the crowd, not actual votes (and I say upfront posted responses won't be counted, so they can't yell later.) > I've also found that on technical issues, such as Reply-To or the > envelope address, most of my users don't understand what the question is > in the first place, and probably don't ever want to, either. Exactly. It's easy to prove quite quickly that the list doesn't care, and the couple of noisy ones who do should shut up and let the list get back to work... -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + The Jedi that I admire most met up with Darth Maul and now he's toast... (Weird Al Yankovic - The Saga Begins) From list-managers-owner Tue Jun 29 00:48:58 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id AAA00479; Tue, 29 Jun 1999 00:36:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: from smtp.pacifier.com (smtp.pacifier.com [199.2.117.96]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id AAA00472 for ; Tue, 29 Jun 1999 00:36:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from chuck (ip214.pdx9.pacifier.com [216.65.145.214]) by smtp.pacifier.com (8.9.3/8.9.1) with SMTP id VAA08264 for ; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 21:09:14 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199906290409.VAA08264@smtp.pacifier.com> X-Sender: chuck@mail.pacifier.com (Unverified) X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0 Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 21:09:11 -0700 To: From: "Charles Bruce, Stewart" Subject: Subject Prefix Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hi folks, Interesing discussion, new member here, but I run a lot of lists under majordomo & do a lot of email. Sorting is immensely simplified by the use of subject prefixes. I dont know who we owe thanks to for the moderating of this fine list, however if a subject prefix could be added to the list here such as that shown below in a sample modification of the config file, well it could make tha difference between my being able to stay on this fine list here or not, & I imagine the same is true with others. How about it? Any chance of getting the subject prefix line re-configuired similar to as shown below? Thanks, Charles, Bruce, Stewart Sandy Oregon. subject_prefix = MJDGS> # This word will be prefixed to the subject line, if it is not # already in the subject. The text is expanded before being used. # The following expansion tokens are defined: $LIST - the name of # the current list, $SENDER - the sender as taken from the from # line, $VERSION, the version of majordomo. From list-managers-owner Tue Jun 29 03:19:31 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id DAA03298; Tue, 29 Jun 1999 03:04:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mushi.colo.neosoft.com (mushi.colo.neosoft.com [206.109.6.82]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id DAA03291 for ; Tue, 29 Jun 1999 03:04:39 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 8209 invoked from network); 29 Jun 1999 10:05:30 -0000 Received: from bonkers.neosoft.com (HELO bonkers.taronga.com) (206.109.2.48) by mushi.colo.neosoft.com with SMTP; 29 Jun 1999 10:05:30 -0000 Received: (from arielle@localhost) by bonkers.taronga.com (8.9.1/8.9.1) id FAA06814 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Tue, 29 Jun 1999 05:05:29 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from arielle) From: Stephanie da Silva Message-Id: <199906291005.FAA06814@bonkers.taronga.com> Subject: Students Joining ML Thing Resolved To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1999 05:05:28 -0500 (CDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Type: text Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I'd like to thank whomever it was that wrote Beverly Cox the nice letter that prompted her to open up a dialogue with me. As it turns out, the student who wrote me strayed so far off the path that I totally got the wrong impression of what the assignment was. Turns out it was a specific list that she was supposed to be subscr|bing to (one on nursing topics hosted at buffalo.edu), not just any list in general. I had a couple exchanges with the teacher about servers and mailing lists in general and she now understands better what I was talking about. She has asked me to ask you all to stop writing her, and I agree, it's not necessary anymore. As a footnote, I mentioned the "proctor" thing to her, said I had never heard it before used that way and it sounded a bit odd applied to a list manager. She said she had gotten it from a professor of hers who was a long-time Unix user. I thought that was kind of interesting! Anyhow, she asked me to pass this message to list-managers. Thanks to everyone who helped! > There has been a misunderstanding here, please allow me to clear it up. > My students do not subscr|be to any list, they have 3 specific, > professional Health Science Student lists they are assigned and will > belong to during these education years. In my lecture, I ask my students > not to respond to questions or conversations before they know all the > details. I feel 'we all' got involved in breaking this rule ourselves! > Your lists are not now or ever were in my assignments. Thank you for > being polite with your message. Beverly Cox From list-managers-owner Tue Jun 29 04:04:38 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id DAA05622; Tue, 29 Jun 1999 03:51:02 -0700 (PDT) Received: from front1.grolier.fr (front1.grolier.fr [194.158.96.51]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id DAA05615 for ; Tue, 29 Jun 1999 03:50:56 -0700 (PDT) Received: from povlab.org (Amiens-3-239.club-internet.fr [194.158.121.239]) by front1.grolier.fr (8.9.3/No_Relay+No_Spam_MGC990224) with ESMTP id MAA11558 for ; Tue, 29 Jun 1999 12:51:14 +0200 (MET DST) Message-ID: <3778A503.1D871EDF@povlab.org> Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1999 12:50:43 +0200 From: "Denis Olivier [368859]" Organization: DOLIST E-mail List Server [http://www.dolist.net] X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.6 [en] (WinNT; I) X-Accept-Language: en,fr MIME-Version: 1.0 To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Subject Prefix References: <199906290409.VAA08264@smtp.pacifier.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hi, Personnly I handle all my past list with subject headers, but I change this point of view, just because now (that depend of the end users platform) most of mail client readers allow filters and users create a special folder where they receive only their message from one same list. Sure, with UNIX console reader things could be harder, so in that case it should be a great deal to add subject headers. "Charles Bruce, Stewart" wrote: > I dont know who we owe thanks to for the moderating of this fine list, > however if a subject prefix could be added to the list here such as that shown below > in a sample modification of the config file, > well it could make tha difference between my being able to stay on this fine list here or not, > & I imagine the same is true with others. -- Denis Olivier ____________________________________________________________ DOLIST, Internet E-mail List Server DOLIST information at : http://www.dolist.net Human information at : http://www.povlab.org/denis.olivier/ From list-managers-owner Tue Jun 29 08:29:50 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA08004; Tue, 29 Jun 1999 08:08:33 -0700 (PDT) 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 IAA07996 for ; Tue, 29 Jun 1999 08:08:27 -0700 (PDT) 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; 29 Jun 1999 15:09:22 UT Received: from ccmail.osti.gov by mailgate.osti.gov (PMDF V5.2-32 #34298) id <0FE300H01GSRJ9@mailgate.osti.gov> for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Tue, 29 Jun 1999 11:10:04 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1999 11:01 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: List Admin References To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Cc: Doug_LaVerne@ccmail.osti.gov Message-id: <0FE300H04GSSJ9@mailgate.osti.gov> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN Content-description: TEXT.TXT Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Who can tell me how to get the listname in the "Subject:" line when using Listproc, as in "ql-users" list below? Users, managers ask for this. E.g. Majordomo can prepend $LIST (e.g. see subject_prefix, O'Reilly MML p. 240) but so far it doesn't look good for Listproc on what seems a simple matter. The [6.0x] config directive "list ... -m" is close but not quite. We recently upgraded from 6.0c to 6.0d to rectify some attachments problems. EXAMPLE: Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1999 12:25:50 +0100 From: Richard Xxxxxx Reply-To: ql-users@nvg.ntnu.no To: "'ql-users@nvg.ntnu.no'" Subject: [ql-users] RE: Cueshell/ SMSQ/E and BIG Drives REFERENCE: _Managing Mailing Lists_, Alan Schwarz, (c) 1998 O'Reilly & Associates Sebastopol, CA, USA, ISBN 1-56592-259-X, 282 p., http://www.oreilly.com/ catalog/mailing/. Covers fairly well Listproc, SmartList, Majordomo, & Listserv(r) [Lite]. Thanks, Doug ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________ Subject: List Admin References Author: murr@vnet.net at INTERNET Date: 1999/06/28 12:50 PM Mauri Collins and Zane L. Berge have put together a fairly nice web page of moderator and list admin references. http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~mpc3/moderators.html - murr - From list-managers-owner Tue Jun 29 09:04:39 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA08431; Tue, 29 Jun 1999 08:57:16 -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 IAA08424 for ; Tue, 29 Jun 1999 08:57:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 22555 invoked by uid 100); 29 Jun 1999 11:58:05 -0400 Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1999 11:58:02 -0400 (EDT) From: John R Levine To: "Charles Bruce, Stewart" cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Subject Prefix In-Reply-To: <199906290409.VAA08264@smtp.pacifier.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > Sorting is immensely simplified by the use of subject prefixes. I don't find that at all. I've done filters in procmail, Eudora, and OE, and I invariably find that there's a reliable tag in a Received: or X-whatever: header that I can easily use to identify list mail and sort it into separate mailboxes. Although I've put list tags on some of my older lists, I don't do it any more because after a couple of replies with slightly broken quoting, copies of the tag start squeezing out the useful part of the subject, e.g. Subject: Re: [foolist] Re: [foolis List tags, was [fooli Re: six hundred 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 Jun 29 11:18:58 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA09694; Tue, 29 Jun 1999 11:14:48 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA09687 for ; Tue, 29 Jun 1999 11:14:42 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id LAA27478 ; Tue, 29 Jun 1999 11:15:19 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1999 10:55:38 -0700 To: John R Levine , "Charles Bruce, Stewart" From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Subject Prefix Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 11:58 AM -0400 6/29/99, John R Levine wrote: >> Sorting is immensely simplified by the use of subject prefixes. > > I don't find that at all. Agreed. With the exception of the AOL mail client (and frankly, they should just join the 19th century), if you don't have mail filtering capabilities in your client, it's because you don't want them. This can (and should) be done on the client side, rather than forcing it on everyone on the list. Harkening back to the user surveys and the reply-to stuff of the other night, this is the OTHER thing that invariably seems to crop up every few months on one list or another, and invariably comes down to one or two noisy people who want it their way, period. And whenever I run a user survey, most people don't care, but of those that do, most don't want subject prefixes. I don't like subject prefixes for another reason: the subject is the key thing people use to determine whether or not to read an e-mail message. In most clients, you have effectively 45-60 characters to define that subject. Now, you take away 10% or more of that just so people can do a sort-by-subject-line, when they could do that in other ways already. It really limits the ability to communicate the content of the message, and makes it harder for most folks to figure out whether they want to read a message before opening it. So I think it actually creates more hassle than it solves. And it solves that hassle for a relatively few people, since most of humanity now has the ability to set up their mailers to do this if they really want to. Me, I simply filter every mailing list into its own folder, so I can read each one in context,a nd so none of my mail lists affect my personal e-mail or get in the way until I have time to read them. -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + The Jedi that I admire most met up with Darth Maul and now he's toast... (Weird Al Yankovic - The Saga Begins) From list-managers-owner Tue Jun 29 14:18:55 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA11226; Tue, 29 Jun 1999 14:03:59 -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 OAA11219 for ; Tue, 29 Jun 1999 14:03:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Mars.mcs.net (dattier@Mars.mcs.net [192.160.127.85]) by Kitten.mcs.com (8.8.7/8.8.2) with ESMTP id QAA29287 for ; Tue, 29 Jun 1999 16:04:45 -0500 (CDT) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Mars.mcs.net (8.8.7/8.8.2) id QAA48247 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Tue, 29 Jun 1999 16:04:45 -0500 (CDT) From: "David W. Tamkin" Message-Id: <199906292104.QAA48247@Mars.mcs.net> Subject: Re: Subject Prefix To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1999 16:04:45 -0500 (CDT) In-Reply-To: from "Chuq Von Rospach" at Jun 29, 99 10:55:38 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Type: text Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hang on to your seats, folks. This time I'm going to *agree* with Chuq. Chuq Von Rospach wrote about subject tags, | Hearkening back to the user surveys and the reply-to stuff of the | other night, this is the OTHER thing that invariably seems to crop up | every few months on one list or another, and invariably comes down to | one or two noisy people who want it their way, period. Yup. I offer them as an option. Thing is, nobody ever asks whether it could be done, or whether he or she could have it. Like RTL, it's always a direct order to configure the whole list that way because untagged subjects, RTS, or whatever else he or she is against is wrong, wrong, wrong, bad, evil, wrong, wrong, stupid, and just plain wrong. When I tell someone trying to stump for them as the greatest thing since sliced bread, "I'll put you on that option, but I'm not going to force them on the whole list," the standard reaction is a very short and subdued "Thank you." You can really tell that the wind out was knocked of their sails; get- ting the prize without the victory frustrates them. From list-managers-owner Tue Jun 29 14:49:17 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA11525; Tue, 29 Jun 1999 14:39:29 -0700 (PDT) Received: from miles.greatcircle.com (miles.greatcircle.com [198.102.244.45]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA11518 for ; Tue, 29 Jun 1999 14:39:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from socrates.uophx.edu (socrates.uophx.edu [204.17.17.98]) by miles.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA04996 for ; Tue, 29 Jun 1999 14:41:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (sgmiller@localhost) by socrates.uophx.edu (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id OAA08938; Tue, 29 Jun 1999 14:41:55 -0700 Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1999 14:41:55 -0700 (MST) From: "Steven G. Miller" To: John R Levine cc: "Charles Bruce, Stewart" , List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Subject Prefix In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > > Subject: Re: [foolist] Re: [foolis List tags, was [fooli Re: six hundred > I don't experience this with Majordomo-1.94.4, as it normally reads the list prefix and knows not to add additional repeats. Steve Miller From list-managers-owner Tue Jun 29 21:49:17 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA15123; Tue, 29 Jun 1999 21:38:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ligarius-fe0.ultra.net (ligarius-fe0.ultra.net [146.115.8.189]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA15116 for ; Tue, 29 Jun 1999 21:38:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: from voyager (d44.dial-1.cmb.ma.ultra.net [209.6.64.44]) by ligarius-fe0.ultra.net (8.8.8/ult/n20340/mtc.v2) with SMTP id AAA15266 for ; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 00:39:06 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <2.2.32.19990630043914.00bfc760@pop.ma.ultranet.com> X-Sender: stanr@pop.ma.ultranet.com X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (32) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 00:39:14 -0400 To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Stan Ryckman Subject: Re: Subject Prefix Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 12:50 PM 6/29/99 +0200, Denis Olivier [368859] wrote: >Hi, > >Personnly I handle all my past list with subject headers, but I change >this point of view, just because now (that depend of the end users platform) >most of mail client readers allow filters and users create a special folder >where they receive only their message from one same list. > >Sure, with UNIX console reader things could be harder, so in that case >it should be a great deal to add subject headers. Actually, it's easy in UNIX... use procmail. Not only can you sort into list folders, but you can add in the '[LISTNAME]' thingie yourself if you really want it (though, since the list doesn't know about it it won't be removed when you reply, so you'll want to take it out of the subject manually when replying.) Cheers, Stan From list-managers-owner Tue Jun 29 23:35:39 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA16406; Tue, 29 Jun 1999 23:30:55 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail12.svr.pol.co.uk (mail12.svr.pol.co.uk [195.92.193.215]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id XAA16399 for ; Tue, 29 Jun 1999 23:30:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from modem-92.sodium.dialup.pol.co.uk ([62.136.5.92] ident=cc047) by mail12.svr.pol.co.uk with esmtp (Exim 2.12 #1) id 10zDuO-0007C1-00; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 07:31:48 +0100 Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 07:31:45 +0100 (BST) From: Jeffrey Goldberg X-Sender: cc047@arpad.thegreen.private Reply-To: Jeffrey Goldberg To: "David W. Tamkin" cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Subject Prefix In-Reply-To: <199906292104.QAA48247@Mars.mcs.net> 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 On Tue, 29 Jun 1999, David W. Tamkin wrote: > YI offer [subject prefixes] as an option [for individual subscribers]. Great. How? Which MLMs allow this sort of thing and isn't it "expensive" wrt to mail transport (aren't you generating different data for different subscribers)? -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 Wed Jun 30 08:06:07 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA24048; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 07:53:31 -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 HAA24041 for ; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 07:53:25 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Mars.mcs.net (dattier@Mars.mcs.net [192.160.127.85]) by Kitten.mcs.com (8.8.7/8.8.2) with ESMTP id JAA29087; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 09:54:30 -0500 (CDT) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Mars.mcs.net (8.8.7/8.8.2) id JAA65494; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 09:54:30 -0500 (CDT) From: "David W. Tamkin" Message-Id: <199906301454.JAA65494@Mars.mcs.net> Subject: Re: Subject Prefix To: J.Goldberg@cranfield.ac.uk Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 09:54:30 -0500 (CDT) Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com In-Reply-To: from "Jeffrey Goldberg" at Jun 30, 99 07:31:45 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Type: text Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Jeffrey Goldberg asked me (a Briton named "Jeffrey" rather than "Geoffrey"?), | > I offer [subject prefixes] as an option [for individual subscribers]. | | Great. How? By dint of being a spineless jellyfish and giving into the whiners instead of telling them to learn how to filter their mail as I should have. | Which MLMs allow this sort of thing ... None to my knowledge (but it is slight and scant). My list routines are homebrew, and I wouldn't wish them on anybody. | and isn't it "expensive" wrt to mail | transport (aren't you generating different data for different | subscribers)? No more so than any other mailing list setup that allows users individual settings or options. Right now the only person taking the tag option is the only subscriber in his domain, so it's not causing any additional SMTP work. Also, if the list name (or any of a number of misspellings thereof) is already in the subject, he gets the same version as everyone else, so then there's no expense at all. From list-managers-owner Wed Jun 30 08:20:21 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA24014; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 07:50:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: from portal.aeat.co.uk (portal.aeat.co.uk [151.182.136.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id HAA24002 for ; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 07:50:00 -0700 (PDT) Received: by portal.aeat.co.uk; id PAA29541; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 15:51:04 +0100 Received: from smtp-sweep-2.harwell.aeat.co.uk(151.182.136.198) via SMTP by portal-internal, id smtpdAAAa007DN; Wed Jun 30 15:51:03 1999 Received: from aeat.co.uk (unverified) by smtp-sweep-2.harwell.aeat.co.uk (Content Technologies SMTPRS 2.0.15) with SMTP id for ; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 15:56:35 +0100 Received: from hexagon.harwell.aeat.co.uk by aeat.co.uk with ESMTP (8.9.1/AEAT-GW-1.18) id PAA16486; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 15:50:52 +0100 (BST) sender John.Lines for Received: from hexagon.harwell.aeat.co.uk (jlines@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by hexagon.harwell.aeat.co.uk (8.9.3/8.9.3/Debian/GNU) with ESMTP id PAA16021 for ; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 15:50:51 +0100 Message-Id: <199906301450.PAA16021@hexagon.harwell.aeat.co.uk> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0.2 2/24/98 (debian) To: List-Managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Identifying lists in headers - was Re: Subject Prefix MIME-Version: 1.0 Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 15:50:51 +0100 From: John Lines Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I agree with the various people who have said that identifying lists in the subject line is not a good idea. Like most people on this list I use mail filtering software to sort mail from lists into standard folders. The problem is that every list is slightly different in the best header to filter on, and usually you have to change your filters if the list moves to a new location or the list owner changes the software they use. I would like to see a standard header for all mailing lists, for example: List-name: list-managers which I could rely on to filter lists. (Unfortunately this would have to be agreed by all the authors of list management software, which makes it highly unlikely to ever be implemented in the consistent way which would allow such fancy things as: o I subscribe to a list, and my MUA sees this header, knows it is from a list, and creates a folder for it, and adds filtering rules - all automatically. John Lines From list-managers-owner Wed Jun 30 08:51:05 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA24499; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 08:39:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dragoncat.net (herne.dragoncat.net [216.122.4.136]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA24492 for ; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 08:39:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (jtraub@localhost) by dragoncat.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id IAA27433; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 08:40:10 -0700 Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 08:40:10 -0700 (PDT) From: JT To: Jeffrey Goldberg cc: "David W. Tamkin" , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Subject Prefix 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 Wed, 30 Jun 1999, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote: > On Tue, 29 Jun 1999, David W. Tamkin wrote: > > > YI offer [subject prefixes] as an option [for individual subscribers]. > > Great. How? > > Which MLMs allow this sort of thing and isn't it "expensive" wrt to mail > transport (aren't you generating different data for different > subscribers)? Well, listar will shortly support this as a per-user option, but yes, it is semi-expensive in terms of time spent processing the list (although that time can be reduced by sorting the list on this criteria) (would let you get away with sending two messages instead of one). Listar will probably take this tack in dealing with this issue. (note, this is a future feature, not a current one with listar). --JT -- [-------------------------------------------------------------------------] [ Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty. ] [ It's hard to seize the day when you must first grapple with the morning ] [-------------------------------------------------------------------------] From list-managers-owner Wed Jun 30 09:51:17 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA25298; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 09:40:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail-out-0.tiac.net (mail-out-0.tiac.net [199.0.65.247]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id JAA25285 for ; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 09:40:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: from posterchild1.tiac.net (posterchild1.tiac.net [199.0.65.72]) by mail-out-0.tiac.net (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id MAA28878; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 12:41:22 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from stanr@sunspot.tiac.net) Received: from sunspot.tiac.net (sunspot.tiac.net [199.0.65.22]) by posterchild1.tiac.net (8.8.8/8.8.7) with ESMTP id QAA13782; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 16:41:14 GMT Received: (from stanr@localhost) by sunspot.tiac.net (8.8.8/8.6.9) id MAA18509; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 12:39:22 -0400 (EDT) From: Stan Ryckman Message-Id: <199906301639.MAA18509@sunspot.tiac.net> Subject: Re: Subject Prefix In-Reply-To: <199906301454.JAA65494@Mars.mcs.net> from "David W. Tamkin" at "Jun 30, 99 09:54:30 am" To: dattier@Mcs.Net (David W. Tamkin) Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 12:39:12 -0400 (EDT) Cc: J.Goldberg@cranfield.ac.uk, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Organization: Amber & Sneakers Fan Club X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL40 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > | Which MLMs allow this sort of thing ... > > None to my knowledge (but it is slight and scant). My list routines are > homebrew, and I wouldn't wish them on anybody. LISTSERV (L-Soft's product) does, I think as of 1.8c and later. I set it on a couple of lists, more because it also seems to clean up the "Re: Re(2):" nonsense at the same time. Cheers, Stan From list-managers-owner Wed Jun 30 10:21:14 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA25555; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 10:04:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ma-1.rootsweb.com (ma-1.rootsweb.com [209.192.148.153]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA25548 for ; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 10:04:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from twp@localhost) by ma-1.rootsweb.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id NAA88690; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 13:05:26 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 13:05:26 -0400 From: Tim Pierce To: Jeffrey Goldberg Cc: "David W. Tamkin" , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Subject Prefix Message-ID: <19990630130526.T81810@ma-1.rootsweb.com> References: <199906292104.QAA48247@Mars.mcs.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.1i In-Reply-To: ; from Jeffrey Goldberg on Wed, Jun 30, 1999 at 07:31:45AM +0100 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Wed, Jun 30, 1999 at 07:31:45AM +0100, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote: > On Tue, 29 Jun 1999, David W. Tamkin wrote: > > > YI offer [subject prefixes] as an option [for individual subscribers]. > > Great. How? > > Which MLMs allow this sort of thing and isn't it "expensive" wrt to mail > transport (aren't you generating different data for different > subscribers)? LISTSERV allows individual subscribers to set certain preferences for how the mail looks when it arrives. It is more expensive in that each delivery requires a separate SMTP connection and additional CPU grinding to boot. LISTSERV does this partly by having a tightly optimized MTA built right into the list manager itself. It might be possible to persuade qmail to do something similar without too much pain, since qmail already conducts a separate SMTP session for every message. -- Regards, Tim Pierce RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative system obfuscator and hack-of-all-trades From list-managers-owner Wed Jun 30 10:35:22 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA25629; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 10:11:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail-out-0.tiac.net (mail-out-0.tiac.net [199.0.65.247]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA25622 for ; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 10:10:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail-out-3.tiac.net (mail-out-3.tiac.net [199.0.65.15]) by mail-out-0.tiac.net (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id NAA20163; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 13:12:01 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from stanr@sunspot.tiac.net) Received: from sunspot.tiac.net (sunspot.tiac.net [199.0.65.22]) by mail-out-3.tiac.net (8.8.8/8.8.7) with ESMTP id NAA08692; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 13:12:00 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from stanr@sunspot.tiac.net) Received: (from stanr@localhost) by sunspot.tiac.net (8.8.8/8.6.9) id NAA10738; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 13:10:09 -0400 (EDT) From: Stan Ryckman Message-Id: <199906301710.NAA10738@sunspot.tiac.net> Subject: Re: Identifying lists in headers - was Re: Subject Prefix In-Reply-To: <199906301450.PAA16021@hexagon.harwell.aeat.co.uk> from John Lines at "Jun 30, 99 03:50:51 pm" To: John.Lines@aeat.co.uk (John Lines) Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 13:09:59 -0400 (EDT) Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Organization: Amber & Sneakers Fan Club X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL40 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk John Lines wrote: > > I would like to see a standard header for all mailing lists, for example: > > List-name: list-managers > > which I could rely on to filter lists. (Unfortunately this would have to > be agreed by all the authors of list management software, which makes it > highly unlikely to ever be implemented in the consistent way which would > allow such fancy things as: > > o I subscribe to a list, and my MUA sees this header, knows it is from a list, > and creates a folder for it, and adds filtering rules - all automatically. Look for RFC2369, which I think is still Standards Track. There's a copy at (among other places): http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/htbin/rfc/rfc2369.html "List-Unsubscribe" is the header which would always be present. Its contents are the obvious address, and would change only if the list moved. Onelist.com lists now use them: List-Unsubscribe: where XXXX is the listname. As for filtering on it, especially creating folders automatically... you'll have to decide how you want your setup to behave when somebody forwards/bounces/resends (pick your terminology) a message to you, but from a list you aren't subscribed to, and their software leaves that header in. Cheers, Stan From list-managers-owner Wed Jun 30 11:05:25 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA26098; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 10:52:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA26091 for ; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 10:52:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (A17-219-13-157.apple.com [17.219.13.157]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id KAA191446 ; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 10:53:02 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 10:52:54 -0700 To: JT , Jeffrey Goldberg From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Subject Prefix Cc: "David W. Tamkin" , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >> Which MLMs allow this sort of thing and isn't it "expensive" wrt to mail >> transport (aren't you generating different data for different >> subscribers)? > Well, listar will shortly support this as a per-user option, but yes, it > is semi-expensive in terms of time spent processing the list (although > that time can be reduced by sorting the list on this criteria) So will majordomo 2, I believe. As far as expensive, there's lots you can do to build in user-customized content and keep your efficiency up. Most of your TIME delays are in the delivery end, anyway, and you can minimize that with some reasonable sendmail tweaks (like using QueueSortOrder=host to maximize your connection caching). -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + The Jedi that I admire most met up with Darth Maul and now he's toast... (Weird Al Yankovic - The Saga Begins) From list-managers-owner Wed Jun 30 11:20:24 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA26089; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 10:52:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA26082 for ; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 10:52:00 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (A17-219-13-157.apple.com [17.219.13.157]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id KAA191434 ; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 10:53:00 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <199906301450.PAA16021@hexagon.harwell.aeat.co.uk> References: <199906301450.PAA16021@hexagon.harwell.aeat.co.uk> Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 10:49:22 -0700 To: John Lines , List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Identifying lists in headers - was Re: Subject Prefix Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 3:50 PM +0100 6/30/99, John Lines wrote: > I would like to see a standard header for all mailing lists, for example: > > List-name: list-managers > > which I could rely on to filter lists. RFC 2369 (accessible from the above URL). Some lists support this. Some don't, but it's going to be the emerging standard (I expect all of my lists to support it RSN). There is a second standard, the List-ID standard, which is also affiliated to this and which lists ought to consider supporting. If they exist, they answer your issue. If they don't, there are any number of other ways to determine lists. My lists all go out with an appropriate Sender: header, and that's what I encourage my users to filter by in my list documentation. But you can usually find some string that will guarantee it's a list posting, even if we're not yet at the point where the mail client can automatically determine whether a list exists 100% of the time. Setting up a filter for each list is a trivial exercise... > (Unfortunately this would have to > be agreed by all the authors of list management software, they're a bit ahead of you here... (grin) -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + The Jedi that I admire most met up with Darth Maul and now he's toast... (Weird Al Yankovic - The Saga Begins) From list-managers-owner Wed Jun 30 11:35:28 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA26567; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 11:13:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from portal.aeat.co.uk (portal.aeat.co.uk [151.182.136.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id LAA26560 for ; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 11:13:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: by portal.aeat.co.uk; id TAA17416; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 19:14:23 +0100 Received: from smtp-sweep-2.harwell.aeat.co.uk(151.182.136.198) via SMTP by portal-internal, id smtpdAAAa004G2; Wed Jun 30 19:14:13 1999 Received: from aeat.co.uk (unverified) by smtp-sweep-2.harwell.aeat.co.uk (Content Technologies SMTPRS 2.0.15) with SMTP id ; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 19:14:58 +0100 Received: from hexagon.harwell.aeat.co.uk by aeat.co.uk with ESMTP (8.9.1/AEAT-GW-1.18) id TAA25410; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 19:09:09 +0100 (BST) sender John.Lines for Received: from hexagon.harwell.aeat.co.uk (jlines@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by hexagon.harwell.aeat.co.uk (8.9.3/8.9.3/Debian/GNU) with ESMTP id TAA18799; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 19:09:08 +0100 Message-Id: <199906301809.TAA18799@hexagon.harwell.aeat.co.uk> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0.2 2/24/98 (debian) To: Stan Ryckman Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Identifying lists in headers - was Re: Subject Prefix In-Reply-To: Message from Stan Ryckman of "Wed, 30 Jun 1999 13:09:59 EDT." <199906301710.NAA10738@sunspot.tiac.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 19:09:08 +0100 From: John Lines Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Stan Ryckman wrote: > John Lines wrote: > > > > I would like to see a standard header for all mailing lists, for example: > > > > List-name: list-managers > > > > Look for RFC2369, which I think is still Standards Track. > There's a copy at (among other places): > http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/htbin/rfc/rfc2369.html > "List-Unsubscribe" is the header which would always be present. > Its contents are the obvious address, and would change only > if the list moved. > I forgot to mention that I had looked at rfc2369 (I remember the discussion about it on list-managers in August 1998). I agree that it would be good if more mailing lists supported this, but it does not deal with the problem of lists which move hosts (this is not a problem for onelist, as they assume that they will always be hosting the list. I was wanting a header whose sole purpose was to identify the name of the list for filtering purposes, but which would be independent of the hosting location. (I appreciate that this creates the problem of the non-uniqueness of list names - you would still have to do complex filtering if you wanted to be subscribed to list-managers@greatcircle.com and list-managers@acme.com) > Onelist.com lists now use them: > List-Unsubscribe: > where XXXX is the listname. > > As for filtering on it, especially creating folders automatically... > you'll have to decide how you want your setup to behave when > somebody forwards/bounces/resends (pick your terminology) a message > to you, but from a list you aren't subscribed to, and their software > leaves that header in. > A good point - though you would presumably work out what had happened when you read the message in the new folder. John Lines From list-managers-owner Wed Jun 30 12:20:21 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA27363; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 12:09:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sws5.ctd.ornl.gov (sws5.ctd.ornl.gov [128.219.128.125]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id MAA27356 for ; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 12:08:58 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 220768 invoked by uid 3995); 30 Jun 1999 19:10:04 -0000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <14202.27532.361934.735337@sws5.ctd.ornl.gov> Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 15:10:04 -0400 (EDT) From: Dave Sill To: List-Managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Identifying lists in headers - was Re: Subject Prefix In-Reply-To: <199906301450.PAA16021@hexagon.harwell.aeat.co.uk> References: <199906301450.PAA16021@hexagon.harwell.aeat.co.uk> X-Mailer: VM 6.71 under 21.1 "20 Minutes to Nikko" XEmacs Lucid (patch 2) Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab, Oak Ridge, Tenn., USA X-Face: "p~Q]mg{;e*}YR|)&Q/&Q\*~5UWfZX34;5M wrote: >I agree with the various people who have said that identifying lists in >the subject line is not a good idea. Like most people on this list I use >mail filtering software to sort mail from lists into standard folders. > >The problem is that every list is slightly different in the best header >to filter on, and usually you have to change your filters if the list moves >to a new location or the list owner changes the software they use. There's a better way to automatically file list messages: use a different address for each list subscription. E.g., instead of subscribing to every list as dave@example.com, use dave-LISTNAME@example.com. This requires that your MTA support user-defined addresses, *and* that it lets you specify delivery instructions for them. Most modern MTA's can do this. It doesn't require error prone header parsing and is immune to list moves and software changes. And unlike the standard header field approach, doesn't require any cooperation from the remote site. Also, if your MTA supports wildcarding of user-defined addresses, you don't even have to set up the list address in advance. E.g., de5-list-ANYTHING@sws5.ctd.ornl.gov comes to main mailbox. If I want to file a list in a separate folder, all I have to do create a .qmail-list-LISTNAME file telling it where to put it. -Dave From list-managers-owner Wed Jun 30 12:35:56 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA27590; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 12:30:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sws5.ctd.ornl.gov (sws5.ctd.ornl.gov [128.219.128.125]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id MAA27583 for ; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 12:30:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 221213 invoked by uid 3995); 30 Jun 1999 19:31:10 -0000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <14202.28797.882693.12085@sws5.ctd.ornl.gov> Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 15:31:09 -0400 (EDT) From: Dave Sill To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Identifying lists in headers - was Re: Subject Prefix In-Reply-To: <199906301809.TAA18799@hexagon.harwell.aeat.co.uk> References: <199906301710.NAA10738@sunspot.tiac.net> <199906301809.TAA18799@hexagon.harwell.aeat.co.uk> X-Mailer: VM 6.71 under 21.1 "20 Minutes to Nikko" XEmacs Lucid (patch 2) Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab, Oak Ridge, Tenn., USA X-Face: "p~Q]mg{;e*}YR|)&Q/&Q\*~5UWfZX34;5M wrote: >I was wanting a header whose sole purpose was to identify the name of the >list for filtering purposes, but which would be independent of the hosting >location. (I appreciate that this creates the problem of the non-uniqueness >of list names - you would still have to do complex filtering if you wanted >to be subscribed to list-managers@greatcircle.com and list-managers@acme.com) With user-defined addressing, the user either makes up a unique address (de5-list-managers and de5-list-managers-acme) or uses the same address for both, and they get filed into the same folder. >> As for filtering on it, especially creating folders automatically... >> you'll have to decide how you want your setup to behave when >> somebody forwards/bounces/resends (pick your terminology) a message >> to you, but from a list you aren't subscribed to, and their software >> leaves that header in. >> >A good point - though you would presumably work out what had happened when >you read the message in the new folder. Here again, user-defined addressing "wins". Only messages sent to the list-specific address get filed in the list folder. If someone forwards me a message, it lands in my main mailbox. -Dave From list-managers-owner Wed Jun 30 13:20:31 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA28046; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 13:03:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA28038 for ; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 13:03:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (A17-219-13-157.apple.com [17.219.13.157]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id MAA190632 ; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 12:58:01 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <199906301809.TAA18799@hexagon.harwell.aeat.co.uk> References: <199906301809.TAA18799@hexagon.harwell.aeat.co.uk> Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 12:57:43 -0700 To: John Lines , Stan Ryckman From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Identifying lists in headers - was Re: Subject Prefix Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 7:09 PM +0100 6/30/99, John Lines wrote: > I agree that it would be good if more mailing lists supported this, but > it does not deal with the problem of lists which move hosts But practically speaking, how often does this happen? It seems to me like you're now at the point of worrying about wearing a hat in case a bird flies overhead. It's such a fringe case, I wouldn't write off the other stuff going on simply because it's not handled here. (and if anyone can think about how to build a unique name space across the entire internet for mailing lists, so that a list ID is unique even if it moves hosts, I'm open for discussion. But this implies some central authority, which isn't gonna happen...) -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + The Jedi that I admire most met up with Darth Maul and now he's toast... (Weird Al Yankovic - The Saga Begins) From list-managers-owner Wed Jun 30 13:36:04 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA28299; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 13:21:26 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dragoncat.net (herne.dragoncat.net [216.122.4.136]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA28292 for ; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 13:21:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (jtraub@localhost) by dragoncat.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id NAA31617; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 13:22:15 -0700 Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 13:22:14 -0700 (PDT) From: JT To: Stan Ryckman cc: John Lines , List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Identifying lists in headers - was Re: Subject Prefix In-Reply-To: <199906301710.NAA10738@sunspot.tiac.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Wed, 30 Jun 1999, Stan Ryckman wrote: > > I would like to see a standard header for all mailing lists, for example: > > > > List-name: list-managers Listar supports all of the RFC2369 headers (yeah, I know, blatant plug) > Look for RFC2369, which I think is still Standards Track. > There's a copy at (among other places): > http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/htbin/rfc/rfc2369.html > "List-Unsubscribe" is the header which would always be present. > Its contents are the obvious address, and would change only > if the list moved. I think there are a couple of others which are supposed to be there as well. If you enable the rfc2369 headers (it's a config option) then Listar puts the following headers in. List-help, List-unsubscribe, and List-name. If you turn off rfc2369-minimal (another option) it also puts List-subscribe, List-owner, List-post, and List-Archive. > Onelist.com lists now use them: > List-Unsubscribe: > where XXXX is the listname. > > As for filtering on it, especially creating folders automatically... > you'll have to decide how you want your setup to behave when > somebody forwards/bounces/resends (pick your terminology) a message > to you, but from a list you aren't subscribed to, and their software > leaves that header in. Right now rfc2369 isn't getting as much support as would be good, mainly because most MUA's don't support the nice features that these headers will allow. However, support for them is coming slowly (the co-author of listar submitted back a patch to pine to handle them and the author of pine has said he'll incorporate them (or a close variant) into the next release of Pine). --JT -- [-------------------------------------------------------------------------] [ Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty. ] [ It's hard to seize the day when you must first grapple with the morning ] [-------------------------------------------------------------------------] From list-managers-owner Wed Jun 30 13:50:25 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA28242; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 13:19:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail-out-0.tiac.net (mail-out-0.tiac.net [199.0.65.247]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA28235 for ; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 13:19:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail-out-1.tiac.net (mail-out-1.tiac.net [199.0.65.12]) by mail-out-0.tiac.net (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id QAA28507; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 16:20:32 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from stanr@sunspot.tiac.net) Received: from sunspot.tiac.net (sunspot.tiac.net [199.0.65.22]) by mail-out-1.tiac.net (8.8.8/8.8.7) with ESMTP id QAA09448; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 16:22:27 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from stanr@localhost) by sunspot.tiac.net (8.8.8/8.6.9) id QAA11423; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 16:18:36 -0400 (EDT) From: Stan Ryckman Message-Id: <199906302018.QAA11423@sunspot.tiac.net> Subject: Re: Identifying lists in headers - was Re: Subject Prefix In-Reply-To: <199906301809.TAA18799@hexagon.harwell.aeat.co.uk> from John Lines at "Jun 30, 99 07:09:08 pm" To: John.Lines@aeat.co.uk (John Lines) Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 16:18:23 -0400 (EDT) Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Organization: Amber & Sneakers Fan Club X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL40 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk John Lines wrote: > I forgot to mention that I had looked at rfc2369 (I remember the discussion > about it on list-managers in August 1998). > > I agree that it would be good if more mailing lists supported this, but > it does not deal with the problem of lists which move hosts (this is not a > problem for onelist, as they assume that they will always be hosting the > list. But YOU might want to take YOUR list from onelist to topica, for example. (There might be reasons down the road; I'm not suggesting that anyone do this or that one is better than the other.) > I was wanting a header whose sole purpose was to identify the name of the > list for filtering purposes, but which would be independent of the hosting > location. (I appreciate that this creates the problem of the non-uniqueness > of list names - you would still have to do complex filtering if you wanted > to be subscribed to list-managers@greatcircle.com and list-managers@acme.com) There is a "List-Id:" header proposed as well (it's a "work in progress" which you can find at: http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-chandhok-listid-04.txt ) This would cover address changes within a domain (i.e., some changes to the "List-Unsubscribe" header). However, it still uses either domain name or "localhost". It doesn't seem to me to address what happens if the list moves to a different domain, or (if the List-Id can move with the list) then what happens if the domain name becomes unfunded and re-issued to someone else. I did comment on these issues to the list-header mailing list some time ago. I agreed with the consensus there that we don't need YetAnotherRegistryForThings, but there are ways not to use the domain name directly either. Cheers, Stan From list-managers-owner Wed Jun 30 14:33:58 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA28987; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 14:31:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from godai.maison-otaku.net (godai.maison-otaku.net [216.122.4.241]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA28980 for ; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 14:31:31 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (loki@localhost) by godai.maison-otaku.net (8.7.4/8.7.3) with ESMTP id OAA07676; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 14:32:35 -0700 X-Authentication-Warning: godai.maison-otaku.net: loki owned process doing -bs Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 14:32:34 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeremy Blackman To: John Lines cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Identifying lists in headers - was Re: Subject Prefix In-Reply-To: <199906301450.PAA16021@hexagon.harwell.aeat.co.uk> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Wed, 30 Jun 1999, John Lines wrote: > I would like to see a standard header for all mailing lists, for example: > > List-name: list-managers Look at RFC2369, it defines a standard for this. Unfortunately, only a few mailing list packages (Lyris, Listar, NTList, Mercury) actually support this so far as I know, and even then, some only support the -unsubscribe and -help options. --Loki loki@maison-otaku.net / jeremy@lith.com / loki@lithtech.com From list-managers-owner Wed Jun 30 15:34:14 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA29698; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 15:28:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from venus.hosting4u.net (venus.hosting4u.net [209.15.2.6]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id PAA29691 for ; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 15:28:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: from thorby ([204.210.107.17]) by venus.hosting4u.net ; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 17:29:41 -600 Message-Id: <4.1.19990630122554.00af5ee0@mail.rudbek.com> X-Sender: vawjr@mail.rudbek.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.1 Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 12:29:37 -1000 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.com From: "Victor A. Wagner, Jr." Subject: Re: Long Lines In-Reply-To: References: <2.2.16.19990627204326.3ce709e0@pop.voyager.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk IMO wrapping lines is SOLELY the purview of the receiver. I can't tell that you're still on a 40 column Coco and I shouldn't have to worry about it. If I wrap it correctly for you, everyone else justifiably complains that I write short lines. If your EMail program doesn't wrap for you, get some "real" software and don't try to stop progress. 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 Wed Jun 30 15:48:56 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA29688; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 15:26:18 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA29679 for ; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 15:26:12 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (A17-219-13-157.apple.com [17.219.13.157]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id PAA290334 ; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 15:27:12 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <199906302018.QAA11423@sunspot.tiac.net> References: <199906302018.QAA11423@sunspot.tiac.net> Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 15:25:14 -0700 To: Stan Ryckman , John.Lines@aeat.co.uk (John Lines) From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Identifying lists in headers - was Re: Subject Prefix Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 4:18 PM -0400 6/30/99, Stan Ryckman wrote: >I did comment on > these issues to the list-header mailing list some time ago. I agreed > with the consensus there that we don't need YetAnotherRegistryForThings, > but there are ways not to use the domain name directly either. But without a registry, how do you set up uniqueness? There are multiple mailing lists for, oh, the Anaheim Mighty Ducks (I know of three, including one of mine). Relationships among the three admins ranges from cordial to, oh, not-cordial. How do you define uniqueness among them? And among the ones that probably exist that I don't know about? Especially if they all decide to argue over who gets to be the "main" list? The reason the domain stuff is in the listID is because it's there to help you find the list. Without a central registry, a random string here is pretty useless. And we don't need another Central Registry.... -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + The Jedi that I admire most met up with Darth Maul and now he's toast... (Weird Al Yankovic - The Saga Begins) From list-managers-owner Wed Jun 30 16:34:28 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA00252; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 16:19:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: from deepthought.armory.com (deepthought.armory.com [192.122.209.42]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id QAA00243 for ; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 16:19:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from clovis by deepthought.armory.com id aa21959; 30 Jun 99 16:19 PDT Received: by clovis.nerdnosh.org (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Wed, 30 Jun 99 14:45:58 PST for list-managers@greatcircle.com To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Teachers instructing students to join lists for coursework From: Tim Bowden Message-ID: Date: Wed, 30 Jun 99 14:44:09 PST In-Reply-To: <37748949.E77A8DC7@postmodern.com> Organization: NERDNOSH - the story continues... Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk "Michael C. Berch" writes: > Well, the content of the letters notwithstanding, I think Stephanie has > earned her new nickname of "The Proctor"... :-) Okay, but the one who runs the backup for the list is "The Proctologist." mailto:tcbowden@clovis.nerdnosh.org (Tim Bowden) Proud member of NERDNOSH (tm)! mailto:majordomo@story.nerdnosh org the command: subscribe nerdnosh From list-managers-owner Wed Jun 30 16:49:27 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA00389; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 16:32:55 -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 QAA00382 for ; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 16:32:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from tibbs@localhost) by epithumia.math.uh.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) id SAA01734; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 18:38:05 -0500 From: tibbs@hpc.uh.edu To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Subject Prefix References: Date: 30 Jun 1999 18:38:05 -0500 In-Reply-To: Chuq Von Rospach's message of "Wed, 30 Jun 1999 10:52:54 -0700" Message-ID: Lines: 14 User-Agent: Gnus/5.070065 (Pterodactyl Gnus v0.65) Emacs/20.3 Mime-Version: 1.0 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >>>>> "CVR" == Chuq Von Rospach writes: CVR> So will majordomo 2, I believe. Yes, this has been supported for some time. To keep the complexity reasonable, the owner chooses the string and the user just gets to decide if they want to see it or not. The overhead of this really isn't that bad. You do take a hit in not being able to do some SMTP batching, but I believe most MTAs will now batch separate messages to the same host in the same connection so the overhead is that required to transmit the slightly different copies of the message. - J< From list-managers-owner Wed Jun 30 20:04:07 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA02188; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 19:50:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ma-1.rootsweb.com (ma-1.rootsweb.com [209.192.148.153]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA02181 for ; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 19:50:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from twp@localhost) by ma-1.rootsweb.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id WAA92913; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 22:51:32 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 22:51:32 -0400 From: Tim Pierce To: Chuq Von Rospach Cc: Stan Ryckman , John Lines , List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Identifying lists in headers - was Re: Subject Prefix Message-ID: <19990630225132.O81810@ma-1.rootsweb.com> References: <199906302018.QAA11423@sunspot.tiac.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.1i In-Reply-To: ; from Chuq Von Rospach on Wed, Jun 30, 1999 at 03:25:14PM -0700 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Wed, Jun 30, 1999 at 03:25:14PM -0700, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > At 4:18 PM -0400 6/30/99, Stan Ryckman wrote: > >I did comment on > > these issues to the list-header mailing list some time ago. I agreed > > with the consensus there that we don't need YetAnotherRegistryForThings, > > but there are ways not to use the domain name directly either. > > But without a registry, how do you set up uniqueness? If the purpose is just to assist users in filtering mail into their mailboxes, uniqueness may not be important. It may even be counterproductive. Many of our lists are duplicated at other sites. We even duplicate a few of our own. (List admins can be *so* juvenile sometimes.) The admins surely would be offended if SCHNOZZLEPEPPER-L@rootsweb.com had the same "list ID" as schnozzlepepper@familysearch.org or Schnozzlepepper-L@onelist.com. But whether the list admins are offended is irrelevant if it helps the users filter their mail more easily, which supposedly was the purpose of a generic "list id" in the first place. This is not to say that I think a domain-nonspecific list ID would be a useful thing. It sounds sort of silly to me. But I don't think that uniqueness is necessarily the problem. -- Regards, Tim Pierce RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative system obfuscator and hack-of-all-trades