From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 2 00:31:08 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id AAA02904; Thu, 2 Mar 2000 00:24:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.vjs.org (cc50165-b.hwrd1.md.home.com [24.9.159.241]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id AAA02897 for ; Thu, 2 Mar 2000 00:24:02 -0800 (PST) Received: from [192.168.1.5] (192.168.1.5) by mail.vjs.org with ESMTP (Eudora Internet Mail Server 2.2); Thu, 2 Mar 2000 03:34:33 -0500 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <73532.951850849@monkeys.com> References: <73532.951850849@monkeys.com> X-Organization: Little to None X-Mailer: Eudora 5.0 for Cray T3E-1200 Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 03:26:40 -0500 To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Vince Sabio Subject: Re: A lesson about verifying transferred lists Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk ** Sometime around 11:00 -0800 02/29/2000, Ronald F. Guilmette sent us: >Sharon Tucci wrote: > > >{... list transfer story snipped...} > > >The number of bounces was what we expected - about 8-9%... > >Actually, that sounds rather high to me. > >If the old list hosting company _was_ actually cleaning out bouncing >addresses, why would you expect more than (say) 3-4%, tops? I disagree -- and not [just] because it's fun to disagree with you, Ron. Consider the fact that the list had been dormant for two months; that's plenty of time for a considerable number of e-mail addresses to go bad. If this had been mailed to within the past couple of weeks, I'd agree with your 3-4% figure. But 8-9% is pretty reasonable after a two-month hiatus IMO. (Speaking as a list owner for whom a two-month hiatus is pretty common.) __________________________________________________________________________ Vince Sabio Got Bounces? vince@vjs.org Got Jokes? Got Spam? From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 2 00:46:08 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id AAA02895; Thu, 2 Mar 2000 00:23:59 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.vjs.org (cc50165-b.hwrd1.md.home.com [24.9.159.241]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id AAA02888 for ; Thu, 2 Mar 2000 00:23:53 -0800 (PST) Received: from [192.168.1.5] (192.168.1.5) by mail.vjs.org with ESMTP (Eudora Internet Mail Server 2.2); Thu, 2 Mar 2000 03:34:25 -0500 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <200002291636.LAA23582@tor-srs1.netcom.ca> References: <200002291636.LAA23582@tor-srs1.netcom.ca> X-Organization: Little to None X-Mailer: Eudora 5.0 for Cray T3E-1200 Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 03:22:40 -0500 To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Vince Sabio Subject: Re: A lesson about verifying transferred lists Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk ** Sometime around 11:37 -0500 02/29/2000, Sharon Tucci sent us: Just to provide another opinion/data point here ... >We >received one complaint direct to us from someone who, when we >questioned it, said they didn't recognize the list address. >(Given that the list was moved to our service, the list address >would have obviously changed.) > >The welcome message provided removal information and about 2% >unsubscribed. > >Because of the high unsubscribe rate and the complaint, WHAT??? First of all, 2% is not at all a "high unsubscribe rate," especially for a list that has been dormant for a couple of months. I'd expect the unsubscribe rate to be higher than that. And ONE complaint out of 4000? And you even pointed out yourself that the subscriber was probably confused by the domain change. >we went >back to the client and said the only way we could handle their >list was if everyone was required to opt-in once again. I believe you overreacted, though there's certainly no harm in it. At least, not at this point ... >Client agreed - saying that they want to make sure that the list is >clean and 100% opt-in. This client is more forgiving than most. >We did the two step with 20000 additional subscribers. Each >person received one email telling them that the list was being >moved to our service and that we required people to confirm >their subscription... so in order to receive future messages, >they would need to hit reply to the verification message. > >Here's where the fun starts. Of the 20,000, again, the >number of bounces was normal - what we had expected. However, >we've received three spam complaints in less than 24 hours. >So, in total, we've received more spam complaints from about >24,000 recipients than we normally do in 6 months across >hundreds of new lists. This is, as Dave pointed out, totally insignificant. I run a large mailing list with a confirmation loop, and I *still* routinely (well, a coupla times a year) receive "complaints" from people who claim that I am spamming them. My guess is, most often it's a child or a sibling or even a friend who has access to the mailbox and does the subscribing -- possibly as a joke -- and the poor clueless mailbox owner then starts receiving what he thinks is spam. Many seem to be too daft to figure out the unsubscription instructions that are included in the footer of EVERY message (most probably don't read down that far), and it's easier to simply reply and tell me that I'm spamming them. I have a form letter I send them which includes unsubscription instructions; I rarely hear from them again. Three such complaints on a newly-moved list out of more than 18,000 delivered e-mails isn't even worth noting, Sharon. >The problem is what do we do about this? Move his list. If it helps you sleep at night, require everyone to re-up to the list. But I think even that is an overreaction. The numbers you've quoted are really pretty good. >to handle the re-opt-in process themselves. But my gut won't >let me advise this because I really do think that the list >has been seeded with email addresses who haven't opted in. I think your complaint rate would be MUCH higher if that were the case. >FWIW, we had two other situations where lists provided >by other list hosting services had addresses on the list >that shouldn't have been there. With both situations, it >was a single email address that should have been removed >that wasn't. Sharon, no list of any reasonable size will be 100%. As I said, even confirmation loops aren't perfect; if someone else has access to the mailbox, then all bets are off. __________________________________________________________________________ Vince Sabio Got Bounces? vince@vjs.org Got Jokes? Got Spam? From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 2 05:46:04 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id FAA08281; Thu, 2 Mar 2000 05:34:38 -0800 (PST) Received: from bangkok.digi-net.com ([63.75.34.110]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id FAA08274 for ; Thu, 2 Mar 2000 05:34:32 -0800 (PST) Received: from [209.212.133.114] (unverified [209.212.133.114]) by bangkok.digi-net.com (Rockliffe SMTPRA 3.4.6) with SMTP id for ; Thu, 2 Mar 2000 08:52:20 -0500 Message-ID: Subject: Re: A lesson about verifying transferred lists Date: Thu, 2 Mar 00 08:42:19 -0500 x-sender: tanny@63.75.34.110 x-mailer: Claris Emailer 1.1 From: tanny To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >>we went >>back to the client and said the only way we could handle their >>list was if everyone was required to opt-in once again. > >I believe you overreacted, though there's certainly no harm in it. At >least, not at this point ... I must say I have some sympathy with Sharons concern regarding complaints generated from her new clients list. I think it's important to recognize there is a difference between being the owner of a handful of lists, and a host for many paying clients. I would also keep in mind that no ISP I've ever met has the time or inclination to launch a detailed investigation in to a specific spam complaint. Rather, they judge you by the volume of complaints they receive about you, without a lot of regard to the exact validity of any specific complaint. Anyone who is now inclined to advise me to get a new ISP would receive this question: Can I put the 600,000 sometimes irrational readers we serve on your T-1? What's your comfort level with death threats? :-) I wouldn't care to advise Sharon on exactly how she should respond to this particular situation, she knows her business better than I obviously. But I do have an appreciation of the fact that someone in her position has to take all complaints, valid or invalid, very seriously. Logic and common sense is a poor guide to this issue in my experience. Phil From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 2 09:46:40 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA10696; Thu, 2 Mar 2000 09:35:44 -0800 (PST) Received: from hostigos.otherwhen.com (mavery-gw.pernet.net [205.229.2.17]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id JAA10689 for ; Thu, 2 Mar 2000 09:35:36 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.otherwhen.com (mavery2.pernet.net [205.229.2.19]) by hostigos.otherwhen.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id LAA18742 for ; Thu, 2 Mar 2000 11:43:48 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from mavery@mail.otherwhen.com) Received: from PORKY/SpoolDir by mail.otherwhen.com (Mercury 1.47); 2 Mar 00 11:46:06 -0600 Received: from SpoolDir by PORKY (Mercury 1.47); 2 Mar 00 11:45:53 -0600 From: "Mike Avery" To: Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 11:45:47 -0600 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: A lesson about verifying transferred lists Reply-to: mavery@mail.otherwhen.com Message-ID: <38BE5471.12245.D9E0D05@localhost> In-reply-to: X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 2 Mar 2000, at 8:42, tanny wrote: > >>we went > >>back to the client and said the only way we could handle their > >>list was if everyone was required to opt-in once again. > >I believe you overreacted, though there's certainly no harm in it. At > > least, not at this point ... > I must say I have some sympathy with Sharons concern regarding > complaints generated from her new clients list. > I think it's important to recognize there is a difference between > being the owner of a handful of lists, and a host for many paying > clients. I would also keep in mind that no ISP I've ever met has the > time or inclination to launch a detailed investigation in to a > specific spam complaint. Rather, they judge you by the volume of > complaints they receive about you, without a lot of regard to the > exact validity of any specific complaint. > Anyone who is now inclined to advise me to get a new ISP would receive > this question: Can I put the 600,000 sometimes irrational readers we > serve on your T-1? What's your comfort level with death threats? > :-) > I wouldn't care to advise Sharon on exactly how she should respond to > this particular situation, she knows her business better than I > obviously. But I do have an appreciation of the fact that someone in > her position has to take all complaints, valid or invalid, very > seriously. Logic and common sense is a poor guide to this issue in > my experience. Well.... Vince has excellent experience and has been around mailing lists a long time. I host a number of lists. One of the moderators has slowed down of late. And, as a result, I think Vince is right. People lose interest. People change ISP's. People forget stuff. So... let's imagine we lowered the curtain on this list for two months. And then we moved it to a new provider, let's say onelist.com. And then we sent out a note on the list. Suddenly, even though the first message started out with, "Hi, we've moved to OneList!", the stuff would hit the fan. If the switch-over coincided with a semester break, the "death rate" would be higher - schools change student accounts, companies move their staff to coincide with school schedules - so somewhere from 2 to 8 percent of the addresses would become invalid and bounce. If you have software (like Vince's) that handles bounces, that's background noise. More will forget that they were ever in a list called List-Managers. And some will get pissy because it's on OneList now. So there will be hate mail. Even on lists that have had no hiatus I've had people write me that they've been trying to unsubscribe for two years (note... unsubing is easy, and each message has instructions in it... I imagine them hunkered over their keyboard for two years, "No, I can't come to bed yet, I haven't managed to unsubscribe from this list!!!") There is a reason old Unix admins call 'em lusers. I don't think after two months of no service a 2% bounce rate, or even 8%, is all that high. And two complaints isn't bad either. I recently dealt with a company that had been harvesting email addresses from their web page for several years without using them. It is a software house that markets a fairly well regarded email package. They needed to inform people that there was a Y2K issue, and how to resolve it. Many people put in bad email addresses. Many people moved in the two years. I had over a 30% bounce rate. And many angry complaints. "Who are you? How did you get my name?" *sigh* One person tried to get me in trouble with my ISP. I have been dealing with them for years, so I called 'em and explained. Another turned me into orbs. Since I don't relay, I'm not listed there. Y'know... the levels of problems dealt the first poster had to deal with just don't seem that severe to me.... they sound like a vacation! Mike (Who won't handle another mass mailing like that one...) -- Mike Avery MAvery@mail.otherwhen.com (409)-842-2942 (voice) (409)-842-4352 (FAX) ICQ: 16241692 * Spam is for lusers who can't get business any other way * A Randomly Selected Thought For The Day: Hane's Law: There is no limit to how bad things can get. From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 2 10:46:53 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA11253; Thu, 2 Mar 2000 10:32:14 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA11246 for ; Thu, 2 Mar 2000 10:32:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA81634 for ; Thu, 2 Mar 2000 10:42:22 -0800 (PST) To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: A lesson about verifying transferred lists In-reply-to: Your message of Thu, 02 Mar 2000 03:26:40 -0500. Date: Thu, 02 Mar 2000 10:42:22 -0800 Message-ID: <81632.952022542@monkeys.com> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message , Vince Sabio wrote: >** Sometime around 11:00 -0800 02/29/2000, Ronald F. Guilmette sent us: >>Sharon Tucci wrote: >> >> >{... list transfer story snipped...} >> >> >The number of bounces was what we expected - about 8-9%... >> >>Actually, that sounds rather high to me. >> >>If the old list hosting company _was_ actually cleaning out bouncing >>addresses, why would you expect more than (say) 3-4%, tops? > >I disagree -- and not [just] because it's fun to disagree with you, >Ron. Consider the fact that the list had been dormant for two months; >that's plenty of time for a considerable number of e-mail addresses >to go bad. > >If this had been mailed to within the past couple of weeks, I'd agree >with your 3-4% figure. But 8-9% is pretty reasonable after a >two-month hiatus IMO. (Speaking as a list owner for whom a two-month >hiatus is pretty common.) Agreed. (I didn't see any mention of a ``two month hiatus'' in the original message, but perhaps I just missed it. Anyway, yes, after 2 months, 8-9% might go bad.) From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 2 11:31:04 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA11729; Thu, 2 Mar 2000 11:25:41 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA11717 for ; Thu, 2 Mar 2000 11:25:32 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id LAA81756; Thu, 2 Mar 2000 11:35:06 -0800 (PST) To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Cc: postmaster@qualcomm.com, webmaster@qualcomm.com, eudora-pr@qualcomm.com, eudora-custserv@qualcomm.com, eudora-sales@qualcomm.com Subject: Mailing Lists Done Right (for a change) Date: Thu, 02 Mar 2000 11:35:06 -0800 Message-ID: <81754.952025706@monkeys.com> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Amazingly, just a couple of days after I posted to List-Managers my comments regarding what should and (more importantly) what should not be contained in an initial greeting message (or a subscriber confirmation or re-confirmation message) from any given mailing list, I received the message below from Qualcomm. The message below was definitely triggered by my act of having downloaded the latest version of Eudora recently. (I did that recently.) This is a wonderful example of how to do things right, and I want to com- pliment the people at Qualcomm for taking the time to do it right. Please look at the following message, and as you do, please note that: o It is essentially devoid of anything that could be construed as ``advertising copy''. (Good!) o It indicates that if I *do not* respond in any way, my ``profile'' will be automatically deleted from their records within two weeks. (Good!) o It goes the extra mile to give me detailed information about how/ where/when my e-mail address got onto their list. Specifically, it provides the exact date, time, and IP address from whence this subscription originated. (GOOD!) This information is, of course, critical for tracking down the perp, when/if someone is using Qualcomm's web sign-up form to repeatedly harass me. It is worthy of note also that the message *does not* start off with a bunch of incomprehensible HTML gibberish. (Good!) Also worthy of note is the fact that the message was sent using an ordinary (non-variable) envelope sender address (eudora-profile@qualcomm.com). Thus, if for any reason I was to consider these mailings inappropriate, I could very easily block them all (in my MTA or in a sufficiently sophisticated MDA, e.g. procmail) _without_ having to block all mail from the entire qualcomm.com domain. (Good!) (People using variable envelope sender addresses take note! You may perhaps want to set-aside a separate subdomain of your main domain... like for example foobar-list.example.com... for your mailings so as to make it easier for any postmaster who wants to block all foobar-list traffic to do so WITHOUT also blocking all mail from your entire domain.) Again, I want to compliment Qualcomm for providing a proof by example that mailing lists can indeed be run both responsibly and with sincere concern and thought for the desires of the recipient. Ron Guilmette P.S. I also give Qualcomm extra points for injecting a bit of levity into the first paragraph. P.P.S. When Qualcom mentions ``customizing ads'' in the first paragraph, they are almost certainly talking about the ads one would see IF one elected to actually use their new `free' version of Eudora, which, as I understand it, allows you free use of the product in exchange for your eyeballs... a fair bargain. I don't believe that there is any implication here that Qualcomm is going to start blasting ads my way... at least not until I myself `opt-in' by electing to use the free version of their product. ------- Forwarded Message Return-Path: eudora-profile@qualcomm.com Received: from e-scrub.com (e-scrub.com [207.126.97.39]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id FAA80077 for ; Thu, 2 Mar 2000 05:21:09 -0800 (PST) From: eudora-profile@qualcomm.com Received: from adserver.eudora.com (adserver.eudora.com [208.48.73.150]) by e-scrub.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id XAA18684 for ; Wed, 1 Mar 2000 23:37:27 -0800 (PST) Received: from adserver.eudora.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by adserver.eudora.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id XAA22246 for ; Wed, 1 Mar 2000 23:34:21 -0800 (PST) Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 23:34:21 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <200003020734.XAA22246@adserver.eudora.com> To: rfg+eudora@MONKEYS.COM Reply-to: eudora-comments@qualcomm.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Eudora Profile Information for rfg+eudora@monkeys.com Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="isw6jFG_lLUCmdEQMBGX6yjD2zRXkkM" X-Original-Recipient: RFC822;rfg+2Beudora@monkeys.com - --isw6jFG_lLUCmdEQMBGX6yjD2zRXkkM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Thank you for filling out our survey and downloading Eudora. The survey information will be used by Eudora for customizing the ads it displays so that they better match your interests and your demographic profile. The way we do this is by associating a Profile ID with your information. We do it this way to ensure your privacy. With the Profile ID, you are just a number to us. :-) We don't associate your profile with your name or email address. Here is the URL for our Privacy Policy . WINDOWS USERS: By now, you should have received a dialog asking you to accept your Profile ID. If you clicked the "OK" button, you have nothing more to do. If you clicked the "Cancel" button, your Profile ID will not have been accepted, and Eudora will not be able to customize ads for you. If for any reason you think you need to reenter your profile ID (for example, you clicked "Cancel" in the dialog, or you installed Eudora on a new computer), please click this link and press "OK" in the dialog that follows: . MACINTOSH USERS: By now, you should have received a dialog asking you to accept your profile ID. If you clicked "You have my permission", you have nothing more to do. If you clicked "No thanks" in the dialog, your profile ID will not have been accepted, and Eudora will not be able to customize ads for you. If for any reason you think you need to reenter your profile ID (for example, you clicked "No thanks" in the dialog, or you installed Eudora on a new computer), please double-click the attachment at the bottom of this message, and press "You have my permission" in the dialog that follows. ALL USERS: If you wish to remove or update your profile, please use the Customize the Ads You See button in the Payment & Registration window, which is available from the Help menu. Please save this message for future reference. You completed the survey on Fri, 18 Feb 2000 09:08:36 -0800, from the host [206.14.136.180]. If you do not accept this profiling information, it will expire two weeks from the date that you completed the survey. - --isw6jFG_lLUCmdEQMBGX6yjD2zRXkkM Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=Profile.dat Content-Type: application/vnd.eudora.data; regcode=yes Eudora-File-Type: profile Profile: -------------------------------- Profile-Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 09:08:36 -0800 Profile-Address: rfg+eudora@monkeys.com Profile-Source-Agent: sendprofiles 1.0.3 - --isw6jFG_lLUCmdEQMBGX6yjD2zRXkkM-- ------- End of Forwarded Message From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 2 14:01:06 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA13095; Thu, 2 Mar 2000 13:48:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from avocet.prod.itd.earthlink.net (avocet.prod.itd.earthlink.net [207.217.121.50]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA13088 for ; Thu, 2 Mar 2000 13:48:11 -0800 (PST) Received: from lw1 (dialup-209.244.177.111.NewYork2.Level3.net [209.244.177.111]) by avocet.prod.itd.earthlink.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id NAA16012; Thu, 2 Mar 2000 13:58:49 -0800 (PST) Reply-To: From: "Tom Baurley" To: Subject: changing confirm process in majordomo Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 16:58:28 -0500 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2919.6600 In-Reply-To: <200003020900.BAA03296@honor.greatcircle.com> Importance: Normal Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Greetings - We are in desperate search for a method to change the confirm message that comes with Majordomo -- does anyone know how to do this? Also is it possible to still run confirm but get rid of the approval code? We want it to be able to be approved by simply replying to the email. Please help if you know how as no one on the other majordomo lists we belong have replied. Thanks, Tom Baurley From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 2 16:46:04 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA14761; Thu, 2 Mar 2000 16:38:14 -0800 (PST) Received: from ivan.iecc.com (ivan.iecc.com [208.31.42.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id QAA14753 for ; Thu, 2 Mar 2000 16:38:09 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 13666 invoked by uid 100); 2 Mar 2000 19:48:49 -0500 Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 19:48:47 -0500 (EST) From: John R Levine To: tom@baurley.com cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: changing confirm process in majordomo In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > We are in desperate search for a method to change the confirm message that > comes with Majordomo -- does anyone know how to do this? The text is in the majordomo perl script, it's easy enough to change. Here's what I've changed it to: We have received a request from someone asking us to add or delete your email address to or from the $list mailing list. If it wasn't you, or you don't want us to do this, ignore this message and you'll never hear from us again. IF YOU WANT US TO TAKE THIS ACTION, send email to $whoami and include within the body of the of the message, EXACTLY as it appears below, the following two lines: auth $cookie $cmd $list $subscriber end Be sure to REMOVE any carats (>) or other "reply" marks your email program inserts before sending, and be sure that the "auth" is on one line and "end" is on a separate line, or our mailing list program will not recognize the "auth" command. The purpose of this verification is to make sure that no one can add or remove your name to or from our lists without your approval. This keeps on-line vandals from ``mailbombing'' you with unwanted mailing list memberships. If you have any questions about the policy of the list owner, please contact "$list-approval\@$whereami". > Also is it possible > to still run confirm but get rid of the approval code? Not and still have any sort of meaningful confirmation. > We want it to be able to be approved by simply replying to the email. Please do NOT do that. I run a bunch of mailing lists and autoresponders that are frequently forged into mailing lists that use "reply to confirm", because they misinterpret bounce messages or autoreponder responses as confirmations. These days, the most reasonable way to do confirmations is to put a unique URL in the confirmation message that the recipient can click on. I believe that's in Majordomo2. 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 Thu Mar 9 04:48:46 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id EAA06162; Thu, 9 Mar 2000 04:41:45 -0800 (PST) Received: from gsp.org (rsk.tidalwave.com [208.211.3.21]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id EAA06155 for ; Thu, 9 Mar 2000 04:41:38 -0800 (PST) Received: (from rsk@localhost) by gsp.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) id HAA09493; Thu, 9 Mar 2000 07:54:17 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 07:54:12 -0500 From: Rich Kulawiec To: webmaster@remarq.com, postmaster@remarq.com, hostmaster@remarq.com Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, Q_1003865_waterdog@lists.remarq.com Subject: Unauthorized archiving and presentation of mailing list by remarq Message-ID: <20000309075412.A9102@gsp.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0i Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Remarq: This morning I noticed that Q_1003865_waterdog@lists.remarq.com has just subscribed to the whitewater mailing list which I own and manage. Upon searching your site, I see that several other mailing lists hosted at gsp.org are also listed on your site, and are presented as if they were original content created by remarq.com. There is, as far as I can, NOTHING indicating the ownership of these mailing lists, their policies, their procedures, or anything else. Hitting the "info" button DOES NOT cause the list's description, operating procedures, or anything else to appear, either. WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? You wouldn't by chance be repackaging content that I and the participants in the mailing list create as your own, would you? I expect a prompt and satisfactory explanation for this behavior on your part. I'm CC'ing various forums used by mailing list managers so that they are aware of what you're doing. Any response by you may be forwarded to them as well. Q_1003865_waterdog@lists.remarq.com: If you're a real person (and it's hard for me to tell from the context if you are or aren't) you're welcome to subscribe by directly interacting with the mailing list manageer here; or you can write me directly and I'll substitute your real address for the one listed above. List-managers: You might want to drop by www.remarq.com and see if your mailing lists are included there as well; use the search box on their home page. ---Rsk Rich Kulawiec rsk@gsp.org From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 9 07:33:37 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA07771; Thu, 9 Mar 2000 07:20:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from ivan.iecc.com (ivan.iecc.com [208.31.42.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id HAA07762 for ; Thu, 9 Mar 2000 07:20:01 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 22288 invoked by uid 100); 9 Mar 2000 10:31:47 -0500 Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 10:31:47 -0500 (EST) From: John R Levine To: Rich Kulawiec cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Unauthorized archiving and presentation of mailing list by remarq In-Reply-To: <20000309075412.A9102@gsp.org> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > You wouldn't by chance be repackaging content that I and the > participants in the mailing list create as your own, would you? Gee, what a surprise. > Q_1003865_waterdog@lists.remarq.com: That's a real person whose login at remarq is waterdog. 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 Thu Mar 9 11:04:17 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA10568; Thu, 9 Mar 2000 10:49:28 -0800 (PST) Received: from gsp.org (rsk.tidalwave.com [208.211.3.21]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA10561 for ; Thu, 9 Mar 2000 10:49:19 -0800 (PST) Received: (from rsk@localhost) by gsp.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) id OAA13177; Thu, 9 Mar 2000 14:02:14 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 14:02:10 -0500 From: Rich Kulawiec To: John R Levine Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Unauthorized archiving and presentation of mailing list by remarq Message-ID: <20000309140210.A13152@gsp.org> References: <20000309075412.A9102@gsp.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0i In-Reply-To: ; from johnl@iecc.com on Thu, Mar 09, 2000 at 10:31:47AM -0500 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, Mar 09, 2000 at 10:31:47AM -0500, John R Levine wrote: > > You wouldn't by chance be repackaging content that I and the > > participants in the mailing list create as your own, would you? > > Gee, what a surprise. I have the suspicion that there is some bit of well-known knowledge that I'm missing. Several neurons in the back of my brain insist that there was some sort of (recent?) to-do over Remarq inserting ads into Usenet articles, but those are the same neurons which caused me to leave off a SCSI terminator this morning, so they obviously can't be trusted. > > Q_1003865_waterdog@lists.remarq.com: > > That's a real person whose login at remarq is waterdog. Thanks -- I figured that out after I did a bit more poking around. I found other mailing lists that I run there as well, *and* I found out that Remarq apparently 'rates' them based on who-knows-what criteria, *and* that some of them are shown as having no content, when in fact they've got traffic going through them all the time. I am not a happy camper. Any insight that you or other people can provide (or point me to so that I can educate myself) would be most helpful. ---Rsk Rich Kulawiec rsk@gsp.org From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 9 17:53:30 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA01373; Thu, 9 Mar 2000 17:41:32 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.mc.net (mail.mc.net [209.172.128.4]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id RAA01366 for ; Thu, 9 Mar 2000 17:41:25 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 9673 invoked from network); 10 Mar 2000 02:05:04 -0000 Received: from chi-ras-5-209-112-91-44.mc.net (HELO ?209.112.91.136?) (209.112.91.44) by mail.mc.net with SMTP; 10 Mar 2000 02:05:04 -0000 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: twentz@mail.mc.net Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <20000309140210.A13152@gsp.org> References: <20000309075412.A9102@gsp.org> <20000309140210.A13152@gsp.org> Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 19:53:31 -0600 To: Rich Kulawiec , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Tim Wentz Subject: Re: Unauthorized archiving and presentation of mailing list by remarq Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" X-Spam-Rating: mail.mc.net 1.6.1 0/1000/N Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hello, I'm new to the list-managers list, but I can tell you what our list went through a few weeks ago. Our list was alerted to remarq's tactics a few weeks ago when one of our subscribers found a new message board on remarq that delivered the same messages she was getting from our list. What we found was: whenever anyone subscribes to remarq's "message board" for your list, their system sends a subscribe command to your list. All of the messages are archived from the moment the first remarq subscription comes through and they maintain a subscriber list gleaned from the posts. From the moment we realized what was happening we locked down our list, changing the config files to require admin approval of subscribe requests so that we could prevent remarq from receiving any more posts. My wife sent a list of complaints to remarq's support staff and they removed the archives and our mailing list from their site within 24 - 36 hours. Once we were off remarq's site, we went back to normal operations. Tim Wentz twentz@mc.net Here's what was sent to remarq. >Your company has chosen to advertise and make available to your >subscribers the Unschooling List. While I appreciate the additional >publicity for my list, you should be aware that you are violating >several of the Unschooling Lists written policies by doing so. Please >discontinue this practice immediately by removing all archives from any >records you may have, destroying the list of names and addresses of >subscribers you have collected and removing our name from your boards. > >My list of complaints to date is as follows: > >remarq has chosen to archive our list against our written policy, and >make it available and even cross reference my list with many other >lists. We have a strong 'no archives' policy in place and have for 5 >years. This is completely and totally unacceptable. Allowing our >illegal collected archives and cross posting them to subscribers of >other lists is not only a massive invasion of privacy - but also >highly illegal as we have young children disccussing personal matters >here and you are not only allowing access by the general public but >displaying their private e-mail addresses too. > >remarq jeopardizes our privacy by making a list of all active list >members available to anyone who joins the list, including >spammers who may join for 5 minutes and then leave This violate >written policy in my Welcome Message and in my own config files. > >remarq subscribers have access to other people's private ADMIN >reminders, messages, even unsubscribed people's requests to be >subscribed! I can't privately communicate or scold one remarq >subscriber without all the others knowing. > >remarq does not allow me to communicate with a person wanting to join >our community until after they are allowed in. I, as a list >owner, need to be able to be sure all applicants are aware of our >purposeand our rules. As we have children on our list, their security >and privacy are of the utmost imporatnce to me. > >remarq s*ubscribers don't get the lists Welcome Message when they join, >so they are unaware of our posting guidellines. > >remarq s*ubscribers seem to have between 5-10% of their daily mail >bounced back to me as undeliverable (*very* poor service!) > >remarq didn't have the common courtesy to ask the list owners about our >being included in their 'service' - or to disclose their policies, >they just snatched us up Rather than being polite and letting a list >'opt-in' you are insisting that a list 'opt-out' after the damage to >privacy has already been done. > >remarq's privacy disclosure statement basically says you shouldn't >expect privacy on the internet and that it isn't their problem to >provide it. Well sirs, I assure you we had at least some privacy before >you began archiving and cross posting my list in a public forum. > > >I have required all new subscriptions to be approved, and unsubbed all >existing remarq subscribers. Of course, as they have not unsubbed from >remarq, they still have unlimited access to not only the illegally >collected UL archives, but also the illegally collected address book. > >Again, I am requesting that all posts, all records and all mention of >the Unschooling List please be immediately removed from your site and >all affiliated sites. > >I expect written confirmation of my request by the close of business >Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2000. From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 9 20:24:01 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA02678; Thu, 9 Mar 2000 20:16:15 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.mc.net (mail.mc.net [209.172.128.4]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id UAA02671 for ; Thu, 9 Mar 2000 20:16:09 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 2576 invoked from network); 10 Mar 2000 04:39:37 -0000 Received: from chi-ras-1-209-112-95-235.mc.net (HELO ?209.112.91.136?) (209.112.95.235) by mail.mc.net with SMTP; 10 Mar 2000 04:39:37 -0000 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: twentz@mail.mc.net Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <20000309140210.A13152@gsp.org> References: <20000309075412.A9102@gsp.org> <20000309140210.A13152@gsp.org> Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 22:28:14 -0600 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Tim Wentz Subject: Re: Unauthorized archiving and presentation of mailing list by remarq Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" X-Spam-Rating: mail.mc.net 1.6.1 0/1000/N Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hello, I'm new to the list-managers list, but I can tell you what our list went through a few weeks ago. Our list was alerted to remarq's tactics a few weeks ago when one of our s*bscribers found a new message board on remarq that delivered the same messages she was getting from our list. What we found was: whenever anyone s*bscribes to remarq's "message board" for your list, their system sends a s*bscribe command to your list. All of the messages are archived from the moment the first remarq s*bscription comes through and they maintain a s*bscriber list gleaned from the posts. From the moment we realized what was happening we locked down our list, changing the config files to require admin approval of s*bscribe requests so that we could prevent remarq from receiving any more posts. My wife sent a list of complaints to remarq's support staff and they removed the archives and our mailing list from their site within 24 - 36 hours. Once we were off remarq's site, we went back to normal operations. Tim Wentz twentz@mc.net Here's what was sent to remarq. >Your company has chosen to advertise and make available to your >subscribers the Unschooling List. While I appreciate the additional >publicity for my list, you should be aware that you are violating >several of the Unschooling Lists written policies by doing so. Please >discontinue this practice immediately by removing all archives from any >records you may have, destroying the list of names and addresses of >subscribers you have collected and removing our name from your boards. > >My list of complaints to date is as follows: > >remarq has chosen to archive our list against our written policy, and >make it available and even cross reference my list with many other >lists. We have a strong 'no archives' policy in place and have for 5 >years. This is completely and totally unacceptable. Allowing our >illegal collected archives and cross posting them to subscribers of >other lists is not only a massive invasion of privacy - but also >highly illegal as we have young children disccussing personal matters >here and you are not only allowing access by the general public but >displaying their private e-mail addresses too. > >remarq jeopardizes our privacy by making a list of all active list >members available to anyone who joins the list, including >spammers who may join for 5 minutes and then leave This violate >written policy in my Welcome Message and in my own config files. > >remarq subscribers have access to other people's private ADMIN >reminders, messages, even unsubscribed people's requests to be >subscribed! I can't privately communicate or scold one remarq >subscriber without all the others knowing. > >remarq does not allow me to communicate with a person wanting to join >our community until after they are allowed in. I, as a list >owner, need to be able to be sure all applicants are aware of our >purposeand our rules. As we have children on our list, their security >and privacy are of the utmost imporatnce to me. > >remarq s*ubscribers don't get the lists Welcome Message when they join, >so they are unaware of our posting guidellines. > >remarq s*ubscribers seem to have between 5-10% of their daily mail >bounced back to me as undeliverable (*very* poor service!) > >remarq didn't have the common courtesy to ask the list owners about our >being included in their 'service' - or to disclose their policies, >they just snatched us up Rather than being polite and letting a list >'opt-in' you are insisting that a list 'opt-out' after the damage to >privacy has already been done. > >remarq's privacy disclosure statement basically says you shouldn't >expect privacy on the internet and that it isn't their problem to >provide it. Well sirs, I assure you we had at least some privacy before >you began archiving and cross posting my list in a public forum. > > >I have required all new subscriptions to be approved, and unsubbed all >existing remarq subscribers. Of course, as they have not unsubbed from >remarq, they still have unlimited access to not only the illegally >collected UL archives, but also the illegally collected address book. > >Again, I am requesting that all posts, all records and all mention of >the Unschooling List please be immediately removed from your site and >all affiliated sites. > >I expect written confirmation of my request by the close of business >Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2000. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Tim Wentz Since athletes are tested for steroids, should twentz@mc.net quiz show contestants be tested for Ginko Biloba? From list-managers-owner Fri Mar 10 10:51:03 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA13767; Fri, 10 Mar 2000 10:47:46 -0800 (PST) Received: from claude.akamai.com (walrus.ne.mediaone.net [24.147.22.188]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA13760 for ; Fri, 10 Mar 2000 10:47:38 -0800 (PST) Received: (from dshaw@localhost) by claude.akamai.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) id NAA03298 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Fri, 10 Mar 2000 13:59:33 -0500 Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 13:59:32 -0500 From: David Shaw To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Unauthorized archiving and presentation of mailing list by remarq Message-ID: <20000310135932.L5781@akamai.com> Mail-Followup-To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM References: <20000309075412.A9102@gsp.org> <20000309140210.A13152@gsp.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii User-Agent: Mutt/1.1.2i In-Reply-To: ; from twentz@mc.net on Thu, Mar 09, 2000 at 07:53:31PM -0600 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 Waxing Crescent (10% of Full) X-Pointless-Random-Number: 145 X-Silly-Header: It sure is. Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, Mar 09, 2000 at 07:53:31PM -0600, Tim Wentz wrote: > Hello, > > I'm new to the list-managers list, but I can tell you what our list > went through a few weeks ago. > > Our list was alerted to remarq's tactics a few weeks ago when one of > our subscribers found a new message board on remarq that delivered > the same messages she was getting from our list. > > What we found was: whenever anyone subscribes to remarq's "message > board" for your list, their system sends a subscribe command to your > list. All of the messages are archived from the moment the first > remarq subscription comes through and they maintain a subscriber list > gleaned from the posts. > > From the moment we realized what was happening we locked down our > list, changing the config files to require admin approval of > subscribe requests so that we could prevent remarq from receiving any > more posts. I found a better solution - I stuck them into sendmail's access.db as "550 Remarq is never welcome here". Along with listtool.com.. Such wonderful companies just itching to make a buck off of someone elses work... 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 Fri Mar 10 12:17:58 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA15329; Fri, 10 Mar 2000 11:49:38 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id LAA15319 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Fri, 10 Mar 2000 11:49:35 -0800 (PST) Received: from bp.ucs.usl.edu (bp.ucs.usl.edu [130.70.40.36]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA11166 for ; Thu, 9 Mar 2000 11:34:20 -0800 (PST) Received: from louisiana.edu (ish.usl.edu [130.70.53.59]) by bp.ucs.usl.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1/ucs-server_1.3) with ESMTP id NAA13731; Thu, 9 Mar 2000 13:42:45 -0600 (CST) Message-ID: <38C7FF1B.40E1DFFB@louisiana.edu> Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2000 13:44:27 -0600 From: Istvan Berkeley Organization: Philosophy, The University of Louisiana at Lafayette X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (Win95; I) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Rich Kulawiec , list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Unauthorized archiving and presentation of mailing list by remarq References: <20000309075412.A9102@gsp.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hi there, It does appear that RemarQ is picking up mailing list traffic and archiving it. In the case of my list (PHILOSOP) at least, they are doing this without any authorization. I talked to the people who know about such things here (our person registered from the purposes of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act). Apparently, the appropriate response is to send a registered letter to their agent for service of process. This is, Vincent Chow RemarQ Communities, Inc. 55 South Market Street Suite 1080, San Jose, CA 95113 (see http://www.remarq.com/corporate/contact_us.html). In my letter I politely requested that the cease and desist from their apparent unapproved archiving activities and notify me of their compliance, before the end of the month. Apparently, a registered letter is better than an e-mail as one can get proof of delivery. It is also interesting to note that many of the subscription requests that come from these guys fail to specify an e-mail that is usable. That is to say, my list 'welcome' messages often bounce. As a consequence, I nuke the subscriptions. Does anyone know what the deal is with these guys? Do they claim that their carry unauthorised list content is somehow sanctioned under Section 107 (fair use)? All the best, Istvan PHILOSOP Moderator -- Istvan S. N. Berkeley, Ph.D. Philosophy & Cognitive Science E-mail: istvan@usl.edu The University of Louisiana at Lafayette [Formerly, The University of Southwestern Louisiana] P.O. Box 43770 Tel: +1 318 482-6807 Lafayette, LA 70504-3770 Fax: +1 318 482-6195 USA http://www.ucs.usl.edu/~isb9112 From list-managers-owner Sat Mar 11 02:08:45 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id BAA24264; Sat, 11 Mar 2000 01:55:20 -0800 (PST) Received: from windlord.stanford.edu (windlord.Stanford.EDU [171.64.12.23]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id BAA24255 for ; Sat, 11 Mar 2000 01:55:10 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 23194 invoked by uid 50); 11 Mar 2000 10:07:19 -0000 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Unauthorized archiving and presentation of mailing list by remarq References: <20000309075412.A9102@gsp.org> <20000309140210.A13152@gsp.org> In-Reply-To: Rich Kulawiec's message of "Thu, 9 Mar 2000 14:02:10 -0500" From: Russ Allbery Organization: The Eyrie Date: 11 Mar 2000 02:07:17 -0800 Message-ID: Lines: 38 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0802 (Gnus v5.8.2) XEmacs/21.1 (Biscayne) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Rich Kulawiec writes: > I have the suspicion that there is some bit of well-known knowledge that > I'm missing. Several neurons in the back of my brain insist that there > was some sort of (recent?) to-do over Remarq inserting ads into Usenet > articles, As part of an "innovative marketing program," remarQ was adding hyperlinks to words in the middle of articles as presented on their web view of Usenet, allowing advertisers to buy particular words and turning those words into hyperlinks to the advertiser's site. It apparently went quite a while without being noticed, and then was noticed by several people and started a number of discussions in various places. Lots of people were quite irate over advertising practices that implied that they, the authors of the posts, were endorsing those products. After a general outcry, remarQ backed down and purged the links from their web Usenet archives. I've had some other unrelated previous experience with the web Usenet folks (not their news outsourcing division, which is apparently largely separate and seems to have more of a clue). They attempted to sell Stanford a "Stanford-branded" presentation of Usenet, including in the sales pitch as evidence of what a good job they were doing the list of Stanford-related newsgroups they were carrying. Which included the public "ghosts" of a large number of newsgroups that we no longer distribute publically and that outside of Stanford contain only spam. They were quite surprised and shocked when I told them that I considered a "Stanford-branded" view of Usenet to be unethical and false claim that the content was provided by Stanford and a possible legal liability problem to boot. This seems to fall into the general category of "why bother to create our own content when we can just steal it from other people and sell it?". -- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) From list-managers-owner Sat Mar 11 06:37:23 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA00242; Sat, 11 Mar 2000 06:32:12 -0800 (PST) Received: from gsp.org (rsk.tidalwave.com [208.211.3.21]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id GAA00235 for ; Sat, 11 Mar 2000 06:32:01 -0800 (PST) Received: (from rsk@localhost) by gsp.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) id JAA09982; Sat, 11 Mar 2000 09:45:21 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2000 09:45:19 -0500 From: Rich Kulawiec To: Eric Leach Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: your mail lists on RemarQ Message-ID: <20000311094518.A9878@gsp.org> References: <38C7E3ED.8B87CC1A@remarq.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0i In-Reply-To: <38C7E3ED.8B87CC1A@remarq.com>; from eleach@remarq.com on Thu, Mar 09, 2000 at 09:48:30AM -0800 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, Mar 09, 2000 at 09:48:30AM -0800, Eric Leach wrote: > Rich, > You have expressed concern about the handling of email lists on RemarQ. That's putting it mildly. I'm furious with you. > We would like to assure you that at no time has the control of any list > left the hands of that list’s owner. By categorizing your list by title > and subject in our directory, users can discover the presence of your > list and request membership from you. We merely give them a vehicle to > view their messages in our threaded discussion interface, once you have > subscribed them to the list. This is an alternative to viewing messages > solely in the user's email box with an email client, but functions > exactly the same: This is not an acceptable response. Your arrogance is astounding, even to me, and I've seen a *lot* of arrogance in my time online. Your actions violate the policies of the lists hosted here, as well as the compilation copyright which I hold on each. You are directed to take the following actions immediately: 1. You will remove all references to mailing lists hosted at gsp.org. This includes subscription information, any and all archives of the contents of those mailing lists, and any automated scripts or programs involved in collecting any kind of data from gsp.org. 2. You will ensure that at no time in the future will any mailing list or other resource hosted at gsp.org be listed at remarq.com without my express written consent. (I am the owner of this domain; check the Internic registration records.) 3. You will notify any of your users who have accessed content from gsp.org via remarq.com, that content from gsp.org has been removed from your site because you were presenting it without authorization from gsp.org and in violation of the policies of gsp.org. You are advised, but not directed to take the following actions: 4. Get a clue. You've already been hammered by the community for inserting ad links in Usenet articles, and you're about to get hammered again (you don't think I'm going to keep this to myself, do you?) for usurping the rights of mailing list owners. You can either continue to generate ill will toward your site and your business by taking things that don't belong to you without permission, or you can choose to ASK FIRST, at which point perhaps you will find people like me may be a bit more cooperative. Or not. But that's *our* choice, not yours, and you are required to respect it. Alternatively, if you persist in the course of action you have apparently set for yourselves, you will alienate increasing portions of the Internet community. ---Rsk Rich Kulawiec rsk@gsp.org From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 01:18:21 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id AAA23167; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 00:53:47 -0800 (PST) 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 AAA23160 for ; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 00:53:40 -0800 (PST) Received: (from twp@localhost) by ma-1.rootsweb.com (8.10.0.Beta10/8.10.0.Beta10) id e2D95wQ23576 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 04:05:58 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 04:05:58 -0500 From: Tim Pierce To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: VERPs versus batched delivery Message-ID: <20000313040558.J14159@ma-1.rootsweb.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.7us Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk John Levine commented recently about the common perception that VERP-style delivery is a bad thing. I have been dealing with this perception here as well: I would desperately like to implement VERP in SmartList, but the managers here are concerned about the effects on our bandwidth. However, none of us have any hard numbers to back up our positions, so I did a little research tonight. Unfortunately, the numbers I got appear to suggest that switching to VERP deliveries would increase our bandwidth consumption by as much as 40%. Here's how I arrived at that number, for anyone who wants to follow along and correct my assumptions. ------------------------------ I chose a thousand lists at random from one of our list servers. (A more realistic study would have taken the volume of list traffic into account. That would actually increase the bandwidth consumption even more, so my numbers may be considered conservative.) For each of those lists, I counted the total number of addresses subscribed to the list, and the number of unique domains that those addresses represent. Because VERP delivery requires delivering a separate message body for each recipient, the total number of addresses should be just about the number of times we transmit a message body over the network. Batched delivery permits us to deliver a message body just about once for each unique domain on the list, so I counted the number of unique domains as approximately the number of times we deliver a message body using traditional batch methods. That gives me a way to estimate the bandwidth increase for any given list: take the difference between the number of VERP deliveries and the number of batch deliveries, and divide by the number of batch deliveries to find the percentage by which that number would increase. So I calculated this percentage for each of the thousand lists, then added them all together and took the average percentage. The result was an average volume increase of 40%. ------------------------------ I dream about the benefits that we could get from VERP delivery -- reduced CPU utilization, increased server efficiency, less listowner confusion, better word-of-mouth, and so on -- but a 40% bandwidth increase means buying another T1 or more just to cover the extra deliveries. That's a pretty hard sell no matter what the bennies are. I'm interested in hearing from people who have migrated from a sendmail-based mailing list platform to qmail, Postfix or some other VERP-style delivery system, and have measured the bandwidth deltas. Did you in fact find a significant increase in volume, and if so, how did you handle it? (I am also interested in hearing from people who can poke holes in my statistical methods, of course.) -- Regards, Tim Pierce RootsWeb.com lead system admonsterator and Chief Hacking Officer From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 03:22:19 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id DAA27199; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 03:15:40 -0800 (PST) Received: from windlord.stanford.edu (windlord.Stanford.EDU [171.64.12.23]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id DAA27189 for ; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 03:15:14 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 1641 invoked by uid 50); 13 Mar 2000 11:27:42 -0000 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery References: <20000313040558.J14159@ma-1.rootsweb.com> In-Reply-To: Tim Pierce's message of "Mon, 13 Mar 2000 04:05:58 -0500" From: Russ Allbery Organization: The Eyrie Date: 13 Mar 2000 03:27:42 -0800 Message-ID: Lines: 34 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0802 (Gnus v5.8.2) XEmacs/21.1 (Biscayne) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Tim Pierce writes: > Because VERP delivery requires delivering a separate message body for > each recipient, the total number of addresses should be just about the > number of times we transmit a message body over the network. Batched > delivery permits us to deliver a message body just about once for each > unique domain on the list, so I counted the number of unique domains as > approximately the number of times we deliver a message body using > traditional batch methods. That's ideal batch delivery. I'd be curious how close to ideal batch delivery you actually arrive in practice. For one thing, you often won't be able to deliver more than 100 messages for a particular domain at a time using most standard MTAs since they limit the RCPT count at that level, and many sites set an even lower limit for spam-control reasons. If your estimation counted 1,000 AOL addresses as a single delivery, for example, that may actually be 10 deliveries or more. Do you have any way of measuring the effective batching rather than the theoretical maximum batching? > So I calculated this percentage for each of the thousand lists, then > added them all together and took the average percentage. The result was > an average volume increase of 40%. This number is going to vary somewhat based on your average message size, since there's a degree of fixed outgoing bandwidth to do the SMTP negotiation. VERP will increase that somewhat too (longer return path), but not by 40%. If you send a lot of short messages, this may be significant (although it's definitely a lesser factor than the above-mentioned deviations from ideal batch delivery). -- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 04:39:51 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id EAA28098; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 04:27:47 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.rev.net (mail.rev.net [206.67.68.8]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id EAA28091 for ; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 04:27:41 -0800 (PST) Received: from fantasy (USER107.GVA.NET [216.80.135.111]) by mail.rev.net (8.10.0/8.10.0) with ESMTP id e2DCaRv08450 for ; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 07:36:27 -0500 From: "Bernie Cosell" Organization: Fantasy Farm Fibers To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 07:39:45 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery Message-ID: <38CC9B41.5272.3CE2056@localhost> In-reply-to: <20000313040558.J14159@ma-1.rootsweb.com> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 13 Mar 2000, at 4:05, Tim Pierce wrote: Pardon the dumb question [I don't even know what the acronym 'VERP' stands for, although I understood what you were talking about so perhaps it didn't matter]: > Because VERP delivery requires delivering a separate message body > for each recipient, ... [...] > So I calculated this percentage for each of the thousand lists, then > added them all together and took the average percentage. The result > was an average volume increase of 40%. > I dream about the benefits that we could get from VERP delivery -- > reduced CPU utilization, increased server efficiency, less listowner > confusion, better word-of-mouth, and so on .... The last two are OK, but I'm not convinced about the first two: in 'normal' delivery, there's just *one* copy of the message and it gets routed all over hell and gone... is the CPU to make and manage all those extra copies trivial? even if trivial, how does it end up being _reduced_ utilization. And doesn't there have to be CPU activity and server activity behind handling those extra 40% of messages? And -one- down server will now not result in _one_ message in your queue, but bunches (implies more overhead/load). And similarly for 'server efficiency' --- how does making 600 SMTP connetions to mail.aol.com instead of one result in 'efficiency' -- all of the protocol, ident, lookups, etc, all have to be done iteratively and for each copy, instead of just once. That is, it strikes me as the difference, in usenet terms, between multiple-newsgroup-posting and crossposting, and few folks have good 'efficiency' things about multiple-posts. So unless I'm really misunderstanding what VERP is [which is possible, since I'm kind-of guessing], it would be better for the -users-, it isn't clear right off that it'll be a win for the _server_ (even beyond the extra net bandwidth eaten by the extra copies). /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 06:53:11 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA29177; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 06:41:35 -0800 (PST) Received: from windlord.stanford.edu (windlord.Stanford.EDU [171.64.12.23]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id GAA29170 for ; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 06:41:31 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 5982 invoked by uid 50); 13 Mar 2000 14:54:02 -0000 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery References: <38CC9B41.5272.3CE2056@localhost> In-Reply-To: "Bernie Cosell"'s message of "Mon, 13 Mar 2000 07:39:45 -0500" From: Russ Allbery Organization: The Eyrie Date: 13 Mar 2000 06:54:02 -0800 Message-ID: Lines: 46 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0802 (Gnus v5.8.2) XEmacs/21.1 (Biscayne) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Bernie Cosell writes: > The last two are OK, but I'm not convinced about the first two: in > 'normal' delivery, there's just *one* copy of the message and it gets > routed all over hell and gone... is the CPU to make and manage all those > extra copies trivial? Basically, yes. :) Compared to the amount of CPU that it takes to analyze bounces, figure out what address bounced, etc. it's pretty trivial. And that analysis doesn't even always work. > even if trivial, how does it end up being _reduced_ utilization. Because your bounce handling suddenly becomes trivial, and as a result your mailing lists get cleaned of bad addresses *much* faster and more thoroughly than any process that requires human invention (as bounce handling without VERP does with depressing frequency). > And doesn't there have to be CPU activity and server activity behind > handling those extra 40% of messages? And -one- down server will now > not result in _one_ message in your queue, but bunches (implies more > overhead/load). On the other hand, those can be scheduled and retried with more flexibility, which may even out your load (good in general). This could go either way. > And similarly for 'server efficiency' --- how does making 600 SMTP > connetions to mail.aol.com instead of one result in 'efficiency' VERP doesn't have to be implemented that way; you can open a single connection and send all the messages in serial. You can even use pipelining if the remote server supports it, which would regain part of the message transmission delay. > That is, it strikes me as the difference, in usenet terms, between > multiple-newsgroup-posting and crossposting, Well, if the SMTP protocol supported return paths that varied by recipient, one wouldn't have to do it that way. The difference between this and Usenet multiposting is that one actually gains a very significant feature from varying return paths, whereas there's really nothing gained from Usenet multiposting. -- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 08:52:19 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA00544; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 08:46:57 -0800 (PST) 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 IAA00537 for ; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 08:46:51 -0800 (PST) Received: (from twp@localhost) by ma-1.rootsweb.com (8.10.0.Beta10/8.10.0.Beta10) id e2DGxK526246; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 11:59:20 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 11:59:20 -0500 From: Tim Pierce To: Russ Allbery Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery Message-ID: <20000313115920.K14159@ma-1.rootsweb.com> References: <20000313040558.J14159@ma-1.rootsweb.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.7us In-Reply-To: Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Mon, Mar 13, 2000 at 03:27:42AM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: > Tim Pierce writes: > > > ... I counted the number of unique domains as > > approximately the number of times we deliver a message body using > > traditional batch methods. > > That's ideal batch delivery. I'd be curious how close to ideal batch > delivery you actually arrive in practice. For one thing, you often won't > be able to deliver more than 100 messages for a particular domain at a > time using most standard MTAs since they limit the RCPT count at that > level, and many sites set an even lower limit for spam-control reasons. > If your estimation counted 1,000 AOL addresses as a single delivery, for > example, that may actually be 10 deliveries or more. > > Do you have any way of measuring the effective batching rather than the > theoretical maximum batching? You raise an excellent point. We don't keep logs of outgoing mail delivery, for obvious reasons, so there's not much to go on. I could look at our mail queues and sort of make educated guesses. I may try turning on outbound mail logging for an hour at a time, if I can be sure our disk won't melt down, in order to get a better picture of our delivery performance -- Regards, Tim Pierce RootsWeb.com lead system admonsterator and Chief Hacking Officer From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 10:07:21 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA01428; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 10:04:31 -0800 (PST) Received: from ns.secondary.com (ns.secondary.com [208.184.76.39]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA01421 for ; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 10:04:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from laptop.imc.org (ip12.proper.com [165.227.249.12]) by ns.secondary.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA18596; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 10:15:37 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <4.3.2.20000313101458.00b3f270@mail.imc.org> X-Sender: phoffman@mail.imc.org X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 4.3 Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 10:16:56 -0800 To: Tim Pierce , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Paul Hoffman / IMC Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery In-Reply-To: <20000313040558.J14159@ma-1.rootsweb.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk A thought sparked by a very different discussion about a very different protocol: What if the list software did VERPs on one out every hundred messages, or maybe on only one message a day? Would you then get the list-cleaning advantages without the costs of doing it on every message? --Paul Hoffman, Director --Internet Mail Consortium From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 11:22:51 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA02345; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 11:17:58 -0800 (PST) Received: from Kitten.mcs.net (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA02338 for ; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 11:17:52 -0800 (PST) Received: from Mercury.mcs.net (root@Mercury.mcs.net [192.160.127.80]) by Kitten.mcs.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id NAA31969 for ; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 13:30:26 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from dattier@mcs.net) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Mercury.mcs.net (8.9.3/8.8.2) id NAA18763 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 13:30:26 -0600 (CST) Message-Id: <200003131930.NAA18763@Mercury.mcs.net> Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 13:30:26 -0600 (CST) From: "David W. Tamkin" To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <20000313040558.J14159@ma-1.rootsweb.com> from "Tim Pierce" at Mar 13, 2000 04:05:58 AM X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL3] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Authentication-Warning: The true sender is dattier@Mercury.mcs.net. Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Tim Pierce wrote, | I dream about the benefits that we could get from VERP delivery -- | reduced CPU utilization, increased server efficiency, less listowner | confusion, better word-of-mouth, and so on ... OK, I'll agree about less listowner confusion, and Russ Allbery has already explained the reduced CPU utilization and the increased server efficiency in his response when Bernie Cosell asked, but how do VERPs improve the word-of- mouth? If anything, I've seen that as a small downside to VERPs: unsophisticated members see their own addresses in the return path and panic that they're being forged. Or sometimes the headers will be corrupted above the RFC822 From: line, so the list member's MUA will see the From: line as part of the body, ignore it, and try to construct a sender name from the return path, which will include the recipient's address in the VERP portion, placing it where even a brand newbie who doesn't know about displaying full headers will see it; the reaction then is something to witness. (And of course, if it happens on an unmoderated list, everyone argues "My address was on it!" "No, you're wrong, mine was!") One public listhost that uses a modification of ezmlm has tried to reduce the panic factor by using the word "sentto" earlier in the VERP instead of "errors" as it used to or "return" as some others do. [Another workaround is to assign a member ID to each subscription and to use that in the VERP instead of the subscriber's actual address.] While that's not enough to outweigh the advantages of VERPs, it certainly does make me wonder why Tim says they improve the word-of-mouth. Oh, speaking of VERPs, a couple months after my drawing the problem to their attention, BigMailBox modified its webmail to allow equal signs in outgoing addresses. Since sites that run it actually direct users to BMB's machines rather than running copies of the software, the fix took care of all BMB sites. Before then, as I was saying on this list last fall, users of BMB sites could not send confirmations to addresses that included equal signs, and BMB sites could not send NDNs to VERP addresses because of the equal signs in them. From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 12:52:36 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA03227; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 12:43:48 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.thesquare.com ([160.79.93.10]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA03220 for ; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 12:43:43 -0800 (PST) Received: from [192.168.0.169] [192.168.1.2] by mail.thesquare.com with ESMTP (SMTPD32-5.05) id A6F24F5A00BA; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 16:00:34 -0500 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: <38CC9B41.5272.3CE2056@localhost> X-Organization: Little to None X-Mailer: Eudora 5.0 for Cray T3E-1200 Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 15:56:11 -0500 To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Vince Sabio Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk ** Sometime around 06:54 -0800 03/13/00, Russ Allbery said: >Bernie Cosell writes: > > > The last two are OK, but I'm not convinced about the first two: in > > 'normal' delivery, there's just *one* copy of the message and it gets > > routed all over hell and gone... is the CPU to make and manage all those > > extra copies trivial? > >Basically, yes. :) Compared to the amount of CPU that it takes to >analyze bounces, figure out what address bounced, etc. it's pretty >trivial. And that analysis doesn't even always work. > > > even if trivial, how does it end up being _reduced_ utilization. > >Because your bounce handling suddenly becomes trivial, and as a result >your mailing lists get cleaned of bad addresses *much* faster and more >thoroughly than any process that requires human invention (as bounce >handling without VERP does with depressing frequency). SmartBounce has better than 97% bounce recognition without using VERP (though it optionally supports VERP as well), so the human intervention is pretty minimal -- and in many of those cases, there's nothing for even a human to go on. However, like all automated processes, it _does_ require a certain amount of CPU and I/O ("The Killer"(tm)) for processing. __________________________________________________________________________ Vince Sabio Got Bounces? vince@vjs.org Got Jokes? Got Spam? From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 13:08:03 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA03479; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 12:58:59 -0800 (PST) Received: from CU.NIH.GOV (cu.nih.gov [128.231.160.111]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id MAA03472 for ; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 12:58:54 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <200003132058.MAA03472@honor.greatcircle.com> To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: "Roger Fajman" Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 16:05:54 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > What if the list software did VERPs on one out every hundred messages, or > maybe on only one message a day? Would you then get the list-cleaning > advantages without the costs of doing it on every message? That's the way that LISTSERV does it. It works well. The percentage of VERPs can be specified by the list owner. LISTSERV also limits the VERPs (it calls them probes) to one post be day, rather than doing them on every post. From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 13:43:16 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA03923; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 13:32:18 -0800 (PST) Received: from waltz.rahul.net (waltz.rahul.net [192.160.13.9]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA03916 for ; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 13:32:10 -0800 (PST) Received: by waltz.rahul.net (Postfix, from userid 511) id 1AFC199E51; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 13:44:40 -0800 (PST) To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery In-reply-to: <20000313040558.J14159@ma-1.rootsweb.com> Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 13:44:39 -0800 From: Michelle Dick Message-Id: <20000313214440.1AFC199E51@waltz.rahul.net> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Tim wrote: > I dream about the benefits that we could get from VERP delivery -- > reduced CPU utilization, increased server efficiency, less listowner > confusion, better word-of-mouth, and so on -- but a 40% bandwidth > increase means buying another T1 or more just to cover the extra > deliveries. That's a pretty hard sell no matter what the bennies > are. I agree. I like the VERP solution too. However, I'm in even a worse situation than you: the small scale situation. My lists run over a modem line and are sent to a smarthost that can handle large numbers of addressees at a time (though I believe I limit it to 500) -- every addressee gets sent to the same host. So, the bandwidth increase I'd see would be over several hundred thousand percent increase. I'm in a non-DSL-able location, and other solutions are not cost effective at this time. My bounce handler works over 90% of the time (and it's been over a year since I've had one it missed that I couldn't figure out on my own in less than a minute), so not changing is a no-brainer. CPU capacity is cheap, cheap, cheap compared to bandwidth in my situation. The $500 computer I bought last year for my own use is twice as powerful as the one that runs the list with load to spare. -- Michelle Dick artemis@rahul.net East Palo Alto, CA From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 14:13:08 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA04610; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 13:39:47 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id NAA04600 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 13:39:45 -0800 (PST) Received: from fb01.eng00.mindspring.net (fb01.eng00.mindspring.net [207.69.229.19]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id RAA18967 for ; Fri, 10 Mar 2000 17:41:02 -0800 (PST) Received: from KKorganTP600E.wetheliving.com (user-2ive2vc.dialup.mindspring.com [165.247.11.236]) by fb01.eng00.mindspring.net (8.9.3/8.8.5) with ESMTP id UAA06931 for ; Fri, 10 Mar 2000 20:53:05 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <4.3.2.20000310204239.00a78480@postoffice.mail.cornell.edu> X-Sender: kjk6@postoffice.mail.cornell.edu X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 4.3 Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 20:52:44 -0500 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com From: Kirez Korgan Subject: moderating a list with a cgi form Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Greetings, I'm hoping to use a form & formmail.pl to moderate one of my lists from a web site. This will enable me to allow a team of several people to stop at the web site and moderate the list whenever they have time --- viewing emails that are in the queue, then copy&pasting them into a form, and submitting them directly to the list, with the headers appropriately doctored for a moderated Majordomo 1.94 list. I'm wondering if anyone knows whether the form can be manipulated so that it will submit a clean, properly formatted email. The body of the email needs to begin with the headers, as follows: approved: PASSWORD to: objectivism@wetheliving.com from: Arthur D'Poste Subject: I love my email list community Blah blah blah blah blah. ******************************************************** ...So the challenge is to get the form properly formatted. I've got the system set up to allow this moderation at http://wetheliving.com/owlmod -- I use MHonArc to archive my lists. The posts that are submitted to the list appear in the 'queue' in the top left frame, the form for submitting the posts is below it in the bottom left frame, and the 'output' to the moderated list appears in the right half frame. The frames can be resized to make it easier to deal with. Can a form submission have such a tailored format.... dispensing with the usual "The results of a form submission are as follows..." etc? Anyone with an answer or solution to this? cheers, Kirez From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 14:27:58 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA04564; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 13:39:17 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id NAA04552 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 13:39:13 -0800 (PST) Received: from claude.akamai.com (walrus.ne.mediaone.net [24.147.22.188]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA13842 for ; Fri, 10 Mar 2000 10:54:25 -0800 (PST) Received: (from dshaw@localhost) by claude.akamai.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) id OAA03384; Fri, 10 Mar 2000 14:05:04 -0500 Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 14:05:04 -0500 From: David Shaw To: Rich Kulawiec Cc: webmaster@remarq.com, postmaster@remarq.com, hostmaster@remarq.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, Q_1003865_waterdog@lists.remarq.com Subject: Re: Unauthorized archiving and presentation of mailing list by remarq Message-ID: <20000310140504.M5781@akamai.com> Mail-Followup-To: Rich Kulawiec , webmaster@remarq.com, postmaster@remarq.com, hostmaster@remarq.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, Q_1003865_waterdog@lists.remarq.com References: <20000309075412.A9102@gsp.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii User-Agent: Mutt/1.1.2i In-Reply-To: <20000309075412.A9102@gsp.org>; from rsk@gsp.org on Thu, Mar 09, 2000 at 07:54:12AM -0500 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 Waxing Crescent (10% of Full) X-Pointless-Random-Number: 180 X-Silly-Header: It sure is. Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, Mar 09, 2000 at 07:54:12AM -0500, Rich Kulawiec wrote: > List-managers: > > You might want to drop by www.remarq.com and see if your mailing lists > are included there as well; use the search box on their home page. Hell, I've had dozens of Remarq-ified users try and subscribe to one of my lists over the past few weeks. Inevitably, the addresses would all bounce with obscure NNTP (yes, NNTP (Usenet)!) errors after a day or so. At any point I would have more Remarq users in the "bounce" file than in the actual list file. I figured they were just hopelessly incompetent, and I could ignore them. Now that I see they are capturing addresses off of a private list, they become The Enemy, and I've blackholed their entire site. Life is too short to waste time negotiating with losers like them. 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 Mar 13 14:43:52 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA05422; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 14:25:50 -0800 (PST) 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 OAA05415 for ; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 14:25:46 -0800 (PST) Received: from [17.216.27.198] (A17-216-27-198.apple.com [17.216.27.198]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id OAA09724 ; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 14:36:53 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <200003132058.MAA03472@honor.greatcircle.com> References: <200003132058.MAA03472@honor.greatcircle.com> Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 14:38:05 -0800 To: "Roger Fajman" , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 4:05 PM -0500 3/13/2000, Roger Fajman wrote: > > What if the list software did VERPs on one out every hundred messages, or >> maybe on only one message a day? Would you then get the list-cleaning >> advantages without the costs of doing it on every message? > >That's the way that LISTSERV does it. It works well. The percentage of >VERPs can be specified by the list owner. This ignores some of the other advantages of VERPing -- for instance, you can start customizing messages to make things better for the users. For instance, putting the user's address back in the To: line, encoding unsubscribe info into your unsubscribe links, that sort of thing. it can REALLY cut the % of user problems and raise user satisfaction a lot. And really cut the admin hassles as well.... VERPing technology can buy you lots beyond simply making bounces easier, if you want. -- -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 15:39:04 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA06248; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 15:26:32 -0800 (PST) Received: from scifi.squawk.com (glock.squawk.com [208.176.124.157]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA06241 for ; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 15:26:25 -0800 (PST) Received: from tpad.squawk.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by scifi.squawk.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 57CC7350C2; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 18:38:57 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.20000313181559.039f4360@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: njs@127.0.0.1 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 18:15:59 -0500 To: Paul Hoffman / IMC From: Nick Simicich Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery Cc: Tim Pierce , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.20000313101458.00b3f270@mail.imc.org> References: <20000313040558.J14159@ma-1.rootsweb.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 10:16 AM 3/13/00 -0800, Paul Hoffman / IMC wrote: >A thought sparked by a very different discussion about a very different >protocol: > >What if the list software did VERPs on one out every hundred messages, or >maybe on only one message a day? Would you then get the list-cleaning >advantages without the costs of doing it on every message? I solved this problem in a vey simple way. The bounce software sets a flag when it gets a bounce it can't fend. The delivery software then verps and resets the flag. No unparsable bounces, no verps. An unparsable bounce? One verp. -- 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 http://scifi.squawk.com/njs.html -- Stop by and Light Up The World! From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 16:22:34 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA06803; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 16:16:02 -0800 (PST) Received: from transport.mail-list.com (transport.mail-list.com [206.109.113.140]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id QAA06796 for ; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 16:15:52 -0800 (PST) Received: from ([206.109.113.127]) [206.109.113.127] by transport.mail-list.com with esmtp (Exim 2.11 #1) id 12Uf9U-0000X2-00; Tue, 14 Mar 2000 00:25:36 +0000 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Message-Id: Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 18:25:44 -0600 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: mark david mcCreary Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >Unfortunately, the numbers I got appear to suggest that switching >to VERP deliveries would increase our bandwidth consumption by as >much as 40%. Here's how I arrived at that number, for anyone who >wants to follow along and correct my assumptions. > Tim I would think that your labor costs savings would be able to offset any increase in bandwidth costs when using VERP. That is, we have a part-time person to help subscribers that are having problems, and the vast majority of those problems are people having trouble getting unsubscribed. If we were not using VERP single delivery, that would most likely be a full time job. That's because with the traditional BCC method, the subscriber never sees any clue as to which email address they are subscribed under. We put in the subscribers email address in the To: line of all announcement lists whenever we are doing VERP. I have seen other lists drop in the email address at the bottom of messages too, and both might be advisable. As long as you are sending a unique message anyway, why not ? We use Exim as our MTA, which has the ability to do VERP, as well as manipulate headers so that we can put the receipents email address in the To: line. We use VERP on all our small and or in-frequent lists. For our bigger lists, we use the traditional mailing list method for all the large domains, and VERP single delivery for the rest of the list. With AOL for example, I don't think VERP helps that much, since AOL handles bounces ok, and the email ends up in the mailbox for the "screen name" that the person is using, so they are rarely confused as to which address of theirs is on our list. And with the rapidly falling price of bandwidth, I expect we will be using VERP single delivery on every single piece of email. Both for the easy handling of bounces, and eliminating the confusion of which email address is on the list,from the subscribers point of view. That's my 2 cents :-) mark mail-list.com franchise toolsmiths, language lawyers, and quality assurance people needed http://www.mail-list.com/franchise From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 16:42:42 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA06907; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 16:25:06 -0800 (PST) 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 QAA06895 for ; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 16:24:57 -0800 (PST) Received: (from twp@localhost) by ma-1.rootsweb.com (8.10.0.Beta10/8.10.0.Beta10) id e2E0at930626; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 19:36:55 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 19:36:54 -0500 From: Tim Pierce To: "David W. Tamkin" Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery Message-ID: <20000313193654.U14159@ma-1.rootsweb.com> References: <20000313040558.J14159@ma-1.rootsweb.com> <200003131930.NAA18763@Mercury.mcs.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.7us In-Reply-To: <200003131930.NAA18763@Mercury.mcs.net> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Mon, Mar 13, 2000 at 01:30:26PM -0600, David W. Tamkin wrote: > Tim Pierce wrote, > > | I dream about the benefits that we could get from VERP delivery -- > | reduced CPU utilization, increased server efficiency, less listowner > | confusion, better word-of-mouth, and so on ... > > OK, I'll agree about less listowner confusion, and Russ Allbery has already > explained the reduced CPU utilization and the increased server efficiency in > his response when Bernie Cosell asked, but how do VERPs improve the word-of- > mouth? I would expect VERP-based delivery to be a big draw to potential list administrators. List managers are always exchanging gossip about which sites make it easiest to run a mailing list, and handling bounces are the biggest headache by far that the typical list admin has to deal with. Eliminating that hassle would be a feather in our cap for other list managers. -- Regards, Tim Pierce RootsWeb.com lead system admonsterator and Chief Hacking Officer From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 16:57:16 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA07105; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 16:42:33 -0800 (PST) Received: from prserv.net (out4.prserv.net [32.97.166.34]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id QAA07090 for ; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 16:42:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from milton ([32.100.71.228]) by prserv.net (out4) with SMTP id <2000031400545023901t16i5e>; Tue, 14 Mar 2000 00:54:52 +0000 Message-Id: <4.2.0.58.20000313182851.009bd570@mail.iecc.com> X-Sender: johnl@mail.iecc.com (Unverified) X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.2.0.58 Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 19:19:33 -0500 To: "Bernie Cosell" , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: John Levine Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery In-Reply-To: <38CC9B41.5272.3CE2056@localhost> References: <20000313040558.J14159@ma-1.rootsweb.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >The last two are OK, but I'm not convinced about the first two: in >'normal' delivery, there's just *one* copy of the message and it gets >routed all over hell and gone... is the CPU to make and manage all those >extra copies trivial? even if trivial, how does it end up being >_reduced_ utilization. Pragmatically, qmail does single deliveries with VERP, and it's a lot faster than sendmail. I don't know how much is the simpler design due to single deliveries, and how much is not having decades of historical cruft glommed into one giant program, but it hardly matters in practice. | That is, it strikes me as the difference, in usenet terms, between >multiple-newsgroup-posting and crossposting, Not really. The crucial difference is that it's useful to customize e-mail to individual recipients. VERP puts a custom envelope return address on each recipient's message, which permits almost completely automated bounce handling. This does work, I've used it for ages on lists I run, and it avoids vast amounts of manual effort on the part of the list admin. Once you send separate copies per recipient, you can also usefully customize the message body. In the tag at the bottoms of the message, you can put the address to which it was sent, useful to track down bounces from systems that bounce back messages while removing all trace of the original envelope. You can also add "To unsubscribe, send a message to " (substituting the actual address for user and domain.com) so that users, even whose addresses have changed since they subscribed, can easily get off the list. Dan Bernstein has pointed out in his usual annoying but accurate way that SMTP wasn't designed to be particularly efficient in bandwidth usage, and if that's what you're worried about, there are a lot of ways other than multiple deliveries to reduce bandwidth. The most effective is sublists like LISTSERV uses -- distribute the list database to hosts close to the recipients, then send one copy with one address from the master host to the subhosts that then redeliver. 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 Mar 13 17:52:37 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA07923; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 17:50:29 -0800 (PST) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id RAA07916 for ; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 17:50:15 -0800 (PST) Received: from [209.239.169.197] (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id SAA14996 ; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 18:05:25 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <20000313193654.U14159@ma-1.rootsweb.com> References: <20000313040558.J14159@ma-1.rootsweb.com> <200003131930.NAA18763@Mercury.mcs.net> <20000313193654.U14159@ma-1.rootsweb.com> Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 17:56:11 -0800 To: Tim Pierce , "David W. Tamkin" From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 7:36 PM -0500 3/13/2000, Tim Pierce wrote: >I would expect VERP-based delivery to be a big draw to potential >list administrators. List managers are always exchanging gossip >about which sites make it easiest to run a mailing list, and handling >bounces are the biggest headache by far that the typical list admin >has to deal with. Eliminating that hassle would be a feather in our >cap for other list managers. > I tend to agree. I know that after buying Smartbounce, after looking at self-implementation and doign ti by hand and all sorts of other options, that SmartBounce paid for itself within two weeks, purely in the reduced man-hours it saved at my billable rate. I haven't (yet) started taking advantage of it's "unsubscribe" processing, but I hope to do that soon, too, to try to pre-process the postmaster mail, and grab another chunk. (today, for instance, I ran smartbounce, and it found and unsubscribed a bit over 50,000 bounces for me on my lists. Do you really want to guess what it'd take for me to do that by hand? shudder. And it did it in about four hours, while I was off doing something else entirely...) -- -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 18:39:00 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA08394; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 18:34:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from waltz.rahul.net (waltz.rahul.net [192.160.13.9]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id SAA08387 for ; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 18:34:12 -0800 (PST) Received: by waltz.rahul.net (Postfix, from userid 511) id 8309F99E53; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 18:46:48 -0800 (PST) To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery In-reply-to: <4.2.0.58.20000313182851.009bd570@mail.iecc.com> Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 18:46:48 -0800 From: Michelle Dick Message-Id: <20000314024648.8309F99E53@waltz.rahul.net> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk John Levine wrote: > recipient's message, which permits almost completely automated bounce > handling. This does work, I've used it for ages on lists I run, and it > avoids vast amounts of manual effort on the part of the list admin. FWIW, I don't find myself spending "vast amounts" of time processing bounces the non-verp bounce handler doesn't catch these days. Of course, although I manage several lists, only one is big enough to be concerned about, and then many would consider even it tiny at around 2,000 subscribers. Bounces must have been getting better, because I'd estimate I spend about 30 seconds every 5 days or so figuring out a bounce that my doctored-up smartlist program couldn't handle. Of course, I wouldn't want to do totally without bounce handling, verp or non-verp. Heck, that's why I adopted smartlist so many years ago. It did use to be more time, which is why I think bounces have gotten better. The main reason I'd like to use verp is NOT because of those few remaining bounces, but so that I can include an active html link in the messages so that folks can unsubscribe themselves more easily or do other tasks just with a click. I DO spend about 10 minutes a week either mailing out various administrivia instructions. -- Michelle Dick artemis@rahul.net East Palo Alto, CA From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 19:37:43 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA09033; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 19:29:41 -0800 (PST) Received: from windlord.stanford.edu (windlord.Stanford.EDU [171.64.12.23]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id TAA09026 for ; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 19:29:34 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 10202 invoked by uid 50); 14 Mar 2000 03:42:11 -0000 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery References: <20000313214440.1AFC199E51@waltz.rahul.net> In-Reply-To: Michelle Dick's message of "Mon, 13 Mar 2000 13:44:39 -0800" From: Russ Allbery Organization: The Eyrie Date: 13 Mar 2000 19:42:11 -0800 Message-ID: Lines: 25 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0802 (Gnus v5.8.2) XEmacs/21.1 (Biscayne) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Michelle Dick writes: > I agree. I like the VERP solution too. However, I'm in even a worse > situation than you: the small scale situation. My lists run over a > modem line and are sent to a smarthost that can handle large numbers of > addressees at a time (though I believe I limit it to 500) -- every > addressee gets sent to the same host. So, the bandwidth increase I'd > see would be over several hundred thousand percent increase. Do you have any control at all over your smarthost? If so, you might be able to get *it* to do VERP for you. > I'm in a non-DSL-able location, and other solutions are not cost > effective at this time. My bounce handler works over 90% of the time > (and it's been over a year since I've had one it missed that I couldn't > figure out on my own in less than a minute), so not changing is a > no-brainer. Oh, agreed. If your bounce handler is already working well for you, there's no real reason to change it. And the number of truly annoying bounces seems to have gone down recently. (I think there are also fewer people who have complicated forwarding paths for their mail.) -- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 21:36:23 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA10235; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 21:21:15 -0800 (PST) Received: from CU.NIH.GOV (silkt.nih.gov [128.231.160.112]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id VAA10221 for ; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 21:21:09 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <200003140521.VAA10221@honor.greatcircle.com> To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: "Roger Fajman" Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 00:31:21 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > If anything, I've seen that as a small downside to VERPs: unsophisticated > members see their own addresses in the return path and panic that they're > being forged. Or sometimes the headers will be corrupted above the RFC822 > From: line, so the list member's MUA will see the From: line as part of the > body, ignore it, and try to construct a sender name from the return path, > which will include the recipient's address in the VERP portion, placing it > where even a brand newbie who doesn't know about displaying full headers will > see it; the reaction then is something to witness. (And of course, if it > happens on an unmoderated list, everyone argues "My address was on it!" "No, > you're wrong, mine was!") One public listhost that uses a modification of > ezmlm has tried to reduce the panic factor by using the word "sentto" earlier > in the VERP instead of "errors" as it used to or "return" as some others do. > [Another workaround is to assign a member ID to each subscription and to use > that in the VERP instead of the subscriber's actual address.] We've run into a mail system used by a number of subscribers to some of our lists that bounces messages that have the VERP-type return path used by LISTSERV. I'm not sure whether it's the overall length of the userid or the asterisks in the userid that it objects to. From list-managers-owner Tue Mar 14 07:51:38 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA18588; Tue, 14 Mar 2000 07:39:22 -0800 (PST) Received: from Kitten.mcs.net (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id HAA18581 for ; Tue, 14 Mar 2000 07:39:16 -0800 (PST) Received: from Jupiter.mcs.net (dattier@Jupiter.mcs.net [192.160.127.88]) by Kitten.mcs.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id JAA42213; Tue, 14 Mar 2000 09:51:55 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from dattier@mcs.net) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Jupiter.mcs.net (8.9.3/8.8.2) id JAA65222; Tue, 14 Mar 2000 09:51:55 -0600 (CST) Message-Id: <200003141551.JAA65222@Jupiter.mcs.net> Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery To: twp@rootsweb.com (Tim Pierce) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 09:51:55 -0600 (CST) From: "David W. Tamkin" Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com In-Reply-To: <20000313193654.U14159@ma-1.rootsweb.com> from "Tim Pierce" at Mar 13, 2000 07:36:54 PM X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL3] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Authentication-Warning: The true sender is dattier@Jupiter.mcs.net. Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I asked Tim Pierce, T> ... but how do VERPs improve the word-of- mouth? He replied, P> I would expect VERP-based delivery to be a big draw to potential P> list administrators. List managers are always exchanging gossip P> about which sites make it easiest to run a mailing list ... Ah, you were talking about the word-of-mouth from listowner to listowner about a list host, not about that from list subscriber to list subscriber about a list. Thanks for explaining. From list-managers-owner Tue Mar 14 08:06:50 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA18738; Tue, 14 Mar 2000 07:54:22 -0800 (PST) Received: from Kitten.mcs.net (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id HAA18731 for ; Tue, 14 Mar 2000 07:54:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from Jupiter.mcs.net (dattier@Jupiter.mcs.net [192.160.127.88]) by Kitten.mcs.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA43959; Tue, 14 Mar 2000 10:07:00 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from dattier@mcs.net) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Jupiter.mcs.net (8.9.3/8.8.2) id KAA66599; Tue, 14 Mar 2000 10:07:00 -0600 (CST) Message-Id: <200003141607.KAA66599@Jupiter.mcs.net> Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery To: RAF@CU.NIH.GOV (Roger Fajman) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 10:07:00 -0600 (CST) From: "David W. Tamkin" Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <200003140521.VAA10221@honor.greatcircle.com> from "Roger Fajman" at Mar 14, 2000 12:31:21 AM X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL3] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Authentication-Warning: The true sender is dattier@Jupiter.mcs.net. Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Roger Fajman wrote, | We've run into a mail system used by a number of subscribers to some of | our lists that bounces messages that have the VERP-type return path used | by LISTSERV. I'm not sure whether it's the overall length of the userid | or the asterisks in the userid that it objects to. Replacing the asterisks and the elements of the subscriber's address in the return path with an alphanumeric subscriber ID would get rid of the unex- pected characters and also decrease the length. It would also reduce the panicking when an MUA presents a post with no From: header (or whose From: header has been disconnected into the body) to the sub- scriber as coming from listname-owner-articleID-your=address.here@list.host. Maybe in extreme cases it's not so far out an idea. From list-managers-owner Tue Mar 14 11:21:20 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA21155; Tue, 14 Mar 2000 11:16:37 -0800 (PST) Received: from one.elistx.com (one.elistx.com [209.116.252.130]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA21126 for ; Tue, 14 Mar 2000 11:16:27 -0800 (PST) Received: from two.elistx.com (ppp.elistx.com [209.116.254.209]) by eListX.com (PMDF V5.2-32 #43584) with ESMTP id <0FRF00BHWFDRQE@eListX.com> for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Tue, 14 Mar 2000 14:27:28 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 14:24:50 -0500 From: James M Galvin Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery In-reply-to: "13 Mar 2000 04:05:58 EST." <"20000313040558.J14159"@ma-1.rootsweb.com> To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Reply-to: James M Galvin Message-id: <0FRF00BHXFDRQE@eListX.com> Content-id: <24586.953061890.0@two.elistx.com> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: multipart/mixed; boundary="----- =_aaaaaaaaaa0" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk ------- =_aaaaaaaaaa0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-ID: <24586.953061890.1@two.elistx.com> This whole discussion of VERP versus batched for better bounce processing seems to have overlooked an arguably preferable solution: MTAs should return the Internet standard delivery status notification message. This has, in fact, been occurring. I've seen a dramatic increase in the last 6 months in the use of the standard DSN. I don't have any hard numbers although I can say that my hit rate for fully processing bounce messages has inched to 85% from 80%, for those elists that are a problem. What that means is the larger an elist gets or the lower the frequency of messages, the more problematic managing the bounces becomes. I divide my elists into two broad categories: those for which the bounce processing is 100% for all practical purposes and those for which I just can not get ahead. By the way, I have trouble believing that SmartBounce gets 97% because I see a new error message at least once a week, but then such statistics are based on your subscriber community so anything is possible. Overall, my community is worldwide and quite varied. Heck, I get error messages in foreign languages almost every day, which result in frequent updates to my parsing routines. In fairness, I do have to admit I've been thinking a lot about VERP distribution, for all the reasons already discussed. Even now I have too many to think about failed messages that come back with no indication or an ambiguous indication as to which address failed. It is a personnel drain to deal with them, although lately we discovered that letting them fail and keeping good records counts for a lot. We've been getting lucky lately getting similar failures across multiple elists, and the intersection can be quite revealing. Jim ------- =_aaaaaaaaaa0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-ID: <24586.953061890.2@two.elistx.com> Content-Description: Contact Information -- James M. Galvin, Ph.D. Principal eList eXpress LLC +1 410.549.4619 607 Trixsam Road +1 561.619.2450 FAX Sykesville, MD 21784 http://www.elistx.com Delivering your email, your way. There are only two ways to live your life; one as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is. - Albert Einstein ------- =_aaaaaaaaaa0-- From list-managers-owner Tue Mar 14 13:51:10 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA23032; Tue, 14 Mar 2000 13:48:48 -0800 (PST) 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 NAA23025 for ; Tue, 14 Mar 2000 13:48:44 -0800 (PST) Received: from [17.216.27.198] (A17-216-27-198.apple.com [17.216.27.198]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id NAA55120 ; Tue, 14 Mar 2000 13:59:28 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <0FRF00BHXFDRQE@eListX.com> References: <0FRF00BHXFDRQE@eListX.com> Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 13:58:52 -0800 To: James M Galvin , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 2:24 PM -0500 3/14/2000, James M Galvin wrote: > >By the way, I have trouble believing that SmartBounce gets 97% because I >see a new error message at least once a week, but then such statistics >are based on your subscriber community so anything is possible. I'd say it does -- I've got one of the most diverse groups of addresses out there, especially internationally, and the only places Smartbounce has problems are things where *I*, manually can't figure out what the subscribed address is, and international sites that translate their error messages.... I can get 200 megabytes of bounce mail out of a mailing without working hard, and SmartBounce will leave me 1-2 megabytes that needs manual looking at. I can't argue with that. -- -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Tue Mar 14 14:06:10 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA23128; Tue, 14 Mar 2000 13:55:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from mta2.snfc21.pbi.net (mta2.snfc21.pbi.net [206.13.28.123]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA23116 for ; Tue, 14 Mar 2000 13:54:59 -0800 (PST) Received: from SeaPort1 ([63.196.185.150]) by mta2.snfc21.pbi.net (Sun Internet Mail Server sims.3.5.1999.09.16.21.57.p8) with SMTP id <0FRF00LDCMGYGT@mta2.snfc21.pbi.net> for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Tue, 14 Mar 2000 14:00:35 -0800 (PST) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 14:08:57 -0800 From: Dave Reinhardt Subject: install MJ? To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Message-id: <38CEB879B4.297FDAVE@mail.pacbell.net> MIME-version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Becky! ver 1.25.07 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk If this is the wrong list for this question please tell me. can you tell me how to get this info off the server? # You need to have or create a user and group which majordomo will run as. # Enter the numeric UID and GID (not their names!) here: W_USER = 55515 W_GROUP = 55515 I have a user majordom that has email access and its dir is /usr/local/majordomo ther is also a dir usr/local/majordomo-1.94.4 there seems to be a user called daemon Owner of many system processes / thanks dave From list-managers-owner Wed Mar 15 02:06:17 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id BAA01242; Wed, 15 Mar 2000 01:55:16 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.uned.es (mail.uned.es [193.146.241.9]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id BAA01226 for ; Wed, 15 Mar 2000 01:54:53 -0800 (PST) Received: from csi.uned.es (obelix.csi.uned.es [193.146.241.10]) by mail.uned.es (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id LAA08266 for ; Wed, 15 Mar 2000 11:07:20 +0100 Message-ID: <38CF613A.3EEA5948@csi.uned.es> Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 11:08:58 +0100 From: Manuel Nogales Casares X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en] (X11; I; Linux 2.2.5-15 i686) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Weblist Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hello: I'm new in this list. my question is : Is there any weblist to manage majordomo? I have webmin and esquire, but I want that users can creates their mailing list, and users can only manage their list. PD: weblist :--> software to mange majordomo by web -- ,.........................................,........................., : Manuel Nogales Casares Email: mnogales@csi.uned.es : : Técnico Comunicaciones CSI-UNED : Tel: (+34) 91-398-6634 : : Universidad N. de Educacion a Distancia : Fax: (+34) 91-398-7667 : : Senda del Rey, s/n. : : : E-28040 Madrid SPAIN : Linux User 140.716 : '.........................................:.........................' From list-managers-owner Wed Mar 15 06:53:46 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA05701; Wed, 15 Mar 2000 06:45:13 -0800 (PST) Received: from pop.mccte.educ.msu.edu (pop.mccte.educ.msu.edu [35.8.172.5]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id GAA05692 for ; Wed, 15 Mar 2000 06:45:08 -0800 (PST) From: steelea2@pop.mccte.educ.msu.edu Received: from localhost (steelea2@localhost) by pop.mccte.educ.msu.edu (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id KAA00608 for ; Wed, 15 Mar 2000 10:09:47 -0500 Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 10:09:47 -0500 (EST) To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: virtual domains Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I have been struggling with setting up majordomo to handle lists comming to multiple domains, I think it has something to do with problems in my /etc/aliases file, or a sendmail configuration if anyone on this list knows of a good, concise resource for configuring virtual domains with majordomo and covers some of sendmail, i would appreciate it thanks /aaron From list-managers-owner Wed Mar 15 07:36:33 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA06165; Wed, 15 Mar 2000 07:32:42 -0800 (PST) Received: from openworld.co.uk (post.openworld.co.uk [194.207.107.3]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id HAA06158 for ; Wed, 15 Mar 2000 07:32:36 -0800 (PST) Received: from ow45 (194.207.107.197) by openworld.co.uk with ESMTP (Eudora Internet Mail Server 2.2.2); Wed, 15 Mar 2000 15:29:32 +0000 Message-Id: <4.2.2.20000315145516.065831b0@post.openworld.co.uk> X-Sender: alistair@post.openworld.co.uk X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.2.2 Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 15:41:18 +0000 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com From: Alistair Formby Subject: Use of a database with list server software Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Dear list, I have been looking for a solution to my problem for quite a while now and I haven't come up with an adequate one. I have looked at several large and expensive solutions like ListServ and other smaller players like majordomo to handle the job for me. So far I have come to the conclusion that majordomo may be my best bet as I currently use majordomo and am familiar with Perl. I also like the idea of using PHP to dynamically drive the front end. Does anyone know of a feasible alternative my problem? Alistair Formby, aformby@openworld.co.uk P.S. I have noticed the recent spate of conversations about 'VERP versus batched delivery'. I find that there are so many subscribers that try to unsubscribe from e-mail accounts that have been 'forwarded to' from another account. It makes the unsubscription process that much easier when sending mails out one by one, due to the fact that when sending batch deliveries I cannot make the 'To' header the subscribers e-mail address. I typically see a 50% increase in bandswidth usage when sending using VERP (not too sure what the acronym VERP stands for though). From list-managers-owner Wed Mar 15 11:36:14 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA09583; Wed, 15 Mar 2000 10:59:51 -0800 (PST) Received: from windlord.stanford.edu (windlord.Stanford.EDU [171.64.12.23]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id KAA09576 for ; Wed, 15 Mar 2000 10:59:45 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 29354 invoked by uid 50); 15 Mar 2000 19:12:39 -0000 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery References: <0FRF00BHXFDRQE@eListX.com> In-Reply-To: James M Galvin's message of "Tue, 14 Mar 2000 14:24:50 -0500" From: Russ Allbery Organization: The Eyrie Date: 15 Mar 2000 11:12:39 -0800 Message-ID: Lines: 19 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0802 (Gnus v5.8.2) XEmacs/21.1 (Biscayne) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk James M Galvin writes: > This whole discussion of VERP versus batched for better bounce > processing seems to have overlooked an arguably preferable solution: > MTAs should return the Internet standard delivery status notification > message. I think it's more that we're all aware that standardized bounce messages would improve everyone's life a lot, but there isn't much we all can do towards that end and we pretty much have to play the hand that we're dealt. And some companies are quite fond of proprietary mail systems that have no concept whatsoever of what a DSN is. (DSN I think would also have caught on quicker if it were about a tenth of the complexity that it is. As it stands, it's a good example of a second-system protocol designed by a committee. :/) -- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) From list-managers-owner Wed Mar 15 11:51:14 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA09356; Wed, 15 Mar 2000 10:57:34 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id KAA09348 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 15 Mar 2000 10:57:32 -0800 (PST) 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 OAA05672 for ; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 14:43:50 -0800 (PST) Received: by tymix.Tymnet.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA11311; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 14:56:26 PST Received: from tardis by Tymnet.COM (in.smtpd); 13 Mar 100 14:56:25 PST Received: (from jms@localhost) by tardis.tymnet.com (8.8.8+Sun/8.8.8) id OAA27437 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 14:56:24 -0800 (PST) Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 14:56:24 -0800 From: Joe Smith To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery Message-Id: <20000313145624.W18702@tardis.Tymnet.COM> References: <20000313040558.J14159@ma-1.rootsweb.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0i In-Reply-To: <20000313040558.J14159@ma-1.rootsweb.com>; from twp@rootsweb.com on Mon, Mar 13, 2000 at 04:05:58AM -0500 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Mon, Mar 13, 2000 at 04:05:58AM -0500, Tim Pierce wrote: > So I calculated this percentage for each of the thousand lists, then > added them all together and took the average percentage. The result > was an average volume increase of 40%. Have you considered doing both? (Batch with an occasional VERP) Do normal delivery in batched mode. But every so often (such as once a week), set a flag on the list so that the next message to that particular list goes out with VERP enabled. Do this on different days for different lists. Bad addresses may hang around for 7 days before the next VERP run, but they will get caught eventually. -- Joe Smith MCI WorldCom, On-Net Design/Impl, Product Technical Support UNIX and Tech Sup: TYMNET Network, Xstream Packet Services (Public X.25) 2560 N 1st St, MS-5046/746, San Jose, CA 95131 Voice: 408-533-6220 = vnet 854-6220 Fax: 408-533-6702 = vnet 854-6702 From list-managers-owner Wed Mar 15 12:06:11 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA09533; Wed, 15 Mar 2000 10:59:12 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id KAA09522 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 15 Mar 2000 10:59:03 -0800 (PST) Received: from server.postmodern.com (server.postmodern.com [216.240.39.3]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA24294 for ; Tue, 14 Mar 2000 15:26:19 -0800 (PST) Received: from postmodern.com (foucault.postmodern.com [216.240.39.5]) by server.postmodern.com (8.8.5/mcb-980201) with ESMTP id PAA10561; Tue, 14 Mar 2000 15:37:46 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <38CECD98.DEC319E1@postmodern.com> Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 15:39:11 -0800 From: "Michael C. Berch" Reply-To: mcb@postmodern.com Organization: Postmodern Consulting, California USA X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 (Macintosh; U; PPC) X-Accept-Language: en-US MIME-Version: 1.0 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM CC: Dave Reinhardt Subject: Re: install MJ? References: <38CEB879B4.297FDAVE@mail.pacbell.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk As always, just a reminder that Majordomo-specific querstions should be posted to the Majordomo-Users list (majordomo-users@greatcircle.com) rather than to List-Managers. To post to Majordomo-Users, first subscribe to the list (you'll probably find it very useful if you are a Majordomo site manager or mailing list owner) by sending the command subscribe majordomo-users to majordomo@greatcircle.com . Then you can post your question to majordomo-users@greatcircle.com and you will get a much larger technical audience for installation and operational questions, as well as not burdening the List-Managers membership (many of whom do not use Majordomo) with technical questions. List-Managers is focused more on policy and overall platform issues rather than MLM-specific technical issues. Thanks, -- Michael C. Berch list-managers list manager majordomo-users list manager mcb@greatcircle.com / mcb@postmodern.com Dave Reinhardt wrote: > > If this is the wrong list for this question please tell me. > > can you tell me how to get this info off the server? > # You need to have or create a user and group which majordomo will run as. > # Enter the numeric UID and GID (not their names!) here: > W_USER = 55515 > W_GROUP = 55515 > I have a user majordom that has email access and its dir is > /usr/local/majordomo > ther is also a dir usr/local/majordomo-1.94.4 > there seems to be a user called daemon Owner of many system processes / > thanks dave From list-managers-owner Wed Mar 15 12:54:48 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA11029; Wed, 15 Mar 2000 12:45:35 -0800 (PST) Received: from one.elistx.com (one.elistx.com [209.116.252.130]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA11018 for ; Wed, 15 Mar 2000 12:45:21 -0800 (PST) Received: from two.elistx.com (ppp.elistx.com [209.116.254.209]) by eListX.com (PMDF V5.2-32 #43584) with ESMTP id <0FRH00112ED7RH@eListX.com> for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Wed, 15 Mar 2000 16:00:44 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 15:58:00 -0500 From: James M Galvin Subject: DSNs are complex In-reply-to: "15 Mar 2000 11:12:39 PST." <"ylzos0f3o8.fsf"@windlord.stanford.edu> To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Reply-to: James M Galvin Message-id: <0FRH00113ED7RH@eListX.com> Content-id: <27737.953153880.0@two.elistx.com> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: multipart/mixed; boundary="----- =_aaaaaaaaaa0" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk ------- =_aaaaaaaaaa0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-ID: <27737.953153880.1@two.elistx.com> From Russ Allbery: (DSN I think would also have caught on quicker if it were about a tenth of the complexity that it is. As it stands, it's a good example of a second-system protocol designed by a committee. :/) Now you've got me curious. Can you describe what is complex about it? The only real issue I have with it is that I can not find everything I need in one place. There are a few companion documents and I find it clumsy to track down details when I need them. And some companies are quite fond of proprietary mail systems that have no concept whatsoever of what a DSN is. The really sad part is that there are two, maybe three companies, that have most of the market share in this space. If even one of them would "do it right" it would probably change "the world". And then there is Sendmail.... Jim ------- =_aaaaaaaaaa0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-ID: <27737.953153880.2@two.elistx.com> Content-Description: Contact Information -- James M. Galvin, Ph.D. Principal eList eXpress LLC +1 410.549.4619 607 Trixsam Road +1 561.619.2450 FAX Sykesville, MD 21784 http://www.elistx.com Delivering your email, your way. There are only two ways to live your life; one as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is. - Albert Einstein ------- =_aaaaaaaaaa0-- From list-managers-owner Wed Mar 15 14:08:17 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA12610; Wed, 15 Mar 2000 14:03:20 -0800 (PST) Received: from planet.fef.com (planet.fef.com [198.147.196.14]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA12603 for ; Wed, 15 Mar 2000 14:03:15 -0800 (PST) Received: (from alvin@localhost) by planet.fef.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id OAA04936; Wed, 15 Mar 2000 14:14:30 -0800 From: Alvin Oga Message-Id: <200003152214.OAA04936@planet.fef.com> Subject: Re: virtual domains To: steelea2@pop.mccte.educ.msu.edu Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 14:14:29 -0800 (PST) Cc: alvin@planet.fef.com (Alvin Oga), list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: from "steelea2@pop.mccte.educ.msu.edu" at Mar 15, 2000 10:09:47 AM X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL1] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk hi aaron... i have a virtual domain mini-howto... ( sorta obsolete ) but the majordomo section should work for oyu... i've not collected new sites of this stuff in a while.. please let me know if oyu know of other sites/references... thanx alvin http://www.linux-consulting.com/FAQ_Virtual > steelea2@pop.mccte.educ.msu.edu wrote: > > I have been struggling with setting up majordomo to handle lists comming > to multiple domains, I think it has something to do with problems in my > /etc/aliases file, or a sendmail configuration > if anyone on this list knows of a good, concise resource for configuring > virtual domains with majordomo and covers some of sendmail, i would > appreciate it > thanks > /aaron > From list-managers-owner Wed Mar 15 14:53:25 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA13235; Wed, 15 Mar 2000 14:47:00 -0800 (PST) Received: from windlord.stanford.edu (windlord.Stanford.EDU [171.64.12.23]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id OAA13228 for ; Wed, 15 Mar 2000 14:46:52 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 1356 invoked by uid 50); 15 Mar 2000 22:59:47 -0000 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: DSNs are complex References: <0FRH00113ED7RH@eListX.com> In-Reply-To: James M Galvin's message of "Wed, 15 Mar 2000 15:58:00 -0500" From: Russ Allbery Organization: The Eyrie Date: 15 Mar 2000 14:59:47 -0800 Message-ID: Lines: 66 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0802 (Gnus v5.8.2) XEmacs/21.1 (Biscayne) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk James M Galvin writes: > Now you've got me curious. Can you describe what is complex about it? windlord:~/work/rfc> wc -l rfc1894.txt 2187 rfc1894.txt 2,000 lines is complex. :) It's also fairly difficult to read. I've helped implement a bounce system, the one currently used by Stanford University for all invalid @stanford.edu addresses in fact, which I believe to be fully compliant with RFC 2187, and the RFC was a pain to follow. It also requires at least reference to RFC 1893 for the status codes, which is another 800 lines or so. It requires both full-blown MIME parsing and full-blown header parsing (which is probably reasonable these days, but certainly has slowed its adoption -- MIME parsing has only in the past year or two really become something I would want to rely on). It doesn't just handle bounces; it also handles delivery notifications. While I appreciate the advantages of generalizing a protocol, delivery notifications are, at least in my opinion, a solution looking for a problem, and their addition to the DSN standard definitely made it much more complicated than it would have needed to be without them. It sets up *three* new IANA registries, which thankfully you can mostly ignore because you rarely need to use anything other than one or two values for those fields. But that means yet more canonical data sources to refer to when you try to parse the things. Basically, there is a whole bunch of additional cruft that it accumulates due to its desire to be able to handle all sorts of delivery notifications (not just bounces, which are the real problem that needed solving) through all sorts of very bizarre gatewaying situations that are only rarely encountered in the wild. While I am sure that some of this would come in handy if you ran one of those weird gateways, I'm inclined to think that a protocol that would simplify a bit better for the 99% case would be superior. > The only real issue I have with it is that I can not find everything I > need in one place. There are a few companion documents and I find it > clumsy to track down details when I need them. Yup, that's a big one. > And then there is Sendmail.... sendmail actually isn't the MTA I would complain about in this space. If you really want a standardized bounce format, the MTA that you're never going to be able to get to join the fold is likely qmail, because Dan Bernstein took one look at DSN and said "no way in hell." Frankly, I'm sympathetic. I think it's an ugly protocol, and qmail's bounce format at least has the significant advantages of simplicity and clarity. I guess one of the points where I differ with Dan is that I'm willing to implement an inferior protocol if it helps things work together; software exists to hide complexity, and now that I've written a DSN bounce generator, I can always just reuse that one and not worry about how annoying the syntax is. But in an ideal world.... -- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) From list-managers-owner Wed Mar 15 15:51:13 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA13827; Wed, 15 Mar 2000 15:38:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from mta2.snfc21.pbi.net (mta2.snfc21.pbi.net [206.13.28.123]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA13820 for ; Wed, 15 Mar 2000 15:37:57 -0800 (PST) Received: from SeaPort1 ([63.196.185.150]) by mta2.snfc21.pbi.net (Sun Internet Mail Server sims.3.5.1999.09.16.21.57.p8) with SMTP id <0FRH009SJM34R1@mta2.snfc21.pbi.net> for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Wed, 15 Mar 2000 15:47:28 -0800 (PST) Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 15:55:56 -0800 From: Dave Reinhardt Subject: newbie question To: Majordomo ListMgrs Message-id: <38D0230C6E.BC38DAVE@mail.pacbell.net> MIME-version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Becky! ver 1.25.07 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I am new to list management. I do not even have one up yet. I am looking for a list manager that will use a text file for source of eMail addresses. Is ther one or do they all do this? Thank You Dave From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 16 00:21:13 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id AAA18481; Thu, 16 Mar 2000 00:07:10 -0800 (PST) Received: from listes.cru.fr (listes.cru.fr [195.220.94.165]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id AAA18474 for ; Thu, 16 Mar 2000 00:07:03 -0800 (PST) Received: from home.cru.fr (home.cru.fr [195.220.94.79]) by listes.cru.fr (8.9.2/jtpda-5.3.2) with ESMTP id JAA04678 for ; Thu, 16 Mar 2000 09:19:59 +0100 (MET) Received: from home.cru.fr (IDENT:salaun@localhost.cru.fr [127.0.0.1]) by home.cru.fr (8.9.3/jtpda-5.3.1) with ESMTP id JAA09910 for ; Thu, 16 Mar 2000 09:19:58 +0100 Message-Id: <200003160819.JAA09910@home.cru.fr> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0.3 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Use of a database with list server software In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 15 Mar 2000 15:41:18 GMT." <4.2.2.20000315145516.065831b0@post.openworld.co.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 09:19:58 +0100 From: Olivier Salaun - CRU Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Alistair Formby wrote : > I have been looking for a solution to my problem for quite a while now and > I haven't come up with an adequate one. I have looked at several large > and expensive solutions like ListServ and other smaller players like > majordomo to handle the job for me. Sympa relies on a DBMS to manage lists' subscribers. It uses Perl DBI standardized API and therefore may work with as different DBMS as MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle or Sybase. > So far I have come to the conclusion that majordomo may be my best bet as > I currently use majordomo and am familiar with Perl. I also like the idea > of using PHP to dynamically drive the front end. The front-end is written in Perl to benefit from sympa's API ; use of FastCGI provides good performences. We use our home-made templates to separate the code from presentation. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Olivier Salaun Sympa: http://listes.cru.fr/sympa/ Comite Reseaux des Universites France From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 16 01:36:26 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id BAA19113; Thu, 16 Mar 2000 01:14:09 -0800 (PST) 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 BAA19106 for ; Thu, 16 Mar 2000 01:14:03 -0800 (PST) Received: (from twp@localhost) by ma-1.rootsweb.com (8.10.0.Beta10/8.10.0.Beta10) id e2G9QnI57940; Thu, 16 Mar 2000 04:26:49 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 04:26:49 -0500 From: Tim Pierce To: Russ Allbery Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: DSNs are complex Message-ID: <20000316042649.P48716@ma-1.rootsweb.com> References: <0FRH00113ED7RH@eListX.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.7us In-Reply-To: Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Wed, Mar 15, 2000 at 02:59:47PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: > > It requires both full-blown MIME parsing and full-blown header parsing > (which is probably reasonable these days, but certainly has slowed its > adoption -- MIME parsing has only in the past year or two really become > something I would want to rely on). I was a little shocked to find that no one seems to have yet written a general-purpose MIME parsing library in C. Having one would probably encourage more MIME awareness in other tools. In the absence of anything else, I wrote a program to parse enough MIME to extract the text/plain portion from multipart/mixed bodies, but it would definitely be useful to expand this to an all-singing- all-dancing MIME manipulation tool. I just can't figure out what the API should look like. (Maybe that's why no one else has done it.) -- Regards, Tim Pierce RootsWeb.com lead system admonsterator and Chief Hacking Officer From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 16 07:06:16 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA25919; Thu, 16 Mar 2000 06:57:06 -0800 (PST) Received: from one.elistx.com (one.elistx.com [209.116.252.130]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id GAA25909 for ; Thu, 16 Mar 2000 06:56:59 -0800 (PST) Received: from two.elistx.com (ppp.elistx.com [209.116.254.209]) by eListX.com (PMDF V5.2-32 #43584) with ESMTP id <0FRI001CDSWURH@eListX.com> for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Thu, 16 Mar 2000 10:12:31 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 10:09:42 -0500 From: James M Galvin Subject: Re: DSNs are complex In-reply-to: "15 Mar 2000 14:59:47 PST." <"ylzorzc00s.fsf"@windlord.stanford.edu> To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Reply-to: James M Galvin Message-id: <0FRI001CESWURH@eListX.com> Content-id: <169.953219382.0@two.elistx.com> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: multipart/mixed; boundary="----- =_aaaaaaaaaa0" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk ------- =_aaaaaaaaaa0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-ID: <169.953219382.1@two.elistx.com> From Russ Allbery: Basically, there is a whole bunch of additional cruft that it accumulates due to its desire to be able to handle all sorts of delivery notifications (not just bounces, which are the real problem that needed solving) through all sorts of very bizarre gatewaying situations that are only rarely encountered in the wild. While I am sure that some of this would come in handy if you ran one of those weird gateways, I'm inclined to think that a protocol that would simplify a bit better for the 99% case would be superior. Speaking of bizarre gatewaying situations, I'm disappointed by the number of software packages that get DSNs wrong. I've got a parser for DSNs and I've got 10 or so special cases that I have to check for. Okay, so I agree with you, it is unnecessarily complex; why else would people get it wrong. > And then there is Sendmail.... sendmail actually isn't the MTA I would complain about in this space. If you really want a standardized bounce format, the MTA that you're never going to be able to get to join the fold is likely qmail, because Dan Bernstein took one look at DSN and said "no way in hell." What I meant by Sendmail is that it's really in a class of its own. As freeware it's the premiere example of, "why should I update since I'm not having any problems?" Bind is another good example. There will be old out-of-date versions for a very long time to come. As far as qmail and Dan Bernstein are considered, sometimes saying nothing is the most you can say. Jim ------- =_aaaaaaaaaa0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-ID: <169.953219382.2@two.elistx.com> Content-Description: Contact Information -- James M. Galvin, Ph.D. Principal eList eXpress LLC +1 410.549.4619 607 Trixsam Road +1 561.619.2450 FAX Sykesville, MD 21784 http://www.elistx.com Delivering your email, your way. There are only two ways to live your life; one as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is. - Albert Einstein ------- =_aaaaaaaaaa0-- From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 16 09:02:21 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA26872; Thu, 16 Mar 2000 08:38:35 -0800 (PST) Received: from windlord.stanford.edu (windlord.Stanford.EDU [171.64.12.23]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id IAA26865 for ; Thu, 16 Mar 2000 08:38:30 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 8882 invoked by uid 50); 16 Mar 2000 16:51:33 -0000 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: DSNs are complex References: <0FRI001CESWURH@eListX.com> In-Reply-To: James M Galvin's message of "Thu, 16 Mar 2000 10:09:42 -0500" From: Russ Allbery Organization: The Eyrie Date: 16 Mar 2000 08:51:33 -0800 Message-ID: Lines: 10 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0802 (Gnus v5.8.2) XEmacs/21.1 (Biscayne) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk James M Galvin writes: > As far as qmail and Dan Bernstein are considered, sometimes saying > nothing is the most you can say. qmail runs our DSN-compliant bounce generator quite well, with nice rate limiting and throttling under load. :) -- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 16 21:07:34 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA04390; Thu, 16 Mar 2000 21:05:45 -0800 (PST) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA04383 for ; Thu, 16 Mar 2000 21:05:41 -0800 (PST) Received: from [209.239.169.197] (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id VAA33856 ; Thu, 16 Mar 2000 21:21:51 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 21:18:49 -0800 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: sendmail 8.10 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk anyone played with it yet? If so, what do you think? -- -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Tue Mar 21 11:51:31 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA14731; Tue, 21 Mar 2000 11:46:27 -0800 (PST) Received: from postal.remarq.com (postal.remarq.com [207.126.105.197]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA14724 for ; Tue, 21 Mar 2000 11:46:08 -0800 (PST) Received: from remarq.com (sno141.remarq.com [209.133.82.141]) by postal.remarq.com (8.9.3/8.9.0) with ESMTP id MAA25124 for ; Tue, 21 Mar 2000 12:00:05 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <38D7D3A2.9DDBD1F8@remarq.com> Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2000 11:55:15 -0800 From: Eric Leach X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en] (Win98; I) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: list-managers-digest@greatcircle.com Subject: Mail Lists on RemarQ Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------765695858754A63F0DAD0E6D" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------765695858754A63F0DAD0E6D Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Hello. As you already know, we have incorporated support for mail lists through our web site at http://www.remarq.com/ . Up until now we have been addressing the concerns of list owners on an as needed basis. We would like to address list owner's concerns in a centralized forum, so I am posting this here. This message covers the functionality of mail lists on RemarQ in 4 sections: 1) Background on RemarQ and our current approach to Usenet newsgroups and custom groups, 2) Approach to public mail lists, 3) Benefits to users and 4) Contacting us. 1) RemarQ currently provides Internet discussion services (Usenet newsgroups and custom message boards) via the RemarQ web site and co-branded partner web sites. Currently people can use our web interface to search or browse a directory of message boards to find a group they are interested in and read the discussions in that group. To participate in the group (post a message) they must register with a valid email address. RemarQ confirms users' email addresses before allowing them to post messages. 2) We support public mail lists in a similar way, but with several key changes. A) Mail lists have been added to our searchable index and our directory, so people are able to find them in the same way they find Usenet newsgroups or custom groups. We obtained our “list of lists” exclusively from Stephanie daSilva's Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists. If your list is not on PAML and you would like to have us include your list please email mail_lists@remarq.com. You can visit our mail list suggestion page http://www.remarq.com/suggestmailinglist.q and enter your mail list information directly into our form to suggest a new list or update an existing list. If your list is on PAML and you do not want us to include your list please send email to mail_lists@remarq.com. B) Mail lists are designated as "subscription required" and RemarQ performs only the client end function of a mail list, leaving the subscription approval process in the hands of the list owner. To access a mail list users have to subscribe to the list. Only registered users with valid email addresses are able to subscribe to a list. RemarQ simplifies the subscription process by creating a unique email address for the user and then sending a subscribe email to the list on their behalf. The user cannot view list content until we receive confirmation from the list owner that the user is successfully subscribed. C) RemarQ does not archive mail lists. Once a user is successfully subscribed, they are able to read discussions from the date of their subscription approval. If the user is unsubscribed from the list they are not allowed to see any messages in the list from that point forward. RemarQ simplifies unsubscribing for users by placing an "unsubscribe" button in the user interface. E) Users who are subscribed to a list can post messages to that list via RemarQ. RemarQ will send messages to the list on the user's behalf. The user's email address will appear with their messages, so they have an identity in the list and so people can respond directly to them. F) RemarQ does not publish the member list of any mail list. Based on the response of list owners, clicking the member tab in mail lists now surfaces a confidentiality message. Email addresses of list members appear only if a subscribed member of a list clicks the sender’s name in the header of a message. This functions exactly as if the user had subscribed through a mail client. 3) We believe that making it possible to read and participate in email lists via the RemarQ interface has 4 main user benefits: + Makes it easier for you to subscribe and unsubscribe to a mailing list + Keeps your email inbox from being overwhelmed with mail list messages + Allows you to better manage your list participation using RemarQ features like discussion threading, watched discussions, ignored discussions, and searching within a group. + Helps promote access to mail lists 4) In implementing support for mail lists we have consulted with Alan Schwartz (author of Mailing Lists published by O'Reilly) and Stephanie da Silva (owner of PAML). Our intention is to create a community that is both convenient for users and respectful of list owners. Consequently, we are always looking for feedback from list members and owners alike. Please send us any suggestions that might help us improve our service to the mail list community to mail lists@remarq.com. Thank you, Barry Saik, Director of Product Management Eric Leach, Content Programming and Web Support --------------765695858754A63F0DAD0E6D Content-Type: text/x-vcard; charset=us-ascii; name="eleach.vcf" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Description: Card for Eric Leach Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="eleach.vcf" begin:vcard n:Leach;Eric tel;work:408-817-1921 x-mozilla-html:FALSE url:http://www.remarq.com org:RemarQ Communities, Inc.;Marketing version:2.1 email;internet:eleach@remarq.com adr;quoted-printable:;;55 South Market Street, Suite 1080=0D=0A;San Jose;California;95113;USA fn:Eric Leach end:vcard --------------765695858754A63F0DAD0E6D-- From list-managers-owner Wed Mar 22 10:56:06 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA01192; Wed, 22 Mar 2000 10:38:30 -0800 (PST) Received: from larryboy.graphics.cornell.edu (larryboy.graphics.cornell.edu [128.84.247.48]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA01185 for ; Wed, 22 Mar 2000 10:38:24 -0800 (PST) Received: from larryboy.graphics.cornell.edu (mkc@localhost) by larryboy.graphics.cornell.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id NAA24998 for ; Wed, 22 Mar 2000 13:52:30 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from mkc@larryboy.graphics.cornell.edu) Message-Id: <200003221852.NAA24998@larryboy.graphics.cornell.edu> To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: mass s*bscr*be attempt Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 13:52:30 -0500 From: Mitch Collinsworth Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Early this morning I received a couple of (possibly forged, possibly not) mass s*bscr*be attempts from "Spam Man" . Each contained a long list of -request and other list admin addresses in the To: header and a multipart/alternative (blech) body containing: s*bscr*be * india times The initial Received: headers look like: Received: from byronnz.demon.co.uk ([212.229.93.210] helo=byrons) by anchor-post-31.mail.demon.net with smtp (Exim 2.12 #1) id 12Xfce-000LQo-0V; Wed, 22 Mar 2000 07:32:09 +0000 You may want to check your logs for similar stuff. -Mitch From list-managers-owner Wed Mar 22 13:40:03 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA03155; Wed, 22 Mar 2000 13:27:23 -0800 (PST) Received: from larryboy.graphics.cornell.edu (larryboy.graphics.cornell.edu [128.84.247.48]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA03148 for ; Wed, 22 Mar 2000 13:27:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from larryboy.graphics.cornell.edu (mkc@localhost) by larryboy.graphics.cornell.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id QAA26090; Wed, 22 Mar 2000 16:41:21 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from mkc@larryboy.graphics.cornell.edu) Message-Id: <200003222141.QAA26090@larryboy.graphics.cornell.edu> To: "Joe Ferguson" cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: mass s*bscr*be attempt In-Reply-To: Message from "Joe Ferguson" of "Wed, 22 Mar 2000 14:24:01 MST." Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 16:41:21 -0500 From: Mitch Collinsworth Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >Pardon my ignorance - but what would this do? What was his intended result? > >> Early this morning I received a couple of (possibly forged, possibly not) >> mass s*bscr*be attempts from "Spam Man" . Well the possibilities that occur to me, none of which are new: - It may have been forged by someone else, as an attempt to mail-bomb the real owner of this address with the content of hundreds of lists. - It could be a spammer collecting e-mail addresses. - It could be another one of those "helpful" web sites that collects your list content and makes it available on their web site. There are probably more that I haven't thought of. In any case it's pretty unlikely to be someone honestly interested in reading about a long list of carefully alphabetized but unrelated subjects... -Mitch From list-managers-owner Wed Mar 22 17:24:30 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA05517; Wed, 22 Mar 2000 17:06:56 -0800 (PST) Received: from claude.akamai.com (walrus.ne.mediaone.net [24.147.22.188]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id RAA05503 for ; Wed, 22 Mar 2000 17:06:50 -0800 (PST) Received: (from dshaw@localhost) by claude.akamai.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) id UAA05033; Wed, 22 Mar 2000 20:23:50 -0500 Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 20:23:50 -0500 From: David Shaw To: Eric Leach Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Mail Lists on RemarQ Message-ID: <20000322202350.G3611@akamai.com> Mail-Followup-To: Eric Leach , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM References: <38D7D3A2.9DDBD1F8@remarq.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit User-Agent: Mutt/1.1.2i In-Reply-To: <38D7D3A2.9DDBD1F8@remarq.com>; from eleach@remarq.com on Tue, Mar 21, 2000 at 11:55:15AM -0800 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 Gibbous (92% of Full) X-Pointless-Random-Number: 182 X-Silly-Header: It sure is. Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Tue, Mar 21, 2000 at 11:55:15AM -0800, Eric Leach wrote: > A) Mail lists have been added to our searchable index and our > directory, > > so people are able to find them in the same way they find Usenet > newsgroups or custom groups. We obtained our “list of lists” > exclusively > > from Stephanie daSilva's Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists. If your list > > is not on PAML and you would like to have us include your list please > email mail_lists@remarq.com. You can visit our mail list suggestion page > > http://www.remarq.com/suggestmailinglist.q and enter your mail list > information directly into our form to suggest a new list or update an > existing list. If your list is on PAML and you do not want us to include > > your list please send email to mail_lists@remarq.com. Opt out. Ah yes, that works well. "If you don't want to get any more of our *targeted* special emails just for you then just send a message to ...." > C) RemarQ does not archive mail lists. Once a user is successfully > subscribed, they are able to read discussions from the date of their > subscription approval. If the user is unsubscribed from the list they > are not allowed to see any messages in the list from that point forward. Okay, say I subscribe to a list, and then don't read for a month. If I read then, do I get the past month? How about if I read two months later? A year? You may be restricting people on what they can read, but in what way is this not archiving? How long do you keep files containing list messages on disk? 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 Thu Mar 23 08:06:17 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA17019; Thu, 23 Mar 2000 08:00:15 -0800 (PST) Received: from postal.remarq.com (postal.remarq.com [207.126.105.197]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA16957 for ; Thu, 23 Mar 2000 08:00:02 -0800 (PST) Received: from remarq.com (sno141.remarq.com [209.133.82.141]) by postal.remarq.com (8.9.3/8.9.0) with ESMTP id IAA08505; Thu, 23 Mar 2000 08:14:16 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <38DA41B3.3B03847A@remarq.com> Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 08:09:23 -0800 From: Eric Leach X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en] (Win98; I) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: David Shaw CC: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Mail Lists on RemarQ References: <38D7D3A2.9DDBD1F8@remarq.com> <20000322202350.G3611@akamai.com> Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------89CF56C73A94667736280A10" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------89CF56C73A94667736280A10 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit David Shaw wrote: *You may be restricting people on what they can read, but in what way is this not archiving? How long do you keep files containing list messages on disk?* Text messages generally expire within 60 to 90 days, depending on the volume of the group. This is true for either usenet newsgroups or mail lists on our site. Binary messages will expire in about 7 days. When you subscribe to the group, you see messages as soon as the subscription is approved by the list, but if you wait six months to read any messages, you may only see things from the last 90 days or so. So we do not archive in the sense that we don't save messages indefinitely for later retrieval. Eric David Shaw wrote: > C) RemarQ does not archive mail lists. Once a user is successfully subscribed, they are able to read discussions from the date of their subscription approval. If the user is unsubscribed from the list they are not allowed to see any messages in the list from that point forward. > > Okay, say I subscribe to a list, and then don't read for a month. If > I read then, do I get the past month? How about if I read two months > later? A year? > > You may be restricting people on what they can read, but in what way > is this not archiving? How long do you keep files containing list > messages on disk? > > 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 --------------89CF56C73A94667736280A10 Content-Type: text/x-vcard; charset=us-ascii; name="eleach.vcf" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Description: Card for Eric Leach Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="eleach.vcf" begin:vcard n:Leach;Eric tel;work:408-817-1921 x-mozilla-html:FALSE url:http://www.remarq.com org:RemarQ Communities, Inc.;Marketing version:2.1 email;internet:eleach@remarq.com adr;quoted-printable:;;55 South Market Street, Suite 1080=0D=0A;San Jose;California;95113;USA fn:Eric Leach end:vcard --------------89CF56C73A94667736280A10-- From list-managers-owner Sun Mar 26 07:36:34 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA29206; Sun, 26 Mar 2000 07:21:48 -0800 (PST) Received: from myrealbox.com ([192.108.102.201]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id HAA29199 for ; Sun, 26 Mar 2000 07:21:41 -0800 (PST) Received: from 0d8xk [206.66.213.175] by myrealbox.com with Novonyx SMTP Server $Revision: 2.25 $; Sun, 26 Mar 2000 08:36:28 -0700 (MDT) From: "Alan S. Harrell" To: list-managers-digest@greatcircle.com Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2000 09:35:50 -0600 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: Quoted-printable Subject: Re: Mail Lists on RemarQ Message-ID: <38DDD9F6.28651.CDD89D@localhost> In-reply-to: <38D7D3A2.9DDBD1F8@remarq.com> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 21 Mar 2000, at 11:55, Eric Leach wrote: > A) Mail lists have been added to our searchable index and our > directory, so people are able to find them in the same way they > find Usenet newsgroups or custom groups. We obtained our =93list of > lists=94 exclusively from Stephanie daSilva's Publicly Accessible > Mailing Lists. If your list is not on PAML and you would like to > have us include your list please email mail_lists@remarq.com. You > can visit our mail list suggestion page > http://www.remarq.com/suggestmailinglist.q and enter your mail list > information directly into our form to suggest a new list or update > an existing list. If your list is on PAML and you do not want us to > include your list please send email to mail_lists@remarq.com. Herein belies a profound ignorance on your part in the basic differences of the USENET newsgroup forum and the mailing list forum. You are attempting to view them both from the same philosophy and this just cannot be accepted by the owners of mailing lists. USENET newsgroups are impersonal vehicles where third party archiving and indexing and other servers do not intrude on any individual's rights. Mailing lists are *owned* by individuals that put both their time and/or money into the efforts involved in maintaining these forums for their subscribers. Hence, by indexing the fruits of another's labors, you are stealing from the owners. > B) Mail lists are designated as "subscription required" and RemarQ > performs only the client end function of a mail list, leaving the > subscription approval process in the hands of the list owner. To > access a mail list users have to subscribe to the list. Only > registered users with valid email addresses are able to subscribe > to a list. RemarQ simplifies the subscription process by creating a > unique email address for the user and then sending a subscribe > email to the list on their behalf. The user cannot view list > content until we receive confirmation from the list owner that the > user is successfully subscribed. > > C) RemarQ does not archive mail lists. Once a user is successfully > subscribed, they are able to read discussions from the date of > their subscription approval. If the user is unsubscribed from the > list they are not allowed to see any messages in the list from that > point forward. > > RemarQ simplifies unsubscribing for users by placing an > "unsubscribe" button in the user interface. List owners do_NOT_want you involved in the administration of their mailing lists. A third party can ONLY involve themselves in the administration of mailing list when they have the express permission of the listowner. > E) Users who are subscribed to a list can post messages to that > list via RemarQ. RemarQ will send messages to the list on the > user's behalf. The user's email address will appear with their > messages, so they have an identity in the list and so people can > respond directly to them. No, they may not. No list owner of any experience would ever allow this, nor any other form of administration unless as stated previously, prior permission was granted. Had you been on this list before, you would have noted that many of the administrators here have placed filters blocking your requests and others are just deleting upon receipt. Rather than doing your users any favors, you are doing them a grave disservice by misleading them into thinking they are able to administer to their mailing lists. > F) RemarQ does not publish the member list of any mail list. Based > on the response of list owners, clicking the member tab in mail > lists now surfaces a confidentiality message. Email addresses of > list members appear only if a subscribed member of a list clicks > the sender=92s name in the header of a message. This functions > exactly as if the user had subscribed through a mail client. We are not convinced. RemarQ's actions are highly distrustful and suspect. No site's Privacy Statements can be believed when that site has banner ads of third party sponsors. The privacy of the users shall always take a back seat to the desires of paying sponsors. Any other view can only be considered Internet naivete. > 3) > We believe that making it possible to read and participate in email > lists via the RemarQ interface has 4 main user benefits: Arrogance on your part. The responsibility to the subscriber rests solely with the listowner and not RemarQ or any other third party. Your "beliefs" are without foundation. > 4) In implementing support for mail lists we have consulted with > Alan Schwartz (author of Mailing Lists published by O'Reilly) and > Stephanie da Silva (owner of PAML). Our intention is to create a > community that is both convenient for users and respectful of list > owners. Consequently, we are always looking for feedback from list > members and owners alike. Please send us any suggestions that might > help us improve our service to the mail list community to mail > lists@remarq.com. Neither Alan Schwartz nor Stephanie da Silva owns my lists and they have absolutely no say on how I conduct my lists. In point of fact, if this is what Schwartz is truly recommending to you, and we have our doubts, then his credibility has dropped considerably. And as concerns the PAML site, it would not surprise me that this opinion was bought. Instead of lecturing us, stop and listen to us. In order for RemarQ to properly provide mailing list services to their users, they MUST first obtain in writing, express permission from the owners of the mailing lists. You cannot take information from public announcement sites such as PAML for your purposes. The listowner listed their lists with these announcement services for their own purposes and did not do so with RemarQ's benefits in mind. Assumptions to the contrary cannot be allowed. Your actions have been no less than thievery. You are stealing from the listowners that which they have built from their own hard work and often, as in my case, their own money. RemarQ should offer to remunerate any listowner to which damages have been incurred. RemarQ is becoming a site held in great revulsion by many of the most influential netizens of our Internet. In my position, I often have the need and opportunity to recommend USENET WWW gateway sites to my subscribers and I have made it my crusade in the past few months to steer all of them away from RemarQ. We strongly recommend that RemarQ heed our advice. Alan S. Harrell Administrator@ASHLists.org http://www.ashlists.org/ From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 27 10:38:36 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA14090; Mon, 27 Mar 2000 10:35:43 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA14083 for ; Mon, 27 Mar 2000 10:35:35 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA54324; Mon, 27 Mar 2000 10:50:17 -0800 (PST) To: SPAM-L@peach.ease.lsoft.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Cc: abuse@topica.com, abuse@egroups.com, dru@egroups.com, postmaster@paypal.com, delph@netmeridian.com, abuse@earthlink.net Subject: MISC: New pyramid scheme involving PAYPAL.COM, TOPICA.COM, EGROUPS.COM Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 10:50:17 -0800 Message-ID: <54322.954183017@monkeys.com> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk The following interesting new spamvertizment dropped into my spamtraps yesterday. It appears that Internet pyramid schemers are getting more sophisticated. This one is hoping to get his victims to pay him via credit card payments made via PayPal.com. I guess that puts this scheme into the realm of wire fraud, yes? Oh yea... and he suggests to his victims that they should snoop around on www.egroups.com and www.topica.com for lists of additional sub-level victim e-mail addresses that THEY can then spam. Spam sent via earthlink, of course. The spammer's real web page seems to be www.link-me-up.com. =============================================================================== >From davewilson@about.com Sun Mar 26 16:51:-- 2000 Received: from gull.prod.itd.earthlink.net (gull.prod.itd.earthlink.net [207.217.121.85]) by -------.--- (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id -------- for <------@----------.--->; Sun, 26 Mar 2000 16:51:-- -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (sdn-ar-001ohcantP255.dialsprint.net [158.252.4.17]) by gull.prod.itd.earthlink.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id -------- for <------@----------.--->; Sun, 26 Mar 2000 16:53:-- -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <---------------------@---------------------------> From: "David Wilson" To: ------@----------.---" <------@----------.---> Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2000 19:56:-- -0500 Subject: Yabadabbado Reply-To: davewilson@about.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 The Great Yabadabbado Original Just Got Better! I am the Yabadabbado list owner. We started the promotion program to grow our Safelist. It made a lot of people money! Now it has been improved, and is moderated! It is making even more money legally, honestly, and in control! If you are in already, use the new wording for your ads. If not, why not join today! Let's Chase Away The Poor Man Blues and Have Some Real Fun! And what's More Fun Than Making Money On The Internet? Help us grow our Yabadabbado Safelist and you will Make thousands of dollars in A Matter of weeks! Here's a perfectly legal way to make hundreds of dollars this month and every month thereafter. Here's how it works. 1. Go to PayPal (join if you haven't yet) at https://secure.paypal.com/refer/pal=drwilson%40themail.com and "beam" $5 to the e-mail address in the #1 position on the list below. Also, "beam" $2 to the yabadabbado safelist moderator at maryann@cirigliano.com The moderator will invite you to join the list when the $2 has been received via PayPal. This keeps the program honest and increases profits and insures growth for all! As a member of Yabadabbado Safelist, you will be able to post to the entire group (soon to be $10,000 strong!) once per day. This is the legal service that you are paying $5 for. When you join PayPal, you will get $5.00 placed in your PayPal account. So participating in this program costs you only $2.00 - $2 to make thousands! What a bargain! AND, you will be able to use PayPal to accept credit card payments for all your other Internet businesses! 2. After you have done that, delete the e-mail address in the #1 position,move the other four e-mail addresses up and enter your e-mail address in the #5 position, then copy the new list and message just as it is and mail it to at least 100 other e-mail addresses. (use the spamfree safelists at www.egroups.com and www.topica.com ) In fact, mail to as many people as you can! Keep mailing until PayPal notifies you that 10 people have joined under you. This won't take long! 3. When your name reaches the #1 position, you could possibly have approximately 10,000 people sending you $5 = $50,000, and because the list is now moderated, no one will be able to circumvent the rules! You can join as often as you like! This is perfectly moral and legal. You are selling information and a service for $5! Don't reinvent the wheel, leave the letter as is except for the new list! Have a great time with this! It works, and it's fun! Here's the list. Make sure you send the $5 to the person in position #1 AND $2 to the list moderator. #1 danwmc1@aol.com #2 majka@cni2.net #3 earnmegabucks@usa.net #4 workshop@hottubhammocks.com #5 drwilson@themail.com You will also make $1,000 from PayPal referrals if you put your PayPal URL in this message! You can do this as often as you like! Remember that cheating will never be blessed! Resist temptation. If you abuse the listing, you will be dropped from Yabadabbado. Do the right thing, and wait for the beams of cash to come your way! Promote this program for fun among all your e-mail associates. It will not interfere with any other program you're in! And use some of the money for a good cause! Have a great time! We will make every effort on our part to REMOVE and BLOCK your e-mail address if you do not want to receive our e-mails for using our service!! All we ask is that you use our remove service and work with us!! AGAIN, PLEASE WORK WITH US!! You Can Remove yourself at http://www.link-me-up.com/ Warm Regards, Angelo From list-managers-owner Tue Mar 28 12:52:13 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA29669; Tue, 28 Mar 2000 12:31:54 -0800 (PST) Received: from waltz.rahul.net (waltz.rahul.net [192.160.13.9]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA29662 for ; Tue, 28 Mar 2000 12:31:50 -0800 (PST) Received: by waltz.rahul.net (Postfix, from userid 511) id 6555799C8B; Tue, 28 Mar 2000 12:46:50 -0800 (PST) To: list-managers-digest@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Mail Lists on RemarQ In-reply-to: <38D7D3A2.9DDBD1F8@remarq.com> Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 12:46:49 -0800 From: Michelle Dick Message-Id: <20000328204650.6555799C8B@waltz.rahul.net> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Eric wrote: > 4) > In implementing support for mail lists we have consulted with Alan > Schwartz (author of Mailing Lists published by O'Reilly) and Stephanie > da Silva (owner of PAML). Our intention is to create a community that is > > both convenient for users and respectful of list owners. My list is available in a publicly-viewable threaded live web interface, funded through banner advertising. The revenues from this advertising acrue to me so that I may continue offering the list to the public. List members who wish a threaded web interface instead of email have this available to them currently. Is it respectful of list owners for you to take that same web content, repackage it so that my advertising does not appear, and instead replace that advertising with your own? Robbing my list of revenue? > Consequently, > we are always looking for feedback from list members and owners alike. > Please send us any suggestions that might help us improve our service to > the mail list community to mail lists@remarq.com. Please allow me to configure your interface so that it displays MY banner advertising instead of yours. I can provide the javascript needed. Thank you. -- Michelle Dick artemis@rahul.net East Palo Alto, CA From list-managers-owner Tue Mar 28 14:07:32 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA00554; Tue, 28 Mar 2000 14:05:30 -0800 (PST) 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 OAA00543 for ; Tue, 28 Mar 2000 14:05:22 -0800 (PST) Received: from [17.216.27.198] (A17-216-27-198.apple.com [17.216.27.198]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id OAA57962 ; Tue, 28 Mar 2000 14:22:49 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <20000328204650.6555799C8B@waltz.rahul.net> References: <20000328204650.6555799C8B@waltz.rahul.net> Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 14:19:13 -0800 To: Michelle Dick , list-managers-digest@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Mail Lists on RemarQ Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >Is it respectful of list owners for you to take that same web content, >repackage it so that my advertising does not appear, and instead >replace that advertising with your own? Robbing my list of revenue? I'd also love to know what anti-spammer/anti-harvesting protections you make for the e-mail addresses you publish. Unlike Michelle, I don't banner advertise my archives, since I'm not worried about revenue. but I categorically refuse ALL attempts to archive my lists, because anyone who archives my lists where they're not under control puts that information onto the web in a way I can't police. I don't want my lists archived by anyone, period. Especially without my permission, and I have sent out a couple of cease and desists over the last year or so. And it's because I'm responsible for protecting my users from the spam harvesters out there, and I've yet to be convinced anyone actually protects their data to my satisfaction (heck *I* don't protect my data to my satisfaction yet, but I'm working on it) I get especially honked off when I offer my users a given level of service and expectations about access and privacy, and the find out someone else has just gone off and borrowed my content and stuffed it onto the net for me. Without asking. And, of course, if I ever do decide to do banner ads or some other kind of subscription/revenue thing, I wouldn't be happy to find that my content is in competition with myself from some other site without my permission. -- -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Tue Mar 28 22:08:54 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id WAA04567; Tue, 28 Mar 2000 22:01:44 -0800 (PST) Received: from listes.cru.fr (listes.cru.fr [195.220.94.165]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id WAA04560 for ; Tue, 28 Mar 2000 22:01:38 -0800 (PST) Received: from home.cru.fr (home.cru.fr [195.220.94.79]) by listes.cru.fr (8.9.2/jtpda-5.3.2) with ESMTP id IAA17536 ; Wed, 29 Mar 2000 08:16:52 +0200 (MEST) Received: from home.cru.fr (IDENT:aumont@localhost.cru.fr [127.0.0.1]) by home.cru.fr (8.9.3/jtpda-5.3.1) with ESMTP id IAA26729 ; Wed, 29 Mar 2000 08:16:52 +0200 Message-Id: <200003290616.IAA26729@home.cru.fr> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0.3 To: Chuq Von Rospach Cc: Michelle Dick , list-managers-digest@GreatCircle.COM Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Subject: anti-spammer/anti-harvesting protections In-reply-to: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 14:19:13 -0800. Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 08:16:52 +0200 From: Aumont - Comite Reseaux des Universites Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > I'd also love to know what anti-spammer/anti-harvesting protections > you make for the e-mail addresses you publish. The harvesting of emails in the web is one of biggest source of spam. Let me describe what we do in the Sympa's web interface for pretection. -1- In order to access to archives, users have to post a form. Because most robots don't follow post links this is a great protection. -2- Archives access are controled by sympa it self (not by apache) so the list config can specify that the archive is restricted to subscribers (or to owners, or intranet users or any other definition). This is a very effective protection. Now we do not need anymore harvester poisoning tool. We still use at the root of how web server a configuration taht reject some kind of browers. (http://mosa.unity.ncsu.edu/~brabec/antispam.html). Serge Aumont From list-managers-owner Tue Mar 28 22:23:54 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id WAA04644; Tue, 28 Mar 2000 22:17:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id WAA04637 for ; Tue, 28 Mar 2000 22:17:21 -0800 (PST) Received: from [209.239.169.197] (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id WAA29548 ; Tue, 28 Mar 2000 22:35:55 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <200003290616.IAA26729@home.cru.fr> References: <200003290616.IAA26729@home.cru.fr> Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 22:31:59 -0800 To: Aumont - Comite Reseaux des Universites , Chuq Von Rospach From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: anti-spammer/anti-harvesting protections Cc: Michelle Dick , list-managers-digest@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 8:16 AM +0200 3/29/2000, Aumont - Comite Reseaux des Universites wrote: >-2- Archives access are controled by sympa it self (not by apache) so > the list config can specify that the archive is restricted to > subscribers (or to owners, or intranet users or any other > definition). This is a very effective protection. Thanks, Serge. Doing this is one fo the exact reasons I'm looking to move my lists to Sympa. -- -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Wed Mar 29 08:26:26 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA12226; Wed, 29 Mar 2000 08:13:36 -0800 (PST) Received: from smtp-relay.noc.dsvr.net (smtp-relay.noc.dsvr.net [212.69.192.4]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA12219 for ; Wed, 29 Mar 2000 08:13:30 -0800 (PST) Received: from [192.168.10.19] (helo=picken.dsvr.co.uk) by smtp-relay.noc.dsvr.net with esmtp (Exim 3.13 #1) id 12aLKF-000EQE-00 for List-Managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 29 Mar 2000 17:28:11 +0100 Received: from bigfoot.com (ABD0D053.ipt.aol.com [171.208.208.83]) by picken.dsvr.co.uk (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA23952 for ; Wed, 29 Mar 2000 17:28:43 +0100 Message-ID: <38E22E58.729389C6@bigfoot.com> Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 17:24:56 +0100 From: John Picken X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en-gb] (Win95; I) X-Accept-Language: en,fr MIME-Version: 1.0 To: List-Managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Web Harvesting precautions, List-Managers-Digest V9 #55 References: <200003290900.BAA05900@honor.greatcircle.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Web Harvesting precautions I am fairly new to managing lists with 3 currently running. I am setting up digests and also want to protect my list members. I am using Majordomo and have set who to closed and subscritions to either open,open+confirm or closed depending on the list, never auto. All have restricted post to list or list + digest. Should I be doing more to protect members Email addresses? I am now starting to get the digests working properly, and I will be inviting digest members shortly. Is there anything else I should protect. I would like to archive to the web or another medium but appreciate the need to hide Email addresses, so that will come later when I have had a chance to get my head round it and have some idea of what I should be doing. Comments appreciated. John Picken From list-managers-owner Wed Mar 29 10:11:44 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA13209; Wed, 29 Mar 2000 10:03:58 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.mccte.educ.msu.edu (mail.mccte.educ.msu.edu [35.8.170.134]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA13202 for ; Wed, 29 Mar 2000 10:03:47 -0800 (PST) From: steelea2@mail.mccte.educ.msu.edu Received: from localhost (steelea2@localhost) by mail.mccte.educ.msu.edu (8.10.0/8.10.0) with SMTP id e2TIVGj00325 for ; Wed, 29 Mar 2000 13:31:17 -0500 Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 13:31:16 -0500 (EST) To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: unknown error Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I have a small problem, i have some working lists, i also am running majordomo on a system with virtual domains Anyhow here goes I tried to setup a new list, and upon completion of making the directories, and such, i issued a config command to majordomo at on of the virtual domains, but I am getting an odd error here is a transcript of what i am getting returned. ******************************* Message delivered to mailing list Array found where operator expected at /usr/local/majordomo/majordomo line 1099, at end of line (Missing operator before ?) syntax error at /usr/local/majordomo/majordomo line 1099, near ") @digest_errors " Execution of /usr/local/majordomo/majordomo aborted due to compilation errors. 554 5.3.0 "|/usr/local/majordomo/wrapper majordomo -C /usr/local/majordomo/majordomo-mail.mccnet.cf"... unknown mailer error 255 ******************************* if anyone know what is going on, and or what i can do to fix it, please let me know, i am at a loss. thank you /aaron From list-managers-owner Wed Mar 29 11:41:11 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA14049; Wed, 29 Mar 2000 11:22:46 -0800 (PST) Received: from sparta.com (dax.sparta.com [157.185.40.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA14042 for ; Wed, 29 Mar 2000 11:22:35 -0800 (PST) Received: from lancaster.sparta.com (lancaster.sparta.com [157.185.7.3]) by sparta.com (8.9.1a/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA06276; Wed, 29 Mar 2000 14:37:50 -0500 Received: from pcbobc (pcbobc.lancaster.sparta.com [157.185.7.39]) by lancaster.sparta.com (8.9.2/8.9.2) with ESMTP id LAA10964; Wed, 29 Mar 2000 11:40:28 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <4.2.2.20000329113412.00a2fd20@av.qnet.com> X-Sender: robertc@av.qnet.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.2.2 Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 11:35:35 -0800 To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Robert Comperini Subject: Re: Web Harvesting precautions, List-Managers-Digest V9 #55 In-Reply-To: <38E22E58.729389C6@bigfoot.com> References: <200003290900.BAA05900@honor.greatcircle.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 05:24 PM 3/29/00 +0100, John Picken wrote: >I would like to archive to the web or another medium but appreciate the >need to hide Email addresses, so that will come later when I have had a >chance to get my head round it and have some idea of what I should be >doing. For what its worth, I use Escribe.Com for my archive. They seem to be pretty good, and claim not to sell/share e-mail addresses with anyone. E-mail addresses from posts are stripped before they're archived. From list-managers-owner Wed Mar 29 13:10:08 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA14904; Wed, 29 Mar 2000 12:52:31 -0800 (PST) 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 MAA14897 for ; Wed, 29 Mar 2000 12:52:27 -0800 (PST) Received: from [17.216.27.198] (A17-216-27-198.apple.com [17.216.27.198]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id NAA49688 ; Wed, 29 Mar 2000 13:10:12 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 13:07:15 -0800 To: steelea2@mail.mccte.educ.msu.edu, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: unknown error Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 1:31 PM -0500 3/29/2000, steelea2@mail.mccte.educ.msu.edu wrote: >Message delivered to mailing list >Array found where operator expected at /usr/local/majordomo/majordomo >line 1099, at end of line > (Missing operator before ?) >syntax error at /usr/local/majordomo/majordomo line 1099, near ") > @digest_errors " >Execution of /usr/local/majordomo/majordomo aborted due to compilation >errors. You've introduced some kind of typo in one of your configuration files. Find: > @digest_errors in whatever file it's in, and you'll find the place where the typo is. -- -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Wed Mar 29 19:10:07 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA18458; Wed, 29 Mar 2000 19:03:29 -0800 (PST) Received: from operamail.com (OperaMail.com [199.29.68.79]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA18451 for ; Wed, 29 Mar 2000 19:03:23 -0800 (PST) Received: from 0d8xk [206.66.213.177] (poptexas@operamail.com); Wed, 29 Mar 2000 22:17:06 -0500 X-WM-Posted-At: operamail.com; Wed, 29 Mar 00 22:17:06 -0500 From: "Alan S. Harrell" To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 21:18:48 -0600 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Web Harvesting precautions, List-Managers-Digest V9 #55 Message-ID: <38E27338.21009.9BD89D@localhost> In-reply-to: <38E22E58.729389C6@bigfoot.com> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 29 Mar 2000, at 17:24, John Picken wrote: > Web Harvesting precautions > > I am fairly new to managing lists with 3 currently running. I am > setting up digests and also want to protect my list members. I am > using Majordomo and have set who to closed and subscritions to either > open,open+confirm or closed depending on the list, never auto. All > have restricted post to list or list + digest. > > Should I be doing more to protect members Email addresses? Suppressing the who - the subscriber list, is your best course of action. You cannot suppress the addresses of the subscribers who post to your list from the view of other subscribers on the list. You can only make sure that only subscribers see the addresses of other subscribers. You place a trust upon every subscriber to not misuse the information they can obtain from your list, such as the addresses of the posting subscribers. If you discover any subscriber violates your trust, you then take any disciplinary steps that you deem necessary. I once had a subscriber collect addresses of the posters of my mailing list and then he mailed these subscribers a chain letter. He mailed this chain letter using a different address than the one in which he was subscribed to my mailing list. I knew he was sending the chain letter to posters of my list because I got about three of the chain letters to three different e-mail addresses I owned and which had previously posted to the list. Plus I was getting complaints from other posters of my list. I later discovered the true identity of the subscriber who was sending the offlist chain letters. I had to use deception and guile to learn his true identity, however, it turned out to be a boy not yet out of high school. I put him on probation by removing him off the list for a month, I believe. He and I exchanged several e-mails where I finally convinced him of the error of his ways and I think he learned a valuable lesson from the experience. > I am now starting to get the digests working properly, and I will be > inviting digest members shortly. Is there anything else I should > protect. Your passwords. :-) There was a time that I goofed an Approval process and my password was distributed to the entire list. I discovered this immediately but right at that time the Net decided to go dead on me. My order to change the password was not getting to the server. Traceroute was dying of old age getting to the Majordomo's server. And I had to get back to work. I was panicking. Finally the order went through and I got my passwords changed before any mischief could occur. Whew! I never wanted to go through that again. I later figured out a method to prevent this from happening ever again. > I would like to archive to the web or another medium but appreciate > the need to hide Email addresses, so that will come later when I have > had a chance to get my head round it and have some idea of what I > should be doing. I noted another subscriber recommended eScribe. They are a popular service and I have other listowner friends that use that service, as well. I prefer The Mail Archive. My reasons are thus: (1) They have no banner ads or other advertisements on the archived pages. I have a basic distrust for the honesty of any site that uses banner ads or has commercial sponsors. I personally would not be comfortable at eScribe. (2) The Mail Archive is protective of my subscribers' e-mail addresses. The method they use to view an address would not be conducive to robot gathering software. One only can view the poster's address by clicking a submit button and that could only be done one post at a time. Plus the site honors "No Archive" headers for subscribers that do not wish public archiving. (3) The guy that administer's to the site is a very nice and helpful man that is unselfishly giving of his time to serve others. He is not making money from this except in the good will that is gained for his employers, who furnish the server space and allow him the time to administer to the site. (The employer is VA LINUX SYSTEMS- makers of computers, work stations, servers, software, etc...all flavored with Linux. This company has a good, all around reputation.) http://www.mail-archive.com/ Learn more by reading the FAQ: http://www.mail-archive.com/faq.html > Comments appreciated. Understand this is pubic archiving. Any tom, dick and harry can read your list posts. They don't have to be subscribers. I opted for public archiving to support my limited host's archiving and for the promotional aspects. The Mail Archive also gives me and my subscribers an excellent search engine for past list posts. Alan poptexas@operamail.com From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 30 05:40:17 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id FAA26400; Thu, 30 Mar 2000 05:30:42 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.rdc1.ne.home.com (ha1.rdc1.ne.home.com [24.2.4.66]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id FAA26393 for ; Thu, 30 Mar 2000 05:30:36 -0800 (PST) Received: from cx44448-a.omhan1.ne.home.com ([24.3.231.19]) by mail.rdc1.ne.home.com (InterMail v4.01.01.00 201-229-111) with ESMTP id <20000330134605.VUZA14878.mail.rdc1.ne.home.com@cx44448-a.omhan1.ne.home.com> for ; Thu, 30 Mar 2000 05:46:05 -0800 Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 07:42:42 -0600 From: Steve McIlree X-Mailer: The Bat! (v1.38e) S/N 307D0ECF Reply-To: Steve McIlree Organization: Carriage Horse Supply X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Message-ID: <6321.000330@home.com> To: List-Managers-Digest Subject: Re: List-Managers-Digest V9 #56 In-reply-To: <200003300900.BAA21301@honor.greatcircle.com> References: <200003300900.BAA21301@honor.greatcircle.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Alan-- Thursday, March 30, 2000, you wrote: > (1) They have no banner ads or other advertisements on the archived > pages. I have a basic distrust for the honesty of any site that uses > banner ads or has commercial sponsors. I personally would not be > comfortable at eScribe. Hmm. Personally I'm far more comfortable when I can clearly see what a service provider is gaining from a relationship. Banner advertising I can understand, when there appears to be no profit for the provider I become suspicious. -- Steve McIlree Noblest of the train that wait on man, the flight-performing horse. --William Cowper(1731-1800) From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 30 08:25:02 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA27853; Thu, 30 Mar 2000 08:15:20 -0800 (PST) Received: from sparta.com (dax.sparta.com [157.185.40.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA27845 for ; Thu, 30 Mar 2000 08:15:13 -0800 (PST) Received: from lancaster.sparta.com (lancaster.sparta.com [157.185.7.3]) by sparta.com (8.9.1a/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA28593; Thu, 30 Mar 2000 11:30:42 -0500 Received: from pcbobc (pcbobc.lancaster.sparta.com [157.185.7.39]) by lancaster.sparta.com (8.9.2/8.9.2) with ESMTP id IAA14845; Thu, 30 Mar 2000 08:33:25 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <4.2.2.20000330082112.00a20100@av.qnet.com> X-Sender: robertc@av.qnet.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.2.2 Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 08:28:31 -0800 To: List-Managers-Digest From: Robert Comperini Subject: Public Archives In-Reply-To: <6321.000330@home.com> References: <200003300900.BAA21301@honor.greatcircle.com> <200003300900.BAA21301@honor.greatcircle.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 07:42 AM 3/30/00 -0600, Steve McIlree wrote: >Alan-- > >Thursday, March 30, 2000, you wrote: > > > (1) They have no banner ads or other advertisements on the archived > > pages. I have a basic distrust for the honesty of any site that uses > > banner ads or has commercial sponsors. I personally would not be > > comfortable at eScribe. > > Hmm. Personally I'm far more comfortable when I can clearly see what > a service provider is gaining from a relationship. Banner > advertising I can understand, when there appears to be no profit for > the provider I become suspicious. Yeah, I tend to agree. Look, these sites dont archive the world's e-mail lists out of the goodness of their hearts. They're in it for advertising dollars, which is OK by me, as long as I get some benefit to it as well. By the way, and I'm not affiliated with Escribe in any way, nor do I have an allegiance to any of these companies. I do use Escribe, and found them very responsive to my questions/needs. I dont find their banners get in the way at all. They do strip e-mail addresses from posts, and do have some good search capabilities. They also allow me to configure a "chat room", "bulletin board", and "links" to my own webpage. They've got a pretty decent TOS too (http://www.escribe.com/policy.html) which clearly states (If I believe 'em) that they don't do anything with e-mail addresses. I do believe we all need to be real careful about the "free" services out there, but done right, and for the price (annoyance) of dealing with banners, some of the "Free" services ain't too bad. Man, I'll take banner ads, over unsolicited e-mail in my In Box any day of the week. PS: I recently joined this list, after I too had an "experience" with Remarq. -- Robert Comperini USUA AFI #A16560 Lancaster, CA mailto:robertc@qnet.com http://www.qnet.com/~robertc From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 30 12:10:01 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA29850; Thu, 30 Mar 2000 11:53:35 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.greatbasin.net (mail.greatbasin.net [207.228.35.39]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA29840 for ; Thu, 30 Mar 2000 11:53:28 -0800 (PST) Received: from rtcportable (rno-max12-28.gbis.net [216.82.158.92]) by mail.greatbasin.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id MAA23019 for ; Thu, 30 Mar 2000 12:08:42 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <200003302008.MAA23019@mail.greatbasin.net> From: "Jim Poston" Organization: The Information Dirt Road To: List-Managers@greatcircle.com Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 12:08:36 -0800 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Public Archives Reply-to: Jim.Poston@bigfoot.com In-reply-to: <4.2.2.20000330082112.00a20100@av.qnet.com> References: <6321.000330@home.com> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.11) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 30 Mar 00, at 8:28, Robert Comperini wrote: > [eScribe does] .... strip e-mail addresses from posts ... Robert, I agreed with most of your post, but I wanted to clarify this comment. eScribe does strip email addresses from headers, but not from the text, or quotes, or sig lines. So, the address won't show in the From:, but if it's included anywhere in the text, it will show. -- Jim Jim.Poston@bigfoot.com <<< Measure twice, cut once. >>> From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 30 22:53:47 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id WAA05500; Thu, 30 Mar 2000 22:45:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from anthem.cnri.reston.va.us (anthem.cnri.reston.va.us [132.151.1.40]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id WAA05491 for ; Thu, 30 Mar 2000 22:45:00 -0800 (PST) Received: by anthem.cnri.reston.va.us (Postfix, from userid 1078) id DF00166125; Fri, 31 Mar 2000 02:00:36 -0500 (EST) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <14564.19732.655406.355451@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us> Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 02:00:36 -0500 (EST) To: Chuq Von Rospach Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: MLM, your opinion ? X-Mailer: VM 6.75 under 21.1 (patch 9) "Canyonlands" XEmacs Lucid X-Attribution: BAW X-Oblique-Strategy: Question the heroic approach X-Url: http://www.python.org/users/bwarsaw From: bwarsaw@python.org (Barry Warsaw) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >>>>> "CVR" == Chuq Von Rospach writes: CVR> I like most of Mailman -- but it's written in Python, and CVR> that means that using it requires installing (and, CVR> ultimately), learning yet another programming language. Not such a big deal though, for Mailman's supported platforms (Un*x)! For Mailman 2.0, you will need Python 1.5.2 which has been out almost a year now, and which should come with most major Linux distributions. RPMs are easily available in any case. Installing Python from source is very easy for anybody familar with autoconf'd distributions: untar, configure, make install. Same with Mailman, BTW. :) As for learning Python, I'm biased, but I firmly believe that the language is learnable in about half a day by anybody with moderate to significant programming experience. I won't get into a language war here, but am happy to answer Python questions if asked off-list. Cheers, -Barry From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 30 23:24:57 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA05778; Thu, 30 Mar 2000 23:06:25 -0800 (PST) Received: from anthem.cnri.reston.va.us (anthem.cnri.reston.va.us [132.151.1.40]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id XAA05763 for ; Thu, 30 Mar 2000 23:06:17 -0800 (PST) Received: by anthem.cnri.reston.va.us (Postfix, from userid 1078) id 1929566125; Fri, 31 Mar 2000 02:21:53 -0500 (EST) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <14564.21009.839484.237845@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us> Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 02:21:53 -0500 (EST) To: Chuq Von Rospach Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: case sensitivity? X-Mailer: VM 6.75 under 21.1 (patch 9) "Canyonlands" XEmacs Lucid X-Attribution: BAW X-Oblique-Strategy: Go out and steal the first sound you here X-Url: http://www.python.org/users/bwarsaw From: bwarsaw@python.org (Barry Warsaw) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >>>>> "CVR" == Chuq Von Rospach writes: CVR> Gotta quick philosophical question here, attached to CVR> practical reality. CVR> The email RFC makes it clear that the username should be CVR> considered case sensitive, while the domain part is case CVR> insensitive CVR> But this leads to a bit of a conundrum for me. To simplify CVR> reality, I coerce all email addresses to lower case -- this CVR> is especially useful for aol.com, where many users wouldn't CVR> be consistent on capitalization if their life depended on CVR> it. But technically speaking, that makes me non-compliant to CVR> the RFC, if I were to ever run into a mail system that IS CVR> case sensitive on the user name. CVR> Does anyone know of any systems that actually enforce case CVR> sensitivity on a user name? Very good question, and one we addressed a while ago in Mailman. Here's what we do: For list membership purposes, email addresses are case insensitive. Thus, Fred@Aol.com, fred@aol.com, fred@Aol.com, etc. are all considereted the same subscription. However, Mailman is case preserving of the email address, and it uses the case-preserved form of the address for all outgoing mail. Thus if Fred@Aol.com was the address that was subscribed, that's the one that will get the list postings. This way we are RFC compliant where it matters, while maintaining a subscription policy for Mailman that, while arbitrary, certainly helps maintain list manager sanity. I've seen no complaints about this policy since it was implemented in Mailman before the 1.0 release. -Barry From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 30 23:38:47 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA05918; Thu, 30 Mar 2000 23:20:50 -0800 (PST) Received: from ikkoku.maison-otaku.net (ikkoku.maison-otaku.net [207.195.149.217]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id XAA05911 for ; Thu, 30 Mar 2000 23:20:45 -0800 (PST) Received: from godai.maison-otaku.net (godai.maison-otaku.net [216.122.4.241]) by ikkoku.maison-otaku.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 401C5AF862; Thu, 30 Mar 2000 23:48:40 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (loki@localhost) by godai.maison-otaku.net (8.7.4/8.7.3) with ESMTP id XAA03056; Thu, 30 Mar 2000 23:35:19 -0800 X-Authentication-Warning: godai.maison-otaku.net: loki owned process doing -bs Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 23:35:18 -0800 (PST) From: Jeremy Blackman To: "Barry A. Warsaw" Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: MLM, your opinion ? In-Reply-To: <14564.19216.381952.310071@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Fri, 31 Mar 2000, Barry A. Warsaw wrote: > Mailman is most definitely not dead. Version 2.0beta1 was released > last week, with another beta likely this weekend. This beta cycle > will be short -- I run nearly the current CVS snapshot on my > production system (python.org) and I'm quite satisfied with its > stability. If you haven't looked at Mailman before, or are only > familiar with the 1.x series, please take a look again. 2.0 has had > some key re-architecting for more flexibility and much better > performance in many respects. This is why it's good to have the various MLM authors on the list! They'll always have the most up-to-date information on the packages they maintain. (This is also why I qualify anything about an MLM that isn't the one I write as 'to the best of my knowledge' or 'from my admittedly limited experience with it'.) I only post this as a note that I think it's valuable to have a representative from the dev team of each MLM that gets discussed on this list; I know feedback I've gotten from this list has helped with Listar. I also know that I've been able to give feedback on what has worked with Listar to other people doing MLM development. (One reason I seriously considered starting an mlm-developer mailing list at one point in the past; and if anyone is still interested in such, let me know.) And congrats on the 2.0 beta. Rearchitecting based on the testing of the 1.x version is always a good thing. :) -- Jeremy Blackman - loki@maison-otaku.net / loki@listar.org / jeremy@lith.com Lithtech Team, Monolith Productions -- http://www.lith.com Listar Developer -- http://www.listar.org From list-managers-owner Fri Mar 31 01:55:42 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id BAA08266; Fri, 31 Mar 2000 01:43:58 -0800 (PST) Received: from gsp.org (rsk.tidalwave.com [208.211.3.21]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id BAA08259 for ; Fri, 31 Mar 2000 01:43:41 -0800 (PST) Received: (from rsk@localhost) by gsp.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) id FAA23571; Fri, 31 Mar 2000 05:00:32 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 05:00:19 -0500 From: Rich Kulawiec To: list-managers-digest@GreatCircle.COM Cc: Eric Leach Subject: Re: Mail Lists on RemarQ Message-ID: <20000331050018.A23451@gsp.org> References: <38D7D3A2.9DDBD1F8@remarq.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0i In-Reply-To: <38D7D3A2.9DDBD1F8@remarq.com>; from eleach@remarq.com on Tue, Mar 21, 2000 at 11:55:15AM -0800 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Tue, Mar 21, 2000 at 11:55:15AM -0800, Eric Leach wrote: > Hello. As you already know, we have incorporated support for mail lists > through our web site at http://www.remarq.com/ . Up until now we have > been addressing the concerns of list owners on an as needed basis. We > would like to address list owner's concerns in a centralized forum, so I > am posting this here. I see that you have time to defend your operations here, but NOT time to reply to the message that I sent you about the lists which I own. (But at least you seem to have removed them. Good. Make sure it stays that way.) However, you don't seem to understand something fairly basic about the difference between Usenet newsgroups (NOT "message boards", btw: do you *really* think you're helping anyone by mislabeling them?) and mailing lists. Usenet newsgroups are a shared public resource which exist by the combined efforts of those who run news servers, moderate newsgroups, contribute to newsgroups, author FAQs for them, and so on. They have been constructed over a period of ~20 years in this fashion. Mailing lists are a publicly-ACCESSIBLE resource which are almost entirely owner and maintained by individuals or organizations. Those individuals/organizations are the sole and final arbiters of how those mailing lists will be run, where they will be archived (IF they're archived), how subscriptions will be managed, and everything else about them. Note the difference between a public resource and publicly-accessible resource. It's important. These mailing lists do not BELONG to you. They belong to other people. You are taking them without permission, which is something you should have learned not to do much earlier in life. Worse yet, you are materially affecting their operation (by forcibly imposing your mechanism on the legitimate owners of these resources), depriving their owners of the ability to run them as they see fit. Do you understand that doing these things is wrong? (I've asked Tim Wentz to send here what he sent to you -- I'll be very interested to see your responses to his points, which elaborate on the above.) ---Rsk Rich Kulawiec rsk@gsp.org From list-managers-owner Fri Mar 31 14:51:16 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA17207; Fri, 31 Mar 2000 14:44:41 -0800 (PST) Received: from server.postmodern.com (server.postmodern.com [216.240.39.3]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA17200 for ; Fri, 31 Mar 2000 14:44:36 -0800 (PST) Received: (from mcb@localhost) by server.postmodern.com (8.8.5/mcb-980201) id OAA01365; Fri, 31 Mar 2000 14:58:44 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <200003312258.OAA01365@server.postmodern.com> From: mcb@postmodern.com (Michael C. Berch) Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 14:58:43 -0800 X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.2.5 10/14/92) To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Some AOL brain damage Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Well, AOL *had* been doing a good job of communicating with postmasters and list managers about mail issues, but it looks like they shot themselves in the foot this time. A couple of hours ago AOL's incoming mail server burped and erroneously rejected all the aol.com addresses on one of my lists -- about 60 addresses or so, with the error message "INCORRECT SEQUENCE OF COMMANDS" in an SMTP transaction. So I forwarded this to postmaster@aol.com with a polite note and inquiry. The response was a form letter saying that AOL had changed its Postmaster procedures -- "We are pleased to announce this change, and look forward to serving the Internet community with increased efficiency and speed" -- that the postmaster@aol.com and postmaster@aol.net addresses would no longer accept messages directly, and in case of mailer problems, outside users should consult the Postmaster FAQ at http://hometown.aol.com/postmaster/email.html . Never mind that this is a violation of the RFC; I guess AOL does what it damn well pleases. But to top things off, if you read the FAQ, and scroll down to the question: "8. The ISP that I work for is experiencing unusual difficulties with sending mail to AOL, what should I do? During regular business hours you should send mail to postmaster@aol.net. However, in an emergency situation, AOL's Network Operations Center can be contacted. Please refer to AOL's whois record for the current contact information. The NOC can be contacted in the event that your site is experiencing unusual difficulties with sending mail to AOL. The NOC should ONLY be contacted by system administrators, technical security and law enforcement issues, and partner community leaders." --- So in other words, the postmaster@aol.net address has been replaced by a reference to a FAQ that tells you to write to the postmaster@aol.net address. Good one. As for me, I think I'll call the NOC every time they bounce some mail. Grrrr. Anyone from AOL's operations still on this list? -- Michael C. Berch mcb@postmodern.com / mcb@greatcircle.com