Previously Linda Richardson wrote -
>
>
> I wondered what other policies sites have with regard to users sending
> to 'all users'. We have disabled this function, but are frequently
> asked to send to 'all students' or 'all staff' or both. On the
> odd occasions that we do mass mailings our mail server suffers, thus
> confirming our believe that we should not allow this. However the
> requests are increasing, despite our efforts to point people towards
> using web pages etc. Do other sites generally allow this, or restrict
> it to certain people, or not allow it at all?
>
We're in a similar position to you. I've written scripts to try to limit the
effect of sending out an announcement but even so, at one each that's still
around 30,000 messages. We average one request a week to mail the whole
university, usually vital information about some meeting that has been left
too late to publicise. Generally we only use the facility to notify people
about the computing service. The only exceptions recently have been the
meningitis outbreak last year and the previous winter when local blood stocks
dropped dangerously low during the snow.
One thing I do is set the message headers so they look as though they went to
some fake list, AllUsers@cardiff.ac.uk, and from the address
Announcement@Cardiff.ac.uk. This draws quite a few reponses from idiots who
think it's funny/clever to reply to messages marked "Please do not reply".
The advantages of this are
Their messages get forwarded on to a vacation auto reply address so
that they get told their message went nowhere.
The auto-response gives contact information so that genuine enquiries
know where to address the questions
The program only sends one reply to an individual address in any
7 day period. This thwarts the even lower species of e-vermin
who think they've got a toy to play with that always replies.
I've never set up a genuine address for AllUsers so I don't know how many
people try to advertise flats, sell cars, look for dates. Maybe I'll do it
one day.
Hope this helps.
Chris Cook - Senior Postmaster
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| Chris Cook - Senior Postmaster and UNIX Administrator |
| University of Wales E-mail : CookC@Cardiff.AC.UK |
| College of Cardiff, Phone : +44 1222 874875 |
| 40-41 Park Place, (Direct) : +44 1222 874219 |
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