It has been brought to my attention that folks have been wondering about
"missing messages" on the list. There are several reasons why a message
may not appear on one of the autox.team.net lists. For example, a number
of folks seem to think that the line
has some secret coding in it that exempts them from this rule. It doesn't.
In truth I've been working on various things lately, one of which is trying
to write down how some of this stuff works, the reasoning behind it and such.
Yep, RealSoonNow I'll get it all organised and filed and online and so on.
Oh, you may want to check out one thing that is sort of working for some of
the lists here. If your internet access has web capabilities, point your
browser to http://www.team.net/cgi-bin/wilma/spridgets. Needs more work,
but it is a start.
And here's a start on the missing message question:
Q: I sent a message to the list, but never saw it. What happened?
A: There are a number of reasons why a message sent to one of the many lists
hosted at autox.team.net does not get broadcast to list members. First off,
you may not have sent it to the list. When you subscribed, you should have
gotten a message that describes various list policies and procedures, as well
as the posting address. Hmm, I should probably subscribe to the 80+ lists here
to make sure that works for all lists, and the intro files are reasonably up
to date. RealSoonNow. For now, here's some details about addressing errors,
content errors will be covered next. And these days there are more and more
folks somehow managing to get on the lists who have no idea how email,
computer networking and such all work. Some of the restrictions and policies
may seem to cumbersome and odd to the novice, but trust me, I've been doing
this for decades, there is a good reason somewhere behind it all.
So, to begin with, make sure you are sending the message to the right place,
something like list-name@autox.team.net.
A simple reply may not work, depending on your mailer. The reply address may
not be the list posting address. This is done as a preventive measure.
Suppose that I. B. Kloolys gets a break from his kumquat bleaching job down
at the plant, and heads off to bake in the desert sun for a week. He sets up
a program to respond to incoming mails with a canned reply. Now, suppose
that the mail headers from the list set the reply address to the list. List
member Orville Oversteer sends a message to the list about his new teflon
lined muffler trunnions. The message gets sent to the list. The vacation
responder set up by our hero ibkloolys@kumquat.com sends back to the list a
quick note about him being out of the office. So then the mail server at
autox.team.net gets the reply, addressed to the list, so it sends it to the
list. The vacation responder that ibkloolys@kumquat.com set up sends back
to the list a quick note about him being out of the office. The mail server
at autox.team.net gets the reply, and sends it to the list. The vacation
responder that ibkloolys@kumquat.com set up sends back to the list a quick
note about him being out of the office. The mail server at autox.team.net
gets the reply, and sends it to the list. The vacation responder .... I'm
sure that most of you get the idea by now.
So make sure you are replying to the proper address if you'd like folks to
see your note.
Another major reason your mail does not get sent out is because you aren't on
the list. Sure, you may be getting the messages, but majordomo has no idea
who you are. Usually this is the result of sending in a subscribe command from
one place, and then posting a submission from another place. As an anti-spam
measure, only list members are allowed to post to most of the lists here.
Some of the lists where another person besides me has control of the config
settings are not set up this way, so anyone in the world can try to sell you
print cartridges or a zillion email addresses or whatever.
In most cases, the fix for this is patience. These 'non-member' messages are
routed to the list janitor (me) who eventually gets to them, tries to figure
out if the poster really is a legit subscriber, and then adds the offending
posting address to the list of allowed contributors and forwards the original
message to the list. Here, 'eventually' can run from minutes to months. I
usually don't forward notes older than a week or so, depending on content.
Often this situation occurs because people send majordomo commands like
subscribe mtm maybe_I_am@this.domain
which is not quite right, because their mailer says they are ax456-ooZ@td.com,
the maybe_I_am@this.domain is just shorthand that only sort of works.
Things would be slick if they would have just sent in the command
subscribe mtm
and let the majordomo program figure out their address.
This members-only policy also comes into play when various vociferous posters
send a message to each and every list they think might have some interest in
their missive. Poster-1 sends a message to Team.Net lists A,B,C,D and some
others on various commercial servers. Poster-2, who reads it on lists B and
C, sends a reply, which only goes to lists B and C. Poster-1 responds, his
mail goes to lists A,B, C and D. Lists B and C see the original message,
Poster-2's reply and Poster-1's response. Folks on lists A or D scratch their
heads in wonder, since they saw the original message and the response from
Poster-1, but never did see non-member Poster-2's message in between. Think
before typing in all those list addresses on the 'To: ' line.
[More notes on admin filters, spam, subscribe/get/index commands, etc.]
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