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Note on email

To: mgs@Autox.Team.Net
Subject: Note on email
From: Mark J Bradakis <mjb@cs.utah.edu>
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 1997 12:33:41 -0700 (MST)
You send off mail to the list and it never shows up.  Why?  Likely it is one
of the following reasons:

1.  You didn't send it to the correct address.  It is amazing how many people
get this one wrong.  But then, the posting address is usually buried way
down in the info file folks get when they subscribe, something like a whole
two or three lines from the top.

2.  You aren't on the list.  Only those addresses in the list files or the
list allow file can post.  This happens a lot when people do something like
'subscribe list-name some-email-address' rather than just 'subscribe list-name'
Their mail has a from address that does not match 'some-email-address' so the
mail is bounced.  On those occasions when I get to dealing with the many
hundreds of error messages that come in daily, if I can figure out that you
really are on the list, I will add the offending address to the allow file,
forward your message to the list, and you should be fine after that.

3.  The message is too long.  Sure, you may think that everyone will be pleased
to get that giant image you want to send out, even though they may not be
able to do anything with the format you've used.  I've even seen people on
one of the digests send in a one or two line commnet, including the *entire*
digest in their reply.  If you have something more than a few paragraphs long
you want to share, send a short note to the list explaining what it is, what
format it is in, and say that you will mail it to those who request it.  Also
you can make it available on ftp.team.net for folks to grab.

4.  You are stuck using some piece of garbage from Microsoft that shouldn't
be allowed any where near a real network, and you haven't figured out how to
turn off all the attachment junk useless to folks with real computers.
Send your mail to the list in plain old ordinary ASCII text.  Why do so many
CMPs (Clueless Mouse Pilots) on PCs think every computer in the world is just
like theirs?

5.  You are using a web based mailer, and think it will be really cool to send
out your message with all sorts of neat HTML formatting in it.  Send your
mail to the list in plain old ordinary ASCII text.  Or provide the possibly
thousands of members on the list with the appropriate hardware and a fast
network connection, all at your expense, to make reading your neeto keeno
mail readable in a respectable amount of time.

6.  The mail contains majordomo commands in the first few lines of the body,
like 'subscribe' or 'help' or something.  For this, you just have to wait
until I get a chance to go through the many hundreds of error messages I get
from all the lists and forward yours on.  Or remember to talk about magazine
zubscriptions or something like that.

7.  The mail contains references to 'triumph.cs.utah.edu' in it.  This comes
from one of two sources.  Either you aren't telling people to use ftp.team.net
or www.team.net instead of triumph, or you are sending a reply to a message
and not bothering to spend any effort editing out previous headers.

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