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administrivia: various issues

there are a bunch of things that i don't think have been properly
explained to the list members; i'm in the process of
improving/rewriting various informational bits about the digests, and
realize that there are some things that digest members need to know.

[this message is being sent to 4 different digests; therefore, i am
using the name "foo-digest" as a meta symbol for an arbitrary digest.
if you subscribe to the bmw-digest, for example, then when you see
foo-digest, just substitute bmw-digest in the following message]

first of all, the correct address for administrative requests is:

majordomo@domain.elided

the various request addresses (e.g.,
foo-digest-request@domain.elided) are set up to add the name of
the digest and forward the message to majordomo.  if you send a
subscribe message to foo-digest-request, then it will be forwarded to
majordomo as "subscribe foo-digest".

if you send it to the digest by mistake, majordomo will intercept it
and forward it to me; i will get to it when i get to it, which may
take some time. i get between 300 and 400 email messages a day.

which brings us to the next subject: administrivia checking.
majordomo inspects the Subject: line and the first 5 body lines of
messages for majordomo commands.  these include words like subscribe
and help; don't use them at the start of your message, because
majordomo will kick it to me, and your message will appear to have
disappeared.

don't complain about this; you'd be amazed at the volume of stuff that
is kept off of the list because of administrivia checking. 

there is a size limit to digest postings.  messages over 10,000
characters in length are kicked to me.  there is a reason for this;
many mailers on the internet are not in complete conformance with
internet standards; for example, when compuserve mailboxes fill up,
compuserve bounces the entire message back to the list, instead of the
proper error address in the message envelope.  since these messages
are typically 27,000 or so characters in length, you guys never have
to look at them; majordomo intercepts them and kicks them out of the
queue.

unfortunately, i do have to look at them.

that's enough for now; more administrivia notes will follow.

richard
- -- 
Home: rwelty@domain.elided            Work: welty@domain.elided
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