administrivia: notes on using this list

[Richard Welty <rwelty@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

              Digest.Net mailing list "Meta FAQ"

These general notes on using Digest.Net mailing lists are posted on
the 1st and 15th of each month. This file may be found on the web
at /general-notes.txt

[last revised 11/19/1999, rpw; new special note relating to messagemedia]


Special Notes

1) messagemedia.com apparently has, via their unitymail.net subsidiary,
   commenced dictionary attacks on mail servers in order to mine
   for addresses for spamming purposes, recently performing such an
   attack for Fidelity Investments. I have accordingly blocked the entire
   ip address range for messagemedia.com from accessing the mail server.
   Since my 401k is restricted to Fidelity Mutual Funds, I am undecided
   at the present time about the nature of appropriate action, but I will
   probably block Fidelity IP addresses as well.

2) Compuserve has had several mail relays added to the Relay Spam
   Stopper; for this reason, Compuserve customers may have difficulty
   sending email to the server. The proper solution for this problem is
   for Compuserve to fix their mail servers; however, at this time they
   have no plan to do so. Compuserve customers should direct their concerns
   to Compuserve support.

Table of Contents

   1. Why don't my postings go through?
   2. Why can't I unsubscribe?
   3. How do I post to the list?
   4. Where are the archives?

The Meta-FAQ

1. Why don't my postings go through?

    There are several things that may interfere with postings
    making it to the list.

   a) Are you a member?

       Some read the ftp archives rather than receiving the list
       in email.  Persons who read the list via email are 
       automatically members, but readers of the FTP archive are not,
       and need to contact me (rwelty@domain.elided) and get
       your name added to the list of "permitted senders".

   b) has your email address changed?

       some of you have had changes in your email address. your old
       address still works, and is still on the list, but your From:
       line shows a new address. this can happen for various reasons;
       you may have changed jobs or ISPs, and left a forward in place,
       or your IT staff may have fiddled with the email system.

       you will need to unsubscribe your old email address and subscribe
       the new one. this may require my involvement, if you can't figure
       out a way to get your old address off the list using the conventional
       majordomo commands. you can use the majordomo "which" command to
       probe for old addresses. send a message to majordomo@domain.elided
       with one or more which commands in the body, one per line. to
       check for potential addresses for Fred Flinstone, formerly of
       bedrock.org, the following commands can be sent:

          which flintstone
          which bedrock

       note that the matches above might return any of the following
       addresses, if they appear in the list (in other words, you can
       use vagueness and incompleteness in your recollection as a tool):

            Fred.Flinstone@domain.elided
            fflinstone@domain.elided
            flintstonef@domain.elided

   c) do you have more than one email address?

       if so, only the subscribed addresses can post, unless you contact
       me (see 1.a) above for relevant information)

   d) are you using (intentionally or accidentially) special "features"
      of your mail client?

       formats such as html, rtf, and the like, are blocked as they
       don't work well in digest format and annoy many readers of the
       digest. most kinds of attachments are blocked for similar
       reasons -- binaries, word documents, and excel spreadsheets are
       simply not good things to send to the digest. virtual business
       cards (a Netscape "feature") are blocked as well. you need to turn
       off any special features of this type to get your mail through the
       digest.

   e) are your posts too large?

       there is a 10,000 character limit on posting sizes; this is done
       for various reasons. you can always split up large postings to
       get mail through.

   f) are you including majordomo commands at the start of your message?

       administrivia control is turned on; this is a trap for things
       like "unsubscribe" at the start of a message. try to avoid obvious
       majordomo commands in the subject and the first 10 lines, or
       misspell them in obvious ways (e.g. unzubscribe, 1ndex, h3lp,
       g3t, etc.)

   g) are you triggering spam traps?

       some things are red flags; for example, the following phrases
       in subject lines are automatically blocked:

            Important Message From
            growth stocks
            free calling card
            direct e-mail secrets
            Merchant Account
            Mass Marketing
            make money fast
            Pediatric advice
            Email ? Million People
            what "they" don't want
            are you being investigated

       the actual list is quite a bit longer; i think you get the idea.

   h) are you using "funky" character sets?

       unfortunately, there are "issues" if i permit any character set
       other than old fashioned 7 level ASCII; therefore, you need to
       avoid national character sets that include various accents, umlauts,
       national currency characters such as the British pound symbol, etc.

   i) are you unintentionally including complete digests in your reply?

       You need to check and make sure you cut down replys to the minimal
       size; digests are between 20,000 and 25,000 characters in length,
       and if you include a complete digest in your reply, it clearly won't
       make the 10,000 character limit. By the way, this feature is
       intentional.

   j) Are you using a "bad" ISP or mail relay?

       Krusty Motorsports (aka digest.net) subscribes to the "MAPS
       Realtime Blackhole List" and the "MAPS Relay Spam Stopper".
       These lists block email from known sources of spam (either ISPs
       with bad attitudes or policies, or badly managed mail environments.)
       Interested parties should visit http://www.mail-abuse.org/ for full
       details.

   k) Is the error message you get back "User Unknown"?

       If so, you may be running afoul of MAPS (see j above). MAPS returns
       an error code of 550, which is a generic code that many broken
       mail systems report as "user unknown".  If you know the IP address
       of your ISPs mail relay, you can go to the maps web site and test
       to see if it is on the RBL or the RSS. Additionally, the "rejectlog"
       entries for the previous day's mail traffic on digest.net are now
       visible at /rejectlog.01
       Finally, some of you may find it useful or instructive to use the
       telnet program to connect directly to port 25 on krusty-motorsports.com
       and see what kind of reply you get; this requires some technical
       knowledge and is not for everyone (you can get out of this at anytime
       after the initial banner simply by typing quit and hitting enter.)

2. Why can't I unsubscribe?

   a) are you using the right address?

       send to majordomo@domain.elided, and the command format is

        unsubscribe list-name my-email-address

   b) has your email address changed?

       majordomo has no way of knowing that Fred.Flinstone@domain.elided was
       once fflintstone@domain.elided.  you can check this with the which
       command (see 1.b) above for details)


3. How do I post to the list?

   You may use either one of two addresses: for example, the bmw-digest
   may be reached using either bmw@domain.elided or bmw-digest@domain.elided

   If you are using the correct addresses and your posts don't show
   up, check out the stuff in 1. above.

4. Where are the archives?

   see ftp://ftp.digest.net/ for digest archives. the web archives have
   proven problematic, and are awaiting time for a systematic attack
   on the problems they've been having.

------------------------------