why messages may not go through, and other notes

[Richard Welty <rwelty@domain.elided>]

for those who are having trouble sending email to any of the lists, here
are some of the reasons why you may be having trouble:

1) for @home users, there are some incompatibilities between the digest.net
mail configuration and @home. i have been unable to identify the true cause
of this; it only appears to occur with @home, but @home insists that the
fault does not lie with them and tells their customers to complain to me
(which they can't because the email won't go through.)

2) do not send email with binary attachments such as pictures or word
documents. they are blocked

3) do not send html format mail (this is the default with M$ Outlook and
some other mail programs). html format mail is blocked.

4) do not send virtual business cards (which appears to be a netscape-ism).
this is blocked.

5) do not sent postings of more than 10,000 characters. they are blocked.
(this is part of the mail loop prevention system; digests are 20,000-25,000
characters and this prevents complete digests from being resubmitted as new
postings.)

6) do not send mail in "rich text format", which is default for some M$
mail products. this is blocked.

the thing to keep in mind is that these lists go to users with a variety of
mail reader programs. one mail reader's way cool feature is another mail
reader's nightmare or simple waste of bandwidth. 

another reason you may have trouble is that we have "restrict post" turned
on; to post, you either 1) have to be sending from an email address which
appears on the mailing list, or 2) be sending from an email address which i
have explicitly added to the list. this is basic spam protection; if you
saw how much spam is directed at the digests, you'd understand. it's an
incredible pain in the neck, both for me and for our readers, but as long
as the internet has a spam problem, we're pretty much stuck with the policy.

finally, please don't complain about how reply-to:, from: and sender: are
set up in the mail headers (this affects how your mail reader behaves when
you hit reply.) they are set the way they are for sound reasons having to
do with mail loop control, and will not be changed.

richard