From rwelty@krusty-motorsports.com Mon Nov 1 08:47:51 1999 From: Richard Welty 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 http://www.digest.net/general-notes.txt [last revised 10/12/1999, rpw] 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. in order to post to the list, you need to contact me (rwelty@krusty-motorsports.com) and get me to add your name 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@digest.net 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@bedrock.org fflinstone@wilma.bedrock.org flintstonef@bedrock.com 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. 2. Why can't I unsubscribe? a) are you using the right address? send to majordomo@digest.net, 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@BarneyCo.com was once fflintstone@bedrock.org. 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@digest.net or bmw-digest@digest.net 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.