admin: Rejected postings 101

[Brett Dikeman]

also known as How To Keep Your Temporary ListMaster From Killing You 
In Ten Easy Steps :-)


Many of you didn't realize that your posts were being held until now 
because majordomo, the previous software, didn't notify you of 
rejected messages...it simply held them and notified Dan, who either 
ignored it or approved it :-)

The quattro list has always had the following policies in place:

a)only members may post; other postings are held for approval and 
usually approved if there are no other problems, but this may take a 
while
b)no attachments, INCLUDING VCARDS, are allowed.  Please -disable 
your vcard functionality-.  No one except you uses them and they are 
-extremely- annoying(I have at least a hundred that fill up my 
attachments folder on a regular basis)
c)NO HTML(ie, no styled/colored/formatted text)

Please consult the documentation for your email program on how to 
follow these guidelines.  It's beyond the scope of this email to 
explain how to do so in the 5 billion different email clients out 
there :-)


Now, more explanation about item A, since this is probably the most 
common source of held postings.

When you subscribe to the list, you might subscribe as, say:

brett at sun.com

That's fine.  -Unless- your return address or From header is set to:

brett at somehost.goofydivision.sun.com

You send mail to the list.  The list software(either the old or new 
software) looks at the address @somehost etc, can't find it, and 
holds the message for approval.

However, the more common situation is where you have two systems(say, 
one at home) and the system at home doesn't have -exactly- the same 
from: address.

The moral of the story is that you -must- make sure the address 
you're subscribed under matches the from: header in your emails. 
Case differences are excused, as far as I know, but different 
usernames or hostnames are -not-!

Lastly, I'm going to start getting very tough about people whose 
addresses bounce a lot.  They're for really dumb reasons.  MSN users 
repeatedly "disappear", then re-appear(the mail server will sometimes 
claim no-such-user.)  Lots of smaller ISPs have trouble with their 
mail servers refusing connections, not being reachable at all, stuff 
like that.)  Still more people use their personal unix boxes and such 
to get list mail, which causes -no- end of bounces.

The most COMMON reason --by far-- is users who are over-quota...

Brett
-- 
----
Brett Dikeman				Systems Engineer
CFN(formerly iClick, Inc)			914-872-8043
120 Bloomingdale Rd.			914-872-8100(fax)
White Plains, NY 10605			http://www.iclick.com
PGP Fingerprint: 06C2 5D5B D2B4 7626  BB24 2BBC 9E4A C8B3
PGP Key location: http://pdikeman.ne.mediaone.net/pgp/brett.pgp