[This message was cross-posted to LSTSRV-L, but please follow up discussions
on LSTOWN-L.  Thanks.]

Hi all, and apologies for a late and ungraceful entrance to this list.  My
name is Jay Levitt, and I'm the manager of the Mail Systems development group
at AOL.  I'm also involved to some extent in operational issues, and this
brings me here today.

First and foremost, I need to apologize on behalf of AOL for the recent
mail-blocking snafus and the poor follow-up communication.  I don't think we
need to revisit everything that happened; let's just say that I intend to
avoid a repeat.

Now, down to business.  As you know, we've fixed the way we handle mail from
source-routed addresses, and I don't believe that anyone's *current* problems
are caused by this.

Another change we made, though, is to block mail from sites that have a very
large number of bounces in a very short period of time.  This is NOT a pure
spam-fighting effort, although it had the effect of stopping a lot of spam,
at least for the short term.  Rather, it's due to the fact that the large
volumes of mail sent to invalid recipients was causing us some operational
problems.

We're between a rock and a hard place.  If we block mail based on this (or
any!) criteria, we risk blocking some legitimate mail.  However, if we don't,
we risk facing denial of service issues, since we don't have infinite server
capacity.  We've already seen some slow mail days here, and things could get
worse before they get better.

This particular blocking is especially troublesome for list owners, since
AOL's mail bounce format isn't parsed automatically by LISTSERV.  This makes
it difficult to prune AOL members from your lists, and so it's more likely
that you'll have lots of invalid AOL names on your list.  Which is something
none of us want.

(A side note: setting your list to SHORTHDR format will not save you; it will
only make list processing less efficient for your system and ours.)


So what are we doing?

Well, first of all, rest assured that broad-brush mail blocking is not a
long-term approach.  Right now, we're taking efforts that give us the biggest
bang for the buck, so we can ensure that we continue delivering most of the
mail quickly most of the time.  That's not exactly an inspiring quality goal,
but it is better than slow mail.

Over the next few months, you'll see a lot of positive developments as we
roll out our new inbound gateway software, written from the ground up to
process mail efficiently.  One of the biggest wins for you as listowners is
that this new gateway software can detect and reject invalid recipients
DURING the SMTP transaction.  Translation: LISTSERV will automatically take
care of your AOL bounces.

This software will also let us take a much more surgical approach to spam, so
that we'll be much less likely to put legitimate list mail in harm's way.

And last, the new gateways are approximately a bazillion times faster and
more efficient than the old ones, which means your AOL subscribers will be
getting their list mail on time, all the time.

"That's nice, Jay, but what do I do for now?"

Well, for starters: If you think your list is being blocked from AOL, send me
e-mail with the name of the list.  I will research it and get back to you.
 Put "LIST BLOCKED" in the subject so it jumps out at me.  Include a contact
phone number if you'd like a voice call; personally, I prefer to solve
problems like this over the phone in real time, not through e-mail tag.

If we did in fact block your list, we will work with you to unblock it and
help you clean out your mailing list so you won't trigger the auto-blocker
again.

"But why should I have to be the one to contact AOL?"

You shouldn't.  I'm going to see if we can modify the auto-blocker to send
mail to the list owner if it sees the telltale LISTSERV-style names when it
blocks a list.  But that's later, this is now, and I want to start solving
things NOW.

Executive summary:  I'm here to talk, to help, and to make sure we keep the
phone lines open.  I think things are going to get a lot better (what else
could they get?) and that we can work around the current problems.

Jay Levitt
Manager, Mail Systems Group
America Online, Inc.
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