It is my intention to address two related issues with this LSTSRV-L
post (sorry if this is not the best forum). First, LISTSERV has a bug,
or at least a usability issue, with respect to (wrt) list owners being
served out. Second, LISTSERV has an increasingly important problem
wrt "out of the office" facilities that I believe needs to be addressed by
LSoft. Here we go ...

The LISTSERV web interface (2000b on Linux in my case) doesn't
play well for a list-owner currently "served out".  The web userid/pswd
(via intermediate page or cookie) is recognized by LISTSERV, but
then something in LISTSERV seems to trigger failures on succeeding
pages.  For example, on the "lists management" page, available for list-
owners from the default main LISTSERV web page, one obtains a null-
list of owned lists, instead of the normal drop-down list of lists.
Another example occurs when the served out list owner goes through
the lists of lists or unlisted lists page, s/he gets to the management
pages, but all actions fail with no (or blank) messages.  That is, a
subscriber search always returns no hits.  Selecting the
"Configuration" button returns a page *without* the box containing the
list configuration.

Serving the list-owner back on again causes LISTSERV to return to its
normal (correct) actions.  This is a bug.  I think I understand why it
happens, but the current action is not acceptable, IMHO.

Solutions?  I'd like to  LISTSERV recognize (at some point) that the
user is served out and ask if s/he would like to be served back on. If,
for technical reasons, the web interface cannot be used by a served-
out user, the web interface should explicitly disallow access.  My time
and my list-owners time are too valuable for LSoft to ignore this
problem, IMHO.  Apologies if this has been discussed on the list. A
quick search missed any such discussion.

My second issue for this e-mail also concerns "served out" users, but
is well known. IMHO, LSoft needs to protect its reputation as providing
good mailing list management by recognizing/enabling non-standard
solutions to "gone" or "out-of-the-office" (OoO) caused problems.

In the way of quite review, OoO responses cause two types of
problems. First, some OoO list recipient systems respond in ways that
cause the OoO response go to LISTSERV.  Usually quickly, the list
subscriber (or list owner) becomes "served out" with 51 bogus
"commands".  A subscriber that never posts is unaffected, but posters
and list-owners are affected and spend time getting the affected
address "working" with LISTSERV again.  Second, some OoO list
recipient systems respond (inappropriately, but that doesn't matter,
IMHO) to list posters. List owners don't want their posters bugged with
these every time they contribute to their lists!

Solutions?

These two OoO problems are fairly easily addressed by LSoft  by
enabling list owners or site managers to distribute posts with the one
or two non-standard, but defacto standard e-mail headers (e.g.,
precedence bulk).  IMHO, standing behind the argument of "no official
standard", if that is LSoft's argument, is not in the best interests of
LISTSERV nor its standing among MLMs.

I'd appreciate hearing comments from other LISTSERV managers and
LSoft on both of these problems.

cheers, wayne

Wayne T. Smith                       mailto:[log in to unmask]
Systems Group - UNET                 University of Maine System
LISTSERV maintainer for http://lists.Maine.edu/