Adam,
 As you know, I used to get lots of queries as a volunteer answering email
to Listmaster at AOL.  The problems some listowners are reporting now are
the same problems people complained about several years ago. Mail from lists
would disappear for all, or some AOL users. It would arrive out of sequence,
with mail from, say 2 days earlier, would arrive after current email. These
problems were sometimes caused by spam swamping a mail server, and sometimes
for certain lists there were issues where spam-filtering measures mistreated
legitimate email.
 AOL dealt with the latter on a case-by-case basis, since they didn't want
to have to discuss their anti-spam measures in the open, and perhaps
rightfully so. But as for the other stuff, there won't be anything like a
full disclosure. That kind of transparency went away a long time ago.
 Major outages are like a fart in church.  It happens, no one can deny it,
and so long as it's not a frequent occurence, life goes on.  It's the stuff
that doesn't quite work, and for long intervals of time, that piss people
off.
 There are probably more than a few people on this list who remember similar
discussions, oh, say two years ago, perhaps more.
 I support a previous poster's comments and say now that anyone who does not
need access to any of the residual communities on AOL would probably be best
off with an ISP instead of AOL.  I have used UUNet for dialup and POP mail
since 1994, and while they are more expensive for my usage pattern, their
service and support have been excellent.  I've also had similar good luck
with Earthlink when I had to use them for an employer, and Earthlink
provided good technical support for Macs. I think most good-sized ISPs are a
solid alternative to AOL; perhaps there is greater risk in the reseller
market, where there might be more intermediate nodes and vendors subject to
possible failure between you and the backbone.
 I won't get into AOL's client software, or any other of the service's
endearing characteristics, as it'd be off-topic.
 I don't believe that size is the main hindrance in AOL's functioning. Some
things I do know from the 1996-99 period suggest it's management. The
trouble with Scott Adams' Dilbert series is that the wrong people read and
understand it. The rest are too busy acting it out.
 Dave Phillips


----------
>From: Adam Bailey <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Spotty AOL Distribution
>Date: Sat, Jul 8, 2000, 1:26 PM
>

> Relying exclusively on any commercial provider for mission critical email
> service is not a good idea. While AOL has had a few unfortunate major
> outages, it is for the most part no worse than anyone else.
>
> Thus far, everyone has been speculating as to what's causing this without
> the necessary facts to do so. Pending the answer to my questions, it
> could turn out to be a problem of the sender's, not the recipients'.
> You're jumping to conclusions prematurely. Let's wait on that, okay?