Hi, everyone,

I am sorry to have taken so long to report back on the changing of all
AOLers on my list to FULL822 instead of SUBJECTHDR.  Because of family
reasons, I took a month off and left the list in the hands of my
co-listowner who only had only recently extricated himself from AOL.  While
I was inactive, he just reported if anyone asked that I had had trouble with
AOL and had been working on it and he didn't know what the problem was.  He
didn't, actually.

So far as AOL, changing to FULL822 has worked except for a couple of times
when AOL sent a fire-breathing error messages listing mostly different
people from their earlier error messages.  I am sorry but I don't have it to
send it to you.  I just ignored it and it has now been quiet for quite a
long time. Only about three people on AOL contacted me about no longer
having the name on the subject line, and I changed their settings back to
SUBJECTHDR with an explanation of the reason for the change.

A query to Listserv about an AOLer produces this answer:

FULL822        (Obsolete, formerly "FULLHDR") Full mail headers with
               individual "To:" field

I think AOL is not set up to harass lists when they have to respond
individually to a number of people as they do under FULL822.  The poor
people on their server don't know anything else and don't know how to change
options.  I have not made any effort to inform them.

After it goes on another month or so, I may change them back to SUBJECTHDR
and see if it happens again.  I rather imagine it will since AOL is set up
on such narrow terms.  So I may after all just leave it like it is  and let
AOL continue to get all the messages individually instead of one nice little
tidy package.  Our system can stand the pace.

AOL can fly a kite for all I care.  And I am very thankful that Ben Parker
gave me this clue and others who made me realize that only the Listserv
maintainer could handle the feedback loop.  I did not want to burden our
people with that task, and the full822 is just what the doctor ordered,
apparently.

Thanks again to all concerned.

Barbara 

Barbara Passmore
Listowner, FLORIDABIRDS-L


-----Original Message-----
From: LISTSERV list owners' forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Ben Parker
Sent: Sunday, January 16, 2005 2:08 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [LSTOWN-L] AOL's Feedback Loop

On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 22:42:12 -0500, Barbara Passmore <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

>Is this okay?  I don't know how the AOLers received the post but I would
>assume that the listname does not appear on their subject lines either.  

Listname on the Subject line requires the SUBJECTHDR setting.  FULLHDR or
FULL822 replaces SUBJECTHDR so the Listname on the Subject line no longer
happens.  This is pretty well documented.

>No one has contacted me about it.

Yet...  They may.  Or not.  Wait and see.

>So I don't know what the above means, whether FULL822 is correct or whether
>it is obsolete and has been replace by FULLHDR which is what I have always
>seen. Is the way the options should read as to header?

FULL822 is an obsolete setting and may disappear from future versions of
LISTSERV.  For now it is still supported.  In small volumes it has no
measurable impact on the server.  In larger volumes it can, since it forces
LISTSERV to prepare a separate, individual email message for each such
recipient.  Normally LISTSERV sends mail by BSMTP (Bulk SMTP) means where
all
recipients at the same destination (e.g. all *@aol.com) are grouped and sent
together.  Sending 1 message to aol.com with 172 addresses is "easier" on
the
sending server (and the receiving server at aol.com) since only 1 file is
created and handled and much fewer total bytes are sent.  Sending 172
separate
individual messages, means handling 172 separate files, takes longer,
results
in many more total bytes sent, etc.  

Now adding 172 small emails to the total server load is not really a huge
difference, but if all list owners did it for all destinations, it would
have
a very large (negative) impact on the server.

>Also is there anyway I can get the feedback information without going
>through the admin of Listserv?  I see it requires the access numbers which
I
>do not have.

AOL intentionally has designed their feedback loop mechanism only for
"Postmasters" or Server Administrators, i.e. the person(s) fully responsible
for the internet "behavior" of a given machine or group of machines.  List
Owners typically are not also Server Admins (some are of course) and they
don't have the necessary access to control the server's "behavior" so AOL is
not interested in working with List Owners at this lower level.