Without answering each respondent's email individually, let me just
wrap everything up into this one.
        First of all, regardless of what we may or may not feel about the
size of AOL and its' responsiveness to its customers, suggesting to my
subscribers that they switch to another ISP is not an option.  I am a
representative of the U.S. Navy, and therefore of the federal government,
and it is not in my, nor the government's, best interest to dictate to the
general public what software they must use to receive the Navy News Service
(NNS).  Freedom of choice is a wonderful thing!  This is, after all, a
newsletter that is subscribed to by and large by the general public, both
within as well as outside of the United States.  It has nothing to do with
mission critical email systems.  It has everything to do with trying
everything within my power to see to it that the general public is provided
the service that they are requesting from the government.
        Which then brings us back to the issue at hand.  Thanks to the
suggestions of some, I have indeed passed a request on to AOL requesting
that they make NNS an "approved newsletter list" and am waiting to hear back
from them.  In the meantime, if my AOL customers can't get NNS via email
because of problems at their ISP, then I'll make sure that they are able to
get to it in alternative forms, such as via the archives.  Plus, I'll take
David Phillips advice and build myself a little sombrero out of aluminum to
protect myself from the apparent sunspot activity that is the likely cause
of my problems.
        Also, Adam, I do make every attempt to keep my list clean of bad
addresses, both through passive probes as well as subscription renewal
monitoring.  On a list of 6,000+ subscribers, I'm getting a non-deliverable
rate of less than 1%.  None of these, surprising enough, are
non-deliverables to AOL.
        By the way, let me thank each of you that responded.

Dennis W. Thaxton
Director for Information Systems
Naval Media Center

----------
>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?