"David B. O'Donnell - AOL" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
]Not trying to be hostile, but how do you propose that we track which
]lists our members are subscribers of, without violating their right
]to privacy?
OK, that looks like a good equation to list owners: You would not
track which services & nodes are being overloaded or disrupted with
AOL bounces "because of the privacy of customers which neither pay
nor log in". A very good trade-off for AOL, I would say.
Further, the technical problem of how-to-track that is not mine but
AOLs. You can hire a programmer who writes code to automatically
track what has to be tracked to avoid this. An auto-rutine (or
robot) cannot violate any privacy at all. The thing is, in my view,
that if .com providers say they will do so (automatically or
otherwise) they would loose market shares. And this is happening at
the list owner's expense. We talked about this twice in the last 18
months and the problem is becoming wrose due to growth in AOL.
Nothing is being done and this will, sooner or later, hit you
because list owners are free to allow-block anyone provider which do
not comply with certain requirements.
]Would the LISTSERV network be able to handle tens of thousands of
]netwide UNSUB * commands from AOL?
L-Soft has a great technical expertise on networking. E. Thomas is
the right person to answer that question. However, I could
speculate that if LISTSERV has the capacity to deal with all AOL
bounces, it certainly has the capacity to deal with the signoff
commands :-)
]I'm really sorry to hear about the problems they're causing.
]Perhaps you could go into further detail? If the problems are ones
]that could be solved by education, then certainly I will do my best
]to see that the issues are addressed.
For 18 months ago, I thought that these technical issues could be
solved by "education". But it wont be so within an immediate
timeframe. This is due to growth figures in AOL and other .com
providers. The solution is technical, a robot routine to track the
lists to which the non-payer/non-loging-in subscriber is subscribed
and send a sigon command on behalf of list owners, systems operators
and overall operation of nodes and net.
]In this, I have to disagree. We do not "stand for" technical
]problems by our members. The fact that with 6,000,000+ members we
]represent a much larger percentage of Internet users than any other
]site in the world is certain to mean that our members will generate
]more error messages. It's unfortunate, but I don't really know of
]any quick technical fix to the situation.
Please, save me the PR. We addressed this twice under the last 18
months (both privately and through this conference) and nothing has
improved. In my own stats (1700 subscriber, circa 8% from AOL), the
**relative frequency** of bounces generated by AOL subscribers is
significantly higher than for other .com providers. And I am
CERTAINLY not endorsing any .com provider (just for the record).
The point is that I DO NEITHER HAVE THE TIME NOR WILL to keep up
with this AOL thing.
]In any event, if you have any constructive suggestions on how we
]might implement reasonable technical solutions to your problems ...
My "constructive suggestion" has been put forward: To track lists
and signoff automatically when diskquota is exceeded or your
customers do not pay. You have got to fix this up, not me. I am
not a programmer but a fishery biologist. And I dont work for AOL.
Aldo-Pier Solari/lst. ownr. FISH-ECOLOGY
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