Copied from a posting by Jim Battan <[log in to unmask]>
to the "comp.mail.misc" newsgroup.
___________________
How Not to Run an Internet Mailing List
or
How to get 470 e-mail messages in a day
This article describes the author's experiences in setting up and running
an Internet mailing list. It is intended for budding or wannabe mailing list
maintainers. Experienced mailing list maintainers will probably laugh as they
read this; they've probably learned it all the hard way. Hopefully by
publishing this, I'll save at least one other person some hassle.
When the honda mailing list (for discussions about Honda automobiles)
maintainer posted a message to its 370 members saying his machine was
going away, I decided this was my chance for at least 15 seconds of
fame, so I took him up on it. I thought, "gee, this should be easy",
and would increase my knowledge about e-mail in general. When I sent
out a message to the list saying I'd be the new maintainer, I got many
kudos back saying people were grateful someone stepped up to the task.
The maintainer had a bunch of DCL scripts he used on a VAX/VMS system,
but these wouldn't help me on a UNIX system, so I looked around for some
tools to help me automate the task. I found the "distribute" package that
the maintainer of the sun-nets mailing list used to run sun-nets. I compiled
the program on my Sequent machine and installed the necessary mail aliases
for submissions, administrivia, and error messages from the mailer daemon.
I figured I'd use the "Precedence: Bulk" header to the outgoing messages
so that I wouldn't receive error messages. I didn't want to have to
trace down "unknown user" or "system down" errors. I also decided to
undigest the list. The list had been digested and sent out once a day
under the old maintainer. Often times, the traffic was so light the
digest would be empty except for the headers, so I decided to undigestify
the list. This met with some strong opposition right away, I countered
with a suggestion that the users use a mail filter on their systems
(elm, mh, mush, and Z-mail all have filtering capabilities). Anyway,
I was in charge, so I didn't waver in undigestifying the list.
I tested the system with the list only containing my e-mail address,
and things worked right, so I thought I was all ready. On the day
of the cutover, the old maintainer sent me the mailing list member
list, and I put it in an alias file. I sent out a message to the
list saying it had found its new home, and gave the members the new
e-mail locations to send submissions and administrivia.
That day, my belief in a perfect world was shattered. :-) About two hours
after I sent out the first message, I started to get back error messages
from the mailer daemons at about twenty sites, giving a wide variety
of reasons for not delivering my message. I thought, "oh, that's okay,
I'll just wait until I get a second error message for that user, and
I'll remove them from the alias temporarily." This worked okay for
the first hour, but then the flood continued. I started getting error
messages back from three sites in particular every hour. I guess my
"Precedence: Bulk" line wasn't helping. Some of the mailers would
also send error messages to root, mailer-daemon, or the whole list.
Then I waited for the first submission to show up. Nothing. I got a
call from a person who said they got bounced mail saying the honda
alias wasn't known at our Internet gateway machine. I talked to our
sysadmins, and they discovered the alias hadn't been put on it, thinking
it was a "recreational" alias and not a type of alias that needed to
be known to the world. They fixed this, but not before I got about
ten complaints from the members in my personal mailbox.
Later that morning, the first submissions started arriving. At the
time, our Sequent system was running an alpha copy of a new sendmail
program. This alpha version had a bug in it that duplicated mail
messages once in a while. It started duplicating all the incoming
submissions. Of course, both copies generated error messages for
the sites or users I couldn't reach. I sent a mail message to the
users saying they'd have to put up with the duplicates; our engineering
group promised a fixed copy of sendmail in two days.
Then the administrivia requests for removal started pouring in. People
complained that whereas they used to receive just one honda digest a
day, they were now receiving two copies of every submission. Not only
that, but some of the mailer programs would send error messages back
to the list, not to the "Errors-To" header. Then members started sending
mail to the list voicing their opinions on the problems of undigestifying
and receiving duplicates, and others would send mail to the list telling
those members not to send complaints about the list to the whole list.
Things quickly snowballed. At one point our Internet gateway was
processing 45 sendmails, delivering to about 350 sites each. The
sysadmins threatened to remove the aliases and kill the sendmails
unless I fixed the problem immediately. I sent a warning to the list
(which showed up twice), and removed all members for which I was
getting bounced mail. Things quieted down a little, but the next day
they were still busy. The sysadmin told me I had to remove the list.
Fortunately, someone at UCLA noticed my problems, and being a list
maintainer already, volunteered to take it over. The list is now in
his hands, back as a once-a-day digest, and I've learned lots of lessons:
o Don't think that running an Internet mailing list is as easy as using
a mail alias inside your company. There are more factors involved than
you can control, and you're dealing with people who have different
capabilities, facilities, and computers than the ones you have. I was
surprised at the number of people on the Honda list that read their mail
over 1200 baud modems using PCs and very basic MUAs. I'm used to
high-speed lines with UNIX workstations, the latest sendmail, and Elm.
o Get approval from your site's system-administration department before
you decide to host a mailing list on their machines. Even if you do
the list-processing on your own Sun, the mail still has to traverse
over theirs to get outside the company.
o Every mailing list should have a FAQ list. This "Frequently Asked
Questions" should contain common questions that new members usually
ask, with commonly-accepted answers for each. This cuts down on the
traffic considerably. The FAQ should also contain service levels the
administrator will try to adhere to for administrivia requests (moves,
adds, removes, etc.). It should describe whether the list is digested
or not, and why. It should also explain the various mail aliases for
the list in great detail; nothing starts a flame-fest faster than a
newbie posting a "please remove me" message to the whole list. It
should also explain where to find information on filtering mail with
the various mail readers. Decide whether you'll allow advertising
and "for-sale" messages on the list. Also suggest a protocol for
replying to messages; low-volume lists allow replies to go to the
list, high-volume lists like replies to go to the originator, who
then summarizes and posts back to the list the answer(s).
o There are several programs available to help you manage the list.
The previously-mentioned "distribute" program is available in
ftp.umiacs.umd.edu:pub/distribute.tar.Z. A full-functioned package
that sounds good but that I haven't tried is "listserv" (no, this
doesn't have much to do with BITNET's LISTSERV). It was posted
to alt.sources, and is available in cs.bu.edu:pub/listserv.
It sounds like listserv obviates the need for the maintainer to perform
administrative requests; they're done through program control by the members.
o Remember that you have to be root (or have a setuid program) to set
the From_ line in a posting. Setting the From_ line is a good idea.
o sendmail uses a bunch of headers to control its behavior. But you
can't count on the headers being observed by the different mailers
out there. I suggest you set the "Precedence", "Errors-To", and From_
headers appropriately. Leave alone the From: header, and add a "Sender"
header with the list's administrative address if you want. Don't forget
to remove old headers that don't make sense or that you're adding in.
o If you have the time, digesting is much better than not. You can filter
out inappropriate submissions, make sure addresses look good, etc.
If you have even more time, you can read the RFC that talks about the possible
causes behind the various error messages you'll get back from mailers.
o Advertise your mailing list in the "list of lists" postings. See
news.answers, news.announce.newusers, and mail.misc for the address
of these lists. Send the info to [log in to unmask]
If your list is an off-shoot of a newsgroup, post your FAQ periodically
to that Usenet group.
--
Jim Battan - Sequent Computer Systems, Beaverton, OR
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