On Tue, 8 Jul 1997 20:45:42 +0000 Duane Campbell <[log in to unmask]> said: >I have yet to see any outrage at what I thought was most outrageous, >i.e., that the AOL tech reps are not told of the problems that AOL's >system has with listservers. So if an AOL member has a problem with the >list he is on, the tech rep says it isn't their fault and throws it back >to the list owner. Believe me, I have tried to impart this upon AOL, unfortunately without any success thus far. This situation is particularly painful for people who use mailing lists for business purposes and especially when the subscriber is paying good money to receive, say, timely financial news. In the traditional "old boy" academic/hobby world, we can flame AOL all we want and tell people to use another ISP, but in the corporate world where money changes hands and lawyers run the show, it's another story. Asserting that AOL is blocking mailing lists and thus people should consider switching to another provider is a dangerous proposition as, if it got ugly (and I am *not* saying that AOL would ever do anything like that, however lawyers must of course assume the worst), you might find yourself trying to prove something that only AOL is in a position to prove or disprove. Most large newsletters reach hundreds of thousands of subscribers, which translate to millions of dollars of monthly revenue for AOL, or tens of millions per year, or however many zeroes for the life span of the account... Even a very liberal lawyer would get worried when doing the math. And even setting lawyers aside, mud-slinging and bad-mouthing are not very popular activities in the financial world, and people may choose to refrain from giving useful advice purely out of a concern to "keep a high profile". This is why I have been pushing for AOL to go public and *officially* admit (Jay's informal messages on a mailing list hardly count) that AOL is blocking large lists and that the only available corrective action is after the fact and on an informal basis, until Jay gets tired of all our whining and remembers that he has deadlines to meet :-) This might not be the high point of AOL's PR campaign, but I think AOL would get away with it if they would just wave the spectre of "spam" and evil incommensurate. This in turn would allow people to openly and honestly recommend (to a mostly non-technical crowd) the use of another ISP for newsletters and in general any important mailing list subscription. There would be no bad mouthing, but simply a pointer to some AOL web page where the problem would be explained in marketing-ese and AOL would get its best shot at convincing people to keep their AOL account on top of the new account they will have to get, as opposed to people finding out the hard way and getting all worked up and upset. Eric