On Wed, 24 Sep 1997 20:54:48 -0400 Vince Sabio <[log in to unmask]> said: >I had answered your message a couple of days ago, but it seems to have >been rejected by the moderator. (Interestingly, I posted a message to >the same list mere hours earlier that never went through a moderator.) > >(...) > >Eric Thomas is, of course, the developer of LISTSERV. My reply to your >post was very complimentary of Lyris, which is a competing product of >LISTSERV. > >One might wonder if there was a conflict of interest in the moderator. >;-) I don't appreciate your innuendo, Vince. You joined the list on Sep 21 and were set to REVIEW automatically, like any other new subscriber. If you had checked the archives before posting your conspiracy theory, you would have seen that we had to do that because AOL used LSTOWN-L in their "How to subscribe to a LISTSERV list" example, and other sites pointed to the AOL instructions or copied them, etc. A lot of people subscribed to the list thinking it was about baseball or Pamela Anderson or you name it. You can't possibly have posted to LSTOWN-L@SEARN a few hours before and not have been sent through the moderator. You probably bypassed moderation for your earlier message in the same manner as with the present message, by posting to [log in to unmask] (which was not in the AOL example and where there did not seem to be any need to tighten things up). As for why I didn't approve your message, I can't find it in my mailbox. Regretfully, I don't make a good moderator, especially for LSTOWN-L. Problem 1 is that the vast majority of moderated submissions come from people who thought this was a motorbike list and who seem to think that mail bombing the list is the proper way to request assistance in signing off. When I see a barrage of 100 messages to approve and the first 5-10 are like that, I tend to delete them all because genuine moderation requests come at the rate of maybe 1-2/week. I know I shouldn't do this, but I haven't been able to design a filter that universally recognizes mail bombs. Problem 2 is that SEARN runs LISTSERV.NET, which is the #1 target for "Kaboom!" and the like. Sometimes I log in and find a thousand messages from LISTSERV@SEARN in my mailbox (that's after filtering - they find new tricks all the time), so I just delete them all. >It also has some features that are, to my knowledge, impossible to find >anywhere else -- like the ability for any subscriber to forward a copy >of any list posting to a specific address, and automatically unsubscribe >himself. No commands needed -- just forward ANY list mailing. This as you know is highly controversial as it requires every message to be customized specifically for its recipient. Other than wasting bandwidth, this significantly increases the amount of resources needed to process the message at the RECEIVING site. To give just one example, L-Soft delivers some 1-1.5M messages to AOL every day. While WE have the resources to customize each of these messages and send them as 1-1.5M separate transactions, I'm not sure AOL would be thrilled if we (and everyone else in the net) did that. And what's worse, I'm not sure AOL's users would be thrilled either! They can already sign off by writing to [log in to unmask] (no command needed), and list mail is a lot more useful if you get it the same day that it was sent. This customization feature only works as long as a not too many people use it. Technically, it is trivial to implement. >Closely tied to that feature is Lyris's ability to handle bounced mail >more efficiently than any other server I've ever used -- and I should >know, I run a large number of small to moderate (~1k) size lists with LISTSERV and I hardly ever see a bounce. I use a combination of active and passive probing (in most cases I just let the 1.8d defaults apply) and LISTSERV takes care of everything for me in a much more resource-effective manner than with customized messages. This is something that I can apply to large destinations like AOL without having to worry about the consequences. >For example, if someone wants to change his e-mail address on the list, >he can simply go to the Web interface and change it himself. No more "my >ISP changed names, can you change my e-mail address for me?" You can also do that with LISTSERV (1.8d), but guess what? >Well, I still *receive* those messages Exactly :-) People don't know that they can do it themselves, so they ask you anyway, or they ask on the list. Most *users* never use the web interface, simply because all they ever need to do is post and reply, and they prefer to read their mail using their mail program than through a web interface where they can't conveniently move mail messages to folders in their mail programs and so on. Users whose e-mail address changes with every login, however, are big fans of the web interface. This allows them to post to "Send= Private" lists even if their ISP discovered yet another variation on their e-mail address today. They set themselves to REPRO so that they can log their own messages when they get their copy. Personally, I would still find another ISP, but people in remote areas sometimes have limited choice. >It also has built-in autoresponders that are easy to configure, "action >phrase" notification where you can instruct the server to take specific >actions (notify you, and/or return a pre-recorded message, and/or etc.) >in the event it detects (or doesn't detect, etc.) some specific text >within a message to the server. LISTSERV has supported auto-responders since 1.8b, if I remember correctly, and you can use various exits to add new command verbs to the system or then to examine messages before they are posted to a list and take the action of your choice. These exits are programs that you can write in the language of your choice and that are not limited to a series of predefined actions. Eric