[TN-Bird] Re: ARRGHH!!!

Dean Edwards and TN-Birders:

Yes!  We did have problems with the listserver recently.
Rick Knight was the first to detect trouble and notified me
right away.

Rick said he received a message from the list informing
him that his subscription status was set to "Vacation" and
he had not requested such a status.  Sure enough, he was
correct.

In the next few days, more people wrote me to ask about
their status.  I checked the list and found 49 subscribers on
the Vacation status which prevented them from getting mail.
But I had no way of knowin who had selected that status or
who hadn't.  I didn't know what was happening.  I did know
that was far more than the usual number on vacation and
that something was going astray.

By Saturday I had discovered the problem. 

Many of you have internet service providers which are not
always accepting mail.  Sometimes your mail reception
may be down,  the system may be down, or your system
may be just a little silly.  We have that with hotmail all the
time.

When your e-mail network service provider has trouble
it refuses to accept mail from the TN-Bird Network
server which is located in Ohio.  The TN-Bird Network
servers continues to try to send the messages and
does so for several days.  If your mail eventually goes
thru, then it forgets all about the problem.  If it doesn't
go thru, the server keeps trying for so many days and
then eventually unsubscribes you and takes you off the
mailing list.

So many people have so much trouble with their own
providers that they are constantly having that problem
and they get unsubscribed and then I have to put them
back on manually which takes a lot of time.

So,  I set the list options to not unsubcribe those persons
but simply put them over on to Vacation status.  I thought
that fixed the problem.  Now all I would have to do is just
open the list and unclick the Vacation status and they
would be back without my having to resubscribed them
by their e-mail address, etc.

Well, 49 persons had too many problem and instead of
being kicked off the list, they were parked on vacation.

I usually get a printout every day or so showing the names
of people having trouble and how close they are to being
booted.  I also get an e-mail message that informs me of
everyone booted off the system by unsubscribing.

I didn't get any messages about Vacation status because
I don't normally get a notice when someone sets their
status to Vacation.

To prevent this problem, we've had to go back to letting
the system boot people off who have e-mail addresses 
that or incorrect, not working, or whatever else over a
period of days.  I don't really care to do that but that is
what I am doing.

When I went into the list to reset all the Vacation flags,
I didn't know who was really on vacation and who was
not.  I did have personal knowledge of some who were
actually flagged for legitimate Vacation status.

So,  I had to turn off almost ever single Vacation flag.
This means some people will come home eventually
and find that their mailbox filled up with mail while they
were gone on vacation and they had set it for Vacation
and now why did they get all these message to download?

They will be madder than those of you who missed a
few days worth of messages.

Take Dean Edwards, for example.  Dean is troubled by
missing the spoonbill messages.  He sends a message
to the list telling everyone what had happened to him but
his message is sent from the e-mail address kde@xxxxxxxx
But he is not subscribed to TN-Birds under that address.
He is subscribed to TN-Birds under the address of
kde@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx  Guess what?  When he
sends his message in about being concerned about missing
his e-mail,  the TN-Bird Net server didn't recognized his 
message as coming from a legitimate subscriber to the
net and refused to let him post.  It sent his message to me
and said who in the heck is this kde@xxxxxxx guy?  It
says we don't have a subscriber by that name but he wants to
post.  What do you want to do with that message,  the listserver
asked.  Well,  I had to readdress it with a special code that will
allow the list server to go ahead and send Dean's message
even though it is from an unsubscribed address.

I know everyone is not interested in knowing all the inner workings
of managing a list like this but it just goes with the territory of
being the list owner and moderator.  The list owner has to keep
the mailing list operating, deal with the listserver owners,  be
the list owner, write people about trying to run the list in a smooth
and understandable and useful manner and call timeout on people
who abuse the network and others.  I like providing the services
and have been doing it for seven (7) years.  I will keep on helping
birders communicate on TN-Birds and I hope everyone stays
reasonably happy.

That brings you up to date on where we stand.  Some will now get
mail while they are on vacation and be unhappy.  Some will  get
booted off the list when their network e-mail providers can't accept
TN-Bird message and they will be upset also.  It goes with the turf.

Let's go birding this weekend at Columbia.

Wallace Coffey
Owner
TN-Birds
Bristol, TN


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    TN-Bird Net Owner: Wallace Coffey, Bristol, TN
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