As you might have noticed, we've been off emergency moderation for a day or so.
I would like to again thank everyone for their patience and understanding during the last week or so while we dealt with spam issues and other circumstances on the Mosaic list. Please read the below and understand that I need a place to share my and (ahem) vent my frustrations. In the last 12 hours or so we've seen a lot of "individual" conversations on our list. These are messages asking ONE PERSON for something, asking ONE PERSON for help, or thanking ONE PERSON for a resource. If we had been on moderation, most of these messages would have been rejected because they should have been sent to ONE PERSON. As noted, we are not currently on moderation. The key word above is ONE PERSON. Most messages needed ONE PERSON to help and not 3000+ members to troubleshoot or think about an idea. When on moderation, I usually reject the ONE PERSON messages and direct the sender to contact the ONE PERSON. If you ask the entire membership to help and then 10 members might also reply to the entire list. If list traffic is unmoderated, we easily have a spike of 50,000 messages. This WILL BE NOTICED by server spam software and filters and providers WILL TAKE ACTION. I personally don't mind the large number of messages. Like many Mosaic members, I delete these quickly and move on with my life - no worries. BUT...other providers with their server software packages are watching and WILL NOTICED the spike in traffic. The problem we have with large numbers of posts in a short time period is that MSN, HotMail, AOL, and the other "big boys" *do* wake up and see that a large numbers of messages are being sent by our server. Their sever software quickly decides that they must stop our server as it can only be spam. In recent months these providers essentially "shut down" messages from our server due to *excessive abuse* (too many messages sent in a short amount of time to their clients). No messages from our server can get through to people on "their" server. Mosaic members using these servers are put on inactive status and then quickly deleted from our membership list because messages sent to them are "bouncing". This means that impacted Mosaic members with email accounts provided by the hosts are severely impacted, but more importantly for me, business clients that I also host on my server cannot send messages to their contacts. It is all very arbitrary, unkind, and non-human. But software and no real people are making these decisions. This is a HUGE problem for everyone involved - especially me as I am forced to intervene by trying to find solutions with the "big boys" and for people paying me money to host their email accounts and businesses. This can take hours and hours and hours of my time to troubleshoot and I never get to talk or work with a real, understanding person. I really, *really*, REALLY don't want to get moderation started again (in fact I never want to invoke moderation!). I'm asking, nay...*pleading*, that you think twice before sending a message out to thousands of people (those of you with mobile devices PLEASE take notice). Mosaic has probably sent out in excess of 70,000 emails to the entire membership in the last 18 hours that might have been best served with less than 12 *individual* messages (not sent from our server). I have to admit that I might agree with the "big boys" that this is a form of abuse of resources. Gosh, please, PLEASE be careful when you send a message! Big Brother IS watching. The bottom line is that I'm expecting a big provider(s) to block our server at any time today unless members can show restraint. The other alternative is that we put Mosaic back on moderation. I'm begging (on virtual knees) that when you need ONE PERSON to provide a URL, or access to some resource, or want to be included in ONE PERSON's distribution, or want to thank ONE PERSON, or want to agree with ONE PERSON's idea, please do it INDIVIDUALLY and not to the entire list. As many of you know, I'm a former literacy teacher and really want support the Mosaic group. This is a powerful community of professions and we all want it to continue to grow and help teaching and learning. Please know that I do not benefit financially from the Mosaic list - the work that Ginger, Jennifer, Laura and I do for this list is entirely voluntary. There are no corporate offices and no underpaid staff members and interns involved in providing support for this group. Everyone's help in this matter would be *deeply* appreciated. Thanks, Keith Mack Web Administrator for Mosaic List km...@literacyworkshop.org _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list Mosaic@literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive.
