Ladies and Gentlemen;
Given the flurry of emails back and forth, a quick recap on how a list
server functions might be helpful. If you are receiving all these emails,
it means you consciously subscribed to the list at www.auditnet.org because
you found their information to be helpful and valuable and you wanted to
know about updates and additions to their pool of resources.
the theory behind a list server is that is allows many people with
common interests - in this case audit plans - with an easy way to
communicate with each other in order to share and trade knowledge and
experience about the audits they have performed or need assistance in
performing;
the manager of the list server (Jim Kaplan) sends out one or two emails
every month to the subscribers indicating what audit plans have been
added as well as the requests he has had for new audit plans;
a list server is conceptually two components:
a centralised e-mail group with the email addresses of all those who
have subscribed, much like you would have a personally defined group
in MS Outlook, Lotus Notes, or Netscape Messenger;
an "agent" which automatically sends every email the list server
receives to all subscribers of the list;
if someone replies to a message from the list server "agent", they are
not in fact responding to the sender of the email directly, but the list
server itself. Consequently, the "agent" on the list server sends that
reply to all the subscribers (since it cannot distinguish between a new
e-mail and a reply to a previous message)
you will notice that the bottom of the emails from the list server have
information on how to unsubscribe. The email address for unsubscribing
is usually different than the address for the list itself. This is
because the unsubscribe request invokes a different "agent" which
deletes someone from the subscribers list without distributing the
unsubscribe request to all subscribers of the list. Consequently,
replying back to the list server asking to be unsubscribed will only
send your request to all the members of the list rather than deleting
you from the group.
What happened this time...
The list server does not have a virus nor does Roland's email system have
problems, both have been working as designed.
Round 1
Jim sent his emails as he regularly does every month
Roland's out of office auto reply agent replied back to the list server,
the "agent" on the list server sent his auto reply to all subscribers of
the list;
Round 2
when people replied back to the list server with messages such as
"stop spamming me", "who are you" etc. the list server auto sent
those message to all the subscribers including Roland
since he is a subscriber and he go the responses as well, Roland's
out of office auto reply responded to the list server every time
anyone else sent a message;
Round 3
Roland's out of office (OOO) auto reply goes back to the list
server again;
the list server sends the out of office message to all the
subscribers;
the subscribers reply back to the list server;
Round 4
the "agent" on the list server sends the subscribers' responses
again to all subscribers including Roland (who by now is
probably regretting he ever took a day off in the first place)
Roland's OOO auto agent responds again to the list server
the list server sends the OOO message to all subscribers
Round 5
the subscribers send back more messages
the list server sends them again to all subscribers
including Roland
Roland's OOO auto agent responds again to the list server
ad infinitum...
For those of you familiar with IT terminology this is known as an infinite
loop - as long as someone responds to the list server, Roland's OOO agent
will continue to respond too (until he returns to the office and turns if
off)
The lessons to take from this are as follows:
the more messages sent to the list server, the more messages everyone
gets. If you get an out of office auto reply message just delete it
rather than responding to it. If you respond you will get another
auto reply as happened today;
to unsubscribe from the list use the specified address at the bottom
of the emails ( [EMAIL PROTECTED]) rather than replying back
to the whole list;
if you wish to have a more detailed off-line discussion with any
subscriber to the list, without everybody else seeing it, then email
them directly - their email address will be in the sender information
- just delete the part of the email address at the end:
@list.auditnet.org;
If you have any comments or questions about this email, please contact me
directly at the email address below rather replying to the list server.
Peter Broad
Systems Control Consultant
Canada Life Assurance
(416) 597-1440 x 5032
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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To unsubscribe from this list send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and include
the message unsubscribe auditprograms-l and your name.
