On Mon, Nov 15, 1999 at 08:48:10PM -0500, Nick Simicich wrote: > At 06:40 PM 11/15/99 -0500, Tim Pierce wrote: > >One possibility is if the recipient's mail server is rejecting the > >mail based on some headers that were not generated by the mailing > >list (which might include Message-ID, From, Date, or others, > >depending on the list software). > > If the mail is all being sent from the same system, these headers are > generally similar. Er, the "From" headers are definitely not similar to each other, at least if the posts all come from different people. As for the others, it depends on your list software. For example, I know that SmartList preserves Message-ID, and it looks as if Majordomo does as well. > >Another possibility is if mail is being dropped due to some transient > >problem with the sender's domain, e.g. poor network connectivity to > >their DNS server. > > Then AOL is badly broken, and their members should complain. It might also be the sender's domain that is badly broken. From our perspective it is hard to tell. At any rate, I think we are generally in agreement that if the listmaster can prove that the mail was delivered to AOL, that it is out of her hands and the AOL user should complain to their tech support contacts. But for the record, as an external mail admin I have not found AOL's mail systems to cause nearly as much trouble as, say, Prodigy or iName or CompuServe (with their forwarding and aliasing nightmares), or penny-ante BBS systems that aren't really ready to play with the big boys. Considering that AOL represents about 15-20% of our recipients, that is really an extraordinary achievement. I would really be very happy if the rest of the world ran as smoothly as AOL. -- Regards, Tim Pierce RootsWeb.com lead system admonsterator and Chief Hacking Officer
