> I am very sorry for all the bounces caused by a renegade server today. > > I have turned treg into a moderated list to prevent a recurrance. > A moderated list means I will approve all mailings manually, before they > go out. This may result in some minor delays so if your message doesn't > appear on treg imediately, don't panic, it'll get out by tommorrow. > > The problem today was caused by a mail server which responded to the treg > address rather than the treg-approval address. Once it started > responding to treg, it was in effect sending its message bounces back to > itself in a positive feedback loop. Each message cascaded into another. > And another. Each additional posting to treg by an outside party started > another set of messages looping. You know the result: A hundred messages > in three hundred mailboxes. > > I have decided to become the negative feedback in the loop to control > things. I have two courses of action I can take to address the issue. > I've implemented the most draconian first to just shut this problem > down. > > The draconian solution is to make treg moderated. Someone (me) has to > manually approve all messages. But I don't live on the internet so this > might add unacceptable delay. A second solution is to make treg a > "restricted" list. This means that messages could only be posted to the > list from addresses on the list. The mail server that wreaked havoc today > would only have been able to fill my mailbox under this senario (as I > would have to approve all non-member submissions). I haven't decided on > the long term solution yet. > > On to another touchy subject. Addresses on the treg list are constantly > being abandoned without unsubscribing. If you are > moving/leaving/abandoning please send me a note. When an address becomes > non-viable I get a bounce from it every time treg tries to send it a > message. Result: Everyday my mailbox looks like your's did today. I am > forced to eventually remove the bouncing address from the list and hope > that the person it belongs to really did abandon it. I do try to let the > address bounce for a week or two in the vain hope that it may be fixed. > Sometimes this happens. I have an offer: for those of you who want > advanced notice of any treg eviction, please send me your email address, > name, and telephone number and if your email address stops working, I'll > call in an attempt to straighten it out before I remove it. > > Once again, I apologize, > > Sincerely, > > Jon D. Curtis, P.E. > Director of Engineering email: [email protected] > Curtis-Straus LLC phone: (508) 263-1897 > 409 Massachusetts Avenue fax: (508) 263-4164 > Acton, MA 01720 http://world.std.com/~jdc/ > USA >
