MGR: Welcome Avant Guard GM...

Let's all welcome Joe, our newest GM, running the superhero game, Avant
Guard (avantguard).

Welcome aboard, Joe!

-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Game(s): Fudge, Worldmaking, Fantasy Co-Editor, Phoenyx Co-Owner
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/

MGR: Welcome Avant Guard GM...

on 8/17/02 10:24 PM, Carl D Cravens at raven@phoenyx.net wrote:

> Welcome aboard, Joe!

Damn glad to be here! Are any of the games using the move tags? I'll admit
to being a bit confused by 'em (always look when I'm tired!), but I'd like
to see the end results.


-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Game(s): 
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/

MGR: Welcome Avant Guard GM...

On 08/17/02 at 09:31 PM,  Avant Guard GM  said:

>on 8/17/02 10:24 PM, Carl D Cravens at raven@phoenyx.net wrote:

>> Welcome aboard, Joe!

Welcome, Joe!

>Damn glad to be here! Are any of the games using the move tags? I'll
>admit to being a bit confused by 'em (always look when I'm tired!),
>but I'd like to see the end results.

Nope, I don't use the "move system" so I can't help you there.

Eris
Akus Moby GM

-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Game(s): 
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/

MGR: truncated posts

My posts are going out full but getting distributed cut off. Is this common?

-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Game(s): 
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/

MGR: truncated posts

On Sun, 18 Aug 2002, Avant Guard GM wrote:

> My posts are going out full but getting distributed cut off. Is this common?

No, it's not.  It looks like the freemail sig stripper may have identified
your message as being a Hotmail sig and stripped it.  But we've never had
trouble with it doing this before.  Karen's going to look into it.
-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Game(s): Fudge, Worldmaking, Fantasy Co-Editor, Phoenyx Co-Owner
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/

MGR: truncated posts

> No, it's not.  It looks like the freemail sig stripper may have identified
> your message as being a Hotmail sig and stripped it.  But we've never had
> trouble with it doing this before.  Karen's going to look into it.

One of my hotmail guys keeps getting booted from the system as you noted may
happen the other day. Will this continue as long as he uses hotmail? I'll
try to convince him to use another service, but I don't know if it'll fly...

Here is today's avantguard status report.

Distribution counts ('distrib' is main group):
distrib: 4 users
bouncers: 2 users
3 autoremoval of reaveh@hotmail.com ('SMTP; 554 Transaction failed' reported
by lists.wirebird.com)
1 user 'reaveh@hotmail.com' automatically unsubscribed on Sun, 18 Aug 2002
11:48:48 CDT
3 autoremoval of tyrs_hand@hotmail.com ('SMTP; 554 Transaction failed'
reported by lists.wirebird.com)
1 user 'tyrs_hand@hotmail.com' automatically unsubscribed on Sun, 18 Aug
2002 11:48:49 CDT
1 user 'tyrs_hand@hotmail.com' joined on Sun, 18 Aug 2002 14:04:38 CDT
3 autoremoval of tyrs_hand@hotmail.com ('SMTP; 554 Transaction failed'
reported by lists.wirebird.com)
1 user 'tyrs_hand@hotmail.com' automatically unsubscribed on Sun, 18 Aug
2002 18:51:43 CDT

-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Game(s): 
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/

MGR: truncated posts

On Mon, 19 Aug 2002, Avant Guard GM wrote:

> One of my hotmail guys keeps getting booted from the system as you noted may
> happen the other day. Will this continue as long as he uses hotmail? I'll
> try to convince him to use another service, but I don't know if it'll fly...

As long as Hotmail continues to have difficulties, yes... the auto-booter
will keep removing Hotmail addresses.  The Hotmail problems generally come
in bursts... they'll have problems for two to three days and then they'll
be fine for a few months.

It's important to remember here that this is _Hotmail's_ problem, not the
Phoenyx.  Hotmail is unable to accept mail during these problems
regardless of where the mail is coming from... if you were on a Yahoo
Groups list, the user wouldn't be getting unsubscribed, but he would still
be failing to receive messages.

The Phoenyx at least tries to notify the user that they've lost mail
because Hotmail rejected it, and that they've been deactivated.  It sends
-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Game(s): Fudge, Worldmaking, Fantasy Co-Editor, Phoenyx Co-Owner
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/

MGR: truncated posts

On 19 Aug 2002 at 16:21, Carl D Cravens wrote:

> The Phoenyx at least tries to notify the user that they've lost mail
> because Hotmail rejected it, and that they've been deactivated.

We've had a lot of discussions about this... is it better to let the 
user stay on the list, and just have lost messages?  That makes the 
Phoenyx seem unreliable.

The alternative is to track each and every message to each and every 
user, and keep retrying for a set period of time before bouncing 
them.  The thing is, sendmail already *does* this, but when Hotmail 
reports that the error is "permanent" (there are "permanent" and 
"temporary" disk full errors), sendmail is supposed to believe them.  
So the alternative is to rewrite sendmail's functionality in Perl 
with some added smarts for retrying, which is a big messy project.

I might do it someday, though.


-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Game(s): The Whole Phoenyx
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/

MGR: truncated posts

-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Game(s): 
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/

MGR: truncated posts(hotmail)

on 8/19/02 9:12 PM, Karen Cravens at silver@phoenyx.net wrote:

> On 19 Aug 2002 at 16:21, Carl D Cravens wrote:
> 
>> The Phoenyx at least tries to notify the user that they've lost mail
>> because Hotmail rejected it, and that they've been deactivated.
> 
> We've had a lot of discussions about this... is it better to let the
> user stay on the list, and just have lost messages?  That makes the
> Phoenyx seem unreliable.
> 
> The alternative is to track each and every message to each and every
> user, and keep retrying for a set period of time before bouncing
> them.  The thing is, sendmail already *does* this, but when Hotmail
> reports that the error is "permanent" (there are "permanent" and
> "temporary" disk full errors), sendmail is supposed to believe them.
> So the alternative is to rewrite sendmail's functionality in Perl
> with some added smarts for retrying, which is a big messy project.

    Thanks for this and the other clarifications. I believe my hotmail guys
are just switching over to alternate systems. (hope there's no trouble with
the UltimateEmail server!)

    Hopefully in a couple of days we'll have everyone moved in and the game
will proceed full throttle. In no way do we think it's a Phoenyx end
problem, as directly or indirectly everyone has positive things to say about
PN. When they get to roll their own dice the players will all be in 7th
heaven!

    Thanks again!

-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Game(s): 
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/

MGR: truncated posts(hotmail)

On 19 Aug 2002 at 21:34, Avant Guard GM wrote:

>     Thanks for this and the other clarifications. I believe my hotmail guys
> are just switching over to alternate systems. (hope there's no trouble with
> the UltimateEmail server!)

They really shouldn't do that, if they want a real fix.  They should 
subscribe under their *real* email address, and set their Hotmail 
address as an alternate.  Nobody except the majordomo knows their 
"real" address, but mail (groupmail, anyway... personal replies will 
go to the Hotmail account) gets delivered to what is hopefully the 
most reliable address they've got.

Free services are worth exactly what you pay for them.

(The Phoenyx excepted, of course.)

-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Game(s): The Whole Phoenyx
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/

MGR: truncated posts

On 08/19/02 at 08:12 PM,  "Karen Cravens"  said:

>On 19 Aug 2002 at 16:21, Carl D Cravens wrote:

>> The Phoenyx at least tries to notify the user that they've lost mail
>> because Hotmail rejected it, and that they've been deactivated.

>We've had a lot of discussions about this... is it better to let the 
>user stay on the list, and just have lost messages?  That makes the 
>Phoenyx seem unreliable.

I don't suppose there would be a way to automatically put them on
"vacation" or "hiatis" or something like that, would there? That way
they wouldn't have to resubscribe, just change their status back to
"active."  It would also help if the list owner got a post notifying
us that someone was unsubscribed.

Eris

-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Game(s): 
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/

MGR: truncated posts

On Mon, 19 Aug 2002, Eris Reddoch wrote:

> I don't suppose there would be a way to automatically put them on
> "vacation" or "hiatis" or something like that, would there? That way
> they wouldn't have to resubscribe, just change their status back to
> "active."

That's what it's doing.  The only difference between 'vacation' and
'bouncing' mode is that Firehawk periodically sends out a "hey, you've
been unsubscribed" message.  (That and the end-user can't set themselves
as "bouncing", although the list manager can.)

When a user unsubscribes, intentionally or not, no information is lost...
a flag is simply set on their account to indicate whether or not they
should receive list mail, auto-unsub warnings, or no mail at all.  When
they "resubscribe" they're actually switching the flag on their existing
account back to 'active'.

(I don't think that there's a technical difference between 'vacation' and
'inactive', either.  Just that 'vacation' is more intuitive to the user
who wants to temporarily stop getting mail but not lose their settings.
And in theory, someday old 'inactive' accounts will get purged from the
database, but 'vacation' ones won't.)

The one thing that does need to be done here is for the user settings page
to reflect that they're not 'active'.  It incorrectly shows them as
'active', the idea being that all they have to do to reactivate is load
the settings page and submit it.  That's confusing some people, 'cause
they look at the page and see that they're 'active' and wonder why they
don't get mail.  They just need to click "Submit" and all is well.  (Until
Hotmail does its thing again.)

> It would also help if the list owner got a post notifying us that
> someone was unsubscribed.

It's in your daily status report.

-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Game(s): Fudge, Worldmaking, Fantasy Co-Editor, Phoenyx Co-Owner
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/

MGR: truncated posts

On 19 Aug 2002 at 22:24, Eris Reddoch wrote:

> I don't suppose there would be a way to automatically put them on
> "vacation" or "hiatis" or something like that, would there? That way
> they wouldn't have to resubscribe, just change their status back to
> "active."  It would also help if the list owner got a post notifying
> us that someone was unsubscribed.

Actually, it shows up in your status report (at least, it should).

And technically, they *are* on a vacation/hiatus status, it's just 
called "bouncing," which is exactly like "vacation" except they get 
regular notifications (at 1 day, 7 days, and 30 days) before they're 
unsubscribed for real.  None of their settings (should) go away, they 
should just be able to send a message to GROUPNAME-on and be right 
back where they started.

Someday, I'm going to implement a "catchup" command that will send 
out all the messages in a date range, but I haven't done that yet.
 
-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Game(s): The Whole Phoenyx
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/

MGR: truncated posts

On 08/19/02 at 10:43 PM,  "Karen Cravens"  said:

>On 19 Aug 2002 at 22:24, Eris Reddoch wrote:

>> I don't suppose there would be a way to automatically put them on
>> "vacation" or "hiatis" or something like that, would there? That way
>> they wouldn't have to resubscribe, just change their status back to
>> "active."  It would also help if the list owner got a post notifying
>> us that someone was unsubscribed.

>Actually, it shows up in your status report (at least, it should).

Yes, it is there, but I'll admit to not reading my status reports
every day, and I missed the last one this happened to, and yes he was
a hotmail bouncer.

>And technically, they *are* on a vacation/hiatus status, it's just 
>called "bouncing," which is exactly like "vacation" except they get 
>regular notifications (at 1 day, 7 days, and 30 days) before they're 
>unsubscribed for real.  None of their settings (should) go away, they
> should just be able to send a message to GROUPNAME-on and be right 
>back where they started.

Now that Carl has explained why their settings page shows active, when
they can't post , I can tell them to just hit submit instead of
unsubscribing and then resubscribing.

>Someday, I'm going to implement a "catchup" command that will send 
>out all the messages in a date range, but I haven't done that yet.

That would be useful. If I knew Perl well enough to help, I'd
offer...maybe someday.

Eris
-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Game(s): 
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/

MGR: user settings

A couple of my players claimed they couldn't adjust their nick now that they
have signed onto the game (joined). If you select the user settings from the
banner (webread or for me on the mgr page) you get sent to the general
settings page. We're not listed in the drop down menu yet, so there doesn't
seem to be a way in.

I'm sure I'm missing something, but if someone could point me to the barn
I'll be happy to shoot it with my bazooka :)
-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Game(s): 
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/

MGR: user settings

BOOM! The settings are working A-okay this afternoon, thanks. AG is on the
drop down for access!

> A couple of my players claimed they couldn't adjust their nick now that they
> have signed onto the game (joined). If you select the user settings from the
> banner (webread or for me on the mgr page) you get sent to the general
> settings page. We're not listed in the drop down menu yet, so there doesn't
> seem to be a way in.
> 
> I'm sure I'm missing something, but if someone could point me to the barn
> I'll be happy to shoot it with my bazooka :)


-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Game(s): 
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/

MGR: user settings

On Tue, 20 Aug 2002, Avant Guard GM wrote:

> A couple of my players claimed they couldn't adjust their nick now that they
> have signed onto the game (joined). If you select the user settings from the
> banner (webread or for me on the mgr page) you get sent to the general
> settings page. We're not listed in the drop down menu yet, so there doesn't
> seem to be a way in.

You're on the drop-downs and checklist now.  But even before that occurs,
you can go to the game's default web page
(http://www.phoenyx.net/LISTNAME/) and there's a form to get to the user
settings there.  If you replace or modify that page, it's always a good
idea to keep that form... you can evey copy the form code onto pages off
of the Phoenyx.

I'll go review the list managers initial documentation and see if I can
make that clearer.

-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Game(s): Fudge, Worldmaking, Fantasy Co-Editor, Phoenyx Co-Owner
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/

MGR: user settings

on 8/21/02 1:56 PM, Carl D Cravens at raven@phoenyx.net wrote:

> I'll go review the list managers initial documentation and see if I can
> make that clearer.

Honestly, it's more a problem with moi than the documentation...blame it on
being a day-daddy with a third shift job:) (beats plain old ignorance)

I'll copy the form code and place it on the regular web site too. Thanks for
putting up with me!
-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Game(s): 
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/

MGR: more bonehead questions...

My Mac version of explorer doesn't want to let me in using the web editor,
but I can get through using my FTP proggy. I can't get into my 'files'
folder, though (everything else is accessable) It's working, as a pair of
attachments from mail messages are in there and can be read/seen with the
url appended to the posts.

I know I'm being a pain, please take your time responding.
-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Game(s): 
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/

MGR: more bonehead questions...

On 21 Aug 2002 at 21:49, Avant Guard GM wrote:

> My Mac version of explorer doesn't want to let me in using the web editor,

It's griping about a password mismatch.  Try changing your password 
(via the "passwd" command).

> but I can get through using my FTP proggy. I can't get into my 'files'
> folder, though (everything else is accessable) It's working, as a pair of
> attachments from mail messages are in there and can be read/seen with the
> url appended to the posts.

Hey Carl, I remember now what didn't like virtual links!

> I know I'm being a pain, please take your time responding.
> -- --------------------------------------------------------------
> Game(s): 
> Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/
> 


-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Game(s): The Whole Phoenyx
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/

MGR: more bonehead questions...

on 8/21/02 11:02 PM, Karen Cravens at silver@phoenyx.net wrote:

> It's griping about a password mismatch.  Try changing your password
> (via the "passwd" command).

Will do. I had changed it from the default earlier today, it uses my new
password for my managers tools and the original for FTP...should've guessed
that had something to do with it!
-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Game(s): 
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/

MGR: editing files

	Is there any way that I, as GM, can edit messages after they are posted? 
  I ask because a user of mine signed up using a new account, and posted 
before she changed her "nickname" and doesn't want her real name to 
show.  I tried to access the file with the web page editor, but though I 
can edit it, I can't save my edits.

-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Game(s): ojai
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/

MGR: editing files

On Wed, 21 Aug 2002, Lxndr wrote:

> 	Is there any way that I, as GM, can edit messages after they are
> posted?

Not at this time.

>   I ask because a user of mine signed up using a new account, and posted
> before she changed her "nickname" and doesn't want her real name to
> show.  I tried to access the file with the web page editor, but though I
> can edit it, I can't save my edits.

Even if you could, if we were to ever regenerate the Mhonarc files from
the originals, your changes would go away.

This is something that's coming up more and more... people posting things
they didn't want to post and then they later want them removed from the
archives.  (I recently had someone ask me to remove his name from posts in
the Fudge archive because his new employer disapproved of roleplaying
games and thought his employees shouldn't be publically associated with
them.  Were it me, I'd have told my employer to shove it where the sun
don't shine... what I do with my private life isn't of his concern.)

Our policy has generally been "think before you post" and to leave the
archives alone.  We as owners and you as managers don't want to get into
editing the archives every time someone regrets what they've posted.  So,
of course, nearly every archive starts out with test messages. :)  (These
are the most-requested deletes.)

We can revisit this policy decision if necessary.  But we have a serious
manpower problem here and are not likely to make any decisions that
increase our workload.

BTW:  Can anybody tell me what kind of edit ability Yahoo Groups has?  Can
the list owner delete posts out of the archives there?

-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Game(s): Fudge, Worldmaking, Fantasy Co-Editor, Phoenyx Co-Owner
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/

MGR: editing files

Carl D Cravens wrote:

>BTW:  Can anybody tell me what kind of edit ability Yahoo Groups has?  Can
>the list owner delete posts out of the archives there?
>
Yes, both the author and owner can delete posts from the yahoo groups 
archives. The numbers of the messages are gone afterwards, so it's 
possible that the raw messages may actually still be there and the 
messages marked as deleted simply aren't shown.

Eris


-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Game(s): 
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/

MGR: more bonehead questions...

On Wed, 21 Aug 2002, Avant Guard GM wrote:

> Will do. I had changed it from the default earlier today, it uses my new
> password for my managers tools and the original for FTP...should've guessed
> that had something to do with it!

It wasn't syncing them... I thought we'd taken care of that.  But if it
_had_ been, your password would have screwed it all up. :)

I didn't realize that colons were valid in an encrypted password string
and was splitting the username:cryptstring on the colon... your encrypted
password had a colon as the first character, so the second field of that
string was empty... and an empty password in the FTP config file causes
the server to refuse _all_ connections. :)

Not your fault... just poor coding assumptions on my part.  Nothing you
could have done to prevent it... just a matter of time before some
password encrypted to a string with a colon.

Your FTP password is now in sync with your new list password.

-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Game(s): Fudge, Worldmaking, Fantasy Co-Editor, Phoenyx Co-Owner
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/

MGR: more bonehead questions...

> Your FTP password is now in sync with your new list password.
 
My password is synced, but I still get the message:
 Authorization Required
This server could not verify that you are authorized to access the document
you requested. Either you supplied the wrong credentials (e.g., bad
password), or your browser doesn't understand how to supply the credentials
required.

I'm using avantguard for ID and the password which works for FTP...

-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Game(s): 
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/

MGR: more bonehead questions...

On Thu, 22 Aug 2002, Avant Guard GM wrote:

> My password is synced, but I still get the message:
>  Authorization Required
> This server could not verify that you are authorized to access the document
> you requested. Either you supplied the wrong credentials (e.g., bad
> password), or your browser doesn't understand how to supply the credentials
> required.
>
> I'm using avantguard for ID and the password which works for FTP...

I don't know about the browser issue.

[Thu Aug 22 05:43:10 2002] [error] [client 12.77.28.83] user avantguard:
password mismatch: /tools/webedit

It thinks your password is incorrect.  Hm...  surely Apache doesn't have a
problem with the extra colon.  Doesn't let me in either... so it's not a
browser issue.

Yep, problems with that colon... I re-entered your password (same
password, but the randomly generated 'salt' produces a different encrypted
string every time) and it works fine now.

Hmmmmm...  the first two characters of the encrypted string _are_ the
salt.  And the salt is supposed to be chosen from [a-zA-Z0-9/.] (per the
crypt(3) manpage)... it shouldn't have a colon there.  I was about to go
look at the htpasswd source when I realized that htpasswd isn't what's
setting those.

Karen... check your code for how you're selecting your salt and make sure
you're limiting it to the above character list.

-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Game(s): Fudge, Worldmaking, Fantasy Co-Editor, Phoenyx Co-Owner
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/

MGR: more bonehead questions...

On Wed, 21 Aug 2002, Karen Cravens wrote:

> It's griping about a password mismatch.  Try changing your password
> (via the "passwd" command).

Did I fix that so it calls the ftp_create script to regenerate the FTP
passwords?  I think I did, but I can't recall.

> Hey Carl, I remember now what didn't like virtual links!

That's a ProFTP issue and is not web-related.  The ftp daemon chroot's to
/var/firehawk/lists/avantguard/web, and the files directory is a link to
../files (a level above), so it can't see it.  It's a security feature of
FTP.  If you want to get around that, swap the locations of the real
directory and the link, moving the real 'files' directory into the web
directory.

I think we still have some backwards link/directory relationships between
the web directory and the firehawk directory.  I'm not sure how that's
affecting the FTP issue... you recently indicated that I've been setting
them up backwards, but I'm not sure of the "best" way to do it.  The web
server will let us point outside the document root, so I'm thinking that
the "wrong" way might be preferable.  We need to put that on the list of
things to look at.

-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Game(s): Fudge, Worldmaking, Fantasy Co-Editor, Phoenyx Co-Owner
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/

MGR: more bonehead questions...

On 21 Aug 2002 at 22:56, Carl D Cravens wrote:

> > Hey Carl, I remember now what didn't like virtual links!
> 
> That's a ProFTP issue and is not web-related.  The ftp daemon chroot's to
> /var/firehawk/lists/avantguard/web, and the files directory is a link to
> ../files (a level above), so it can't see it.  It's a security feature of
> FTP.  If you want to get around that, swap the locations of the real
> directory and the link, moving the real 'files' directory into the web
> directory.

That's what I meant.

-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Game(s): The Whole Phoenyx
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/

MGR: My players have spoken

I'm very sorry for this, I know I've been a major pain over the past week.
If I had started my game here, I could have made it a regulation that the
players had stable mail clients. As it is, I've got one (my co-GM!) who'll
leave since he seems to take the bouncing of his rocketmail account
personally(?!), and two others that refuse to switch mail accounts.

I do not understand their stance. E-Mail is e-mail, I'd set up six different
accounts if I had to. But since these are my established players, I can't
really just tell them to take a hike, and the bouncing has thrown off the
momentum of the game considerably. As it is, Yahoo bounces MY real POP mail
for no good reason, so it looks like I'm going to be the one to fold...one
of me, three of them.

I really think Phoenyx is the way to go, and once again I apologise for the
brief stay. Let me know anything I need to do for you and I'll take care of
it ASAP. I feel like a real heel doing this.
-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Game(s): 
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/

MGR: My players have spoken

On Fri, 23 Aug 2002, Avant Guard GM wrote:

> I'm very sorry for this, I know I've been a major pain over the past week.
> If I had started my game here, I could have made it a regulation that the
> players had stable mail clients. As it is, I've got one (my co-GM!) who'll
> leave since he seems to take the bouncing of his rocketmail account
> personally(?!), and two others that refuse to switch mail accounts.

Have you pointed out to them that they're getting unsubbed because _their
email provider is unreliable_ and that they are going to lose messages no
matter what mailing list provider they use?  The software is unsubscribing
them because it cannot deliver mail to their address.  It's our advanced
features bringing out the flaws in other email services.

At least the Phoenyx tries to let them know that they've lost mail and
need to catch up.  Then all they need to do is send mail to avantguard-on
to reactivate their accounts, then go to the web archives to catch up on
mail.  With Yahoo Groups, they may never know that mail didn't reach them.

We're looking at ways of fine-tuning the auto-unsubber... having it keep
track of how many messages have been undeliverable to a particular user
and unsubbing them only after a certain threshold, for instance.

It might be a workable idea to add a flag to accounts that allows you to
mark them "never auto-unsub".  I'll have to add that to the list of things
to consider.

Sorry to see you go... you just about set a speed record for getting
everything set up and ready to run after I got the list turned on.  I was
looking forward to seeing how the game went.

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MGR: My players have spoken

on 8/23/02 11:34 PM, Carl D Cravens at raven@phoenyx.net wrote:

> Sorry to see you go... you just about set a speed record for getting
> everything set up and ready to run after I got the list turned on.  I was
> looking forward to seeing how the game went.

    Yeah, and a speed record out the back door :(  Will it be possible to
stay in this group to keep up with what's going on with your site?
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MGR: My players have spoken

On 24 Aug 2002 at 11:24, Avant Guard GM wrote:

>     Yeah, and a speed record out the back door :(  Will it be possible to
> stay in this group to keep up with what's going on with your site?

Sure.

A question for everybody:  Would it be better to exclude Hotmail (or 
anybody else who's got chronic problems) from the bouncebot?  It 
means the group owner would get all their bounce messages and have to 
manually unsubscribe the legitimate ones, and you'd have to keep your 
players apprised of when Hotmail is losing mail (there's just no way 
to *force* those messages to be delivered).

I don't want groups to be cluttered with a lot of deadwood addresses 
because group owners are tired of seeing bounce messages and route 
them to dev/null (that's why I set up the bouncebot in the first 
place), but I don't like losing otherwise-good games.

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MGR: My players have spoken

On 24 Aug 2002 at 21:10, Karen Cravens wrote:

> A question for everybody:  Would it be better to exclude Hotmail (or 
> anybody else who's got chronic problems) from the bouncebot?  It 
> means the group owner would get all their bounce messages and have to 
> manually unsubscribe the legitimate ones, and you'd have to keep your 
> players apprised of when Hotmail is losing mail (there's just no way 
> to *force* those messages to be delivered).
> 

I would vote for excluding Hotmail.  I have a couple players who have been 
getting routinely unsubscribed too.  They've been really good sports about it 
but I know it's an annoyance.  In most cases Hotmail only bounces stuff 
briefly, so it's not likely to cause much of a problem (at least for me).  It's 
funny b/c I use a Hotmail account as my back-up DM address and it has yet 
to get unsubscribed, yet my other two players with hotmail accounts have 
each been bounced at least twice in the past couple months.

MJ

Realms DM


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MGR: My players have spoken

On Sat, 24 Aug 2002, Karen Cravens wrote:
> A question for everybody:  Would it be better to exclude Hotmail (or
> anybody else who's got chronic problems) from the bouncebot?  It
> means the group owner would get all their bounce messages and have to
> manually unsubscribe the legitimate ones, and you'd have to keep your
> players apprised of when Hotmail is losing mail (there's just no way
> to *force* those messages to be delivered).

Hmm... I rather like the current system, which handles automatically
what previously had to be done manually. Maybe Carl's idea of having
a 'never unsub' flag is a good one. Either for each member, or a common
flag for the whole list. Still, the current system is a good default.

juuso
--
IMHP Juuso Vesanto       juuso@iki.fi         http://www.iki.fi/juuso
-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

		The small girl smiles. One eyelid flickers.
		She draws a pistol from her knickers.
		She aims it at the creature's head,
		And bang bang bang she shoots him dead.



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MGR: truncated posts

On Mon, 19 Aug 2002, Karen Cravens wrote:

> The alternative is to track each and every message to each and every
> user, and keep retrying for a set period of time before bouncing
> them.  The thing is, sendmail already *does* this, but when Hotmail
> reports that the error is "permanent" (there are "permanent" and
> "temporary" disk full errors), sendmail is supposed to believe them.
> So the alternative is to rewrite sendmail's functionality in Perl
> with some added smarts for retrying, which is a big messy project.

Except when the receiving MTA tells you 5xx Disk Full, it means it...
you're supposed to believe it's a fatal error because it told you so.  I
don't think we should waste our time working around Hotmail's
deficiencies by writing a non-standard MTA.  In effect, you're letting
Microsoft set their own "standards" and are conforming to them instead of
making Microsoft and/or their users suffer appropriately for the poor
service being provided.  Somehow, I wouldn't expect you to bow to their
usual plan of assimilation.  (Even if this particular plan is caused by
ineptitude instead of intent.[1])

To put it another way, users of Hotmail aren't going to be encouraged to
find a better service if you cover up their flaws.

When users reply to digests with the digest subject line, complaining that
their mail reader can't burst digests, you tell them to get a better mail
reader.  If their mail service can't receive mail, they should get a
better mail service.  Isn't it the same thing?
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