Why some e-mails do not appear in SYNTH DIY ? GENERAL INFO PSA

[Synthaholic AKA The Shark]

On Mon, 13 Oct 1997 22:10:09 +0100, you wrote:

>Antonio is not the only one. Some days, nothing gets through. Other
>days, no problem. I hassled my provider, and they checked to see if
>everything was OK. It was.
>
>You just have to keep on trying.

Individuals may be having problems either in their own system, or
because of their provider, or even the list's server.  If your problem
is sporadic missing messages, then sending the message again can 'fix'
the problem for a particular message on a particular day.  This can
happen to almost anyone, occasionally, but realistically *should* be
rare.

Here is some hopefully useful information:

This list is handled by a mailing list server program called
'majordomo' at the horus.sara.nl site.  Note that nl is 'Netherlands'
and that the email may go through many routing systems before it gets
there (and back), your locale depending.  These routings can add
minutes or up to hours or even days to the mail delivery time
depending on internet traffic and other factors.  Many things can
happen along the route.

You can always check your ability to communicate with this list by
sending a s*bscribe message to majordomo at horus.sara.nl.  When you
attempt to s*bscribe you should receive a response indicating that 1)
you are already subscribed. 2) that you just then became a subscriber.
3) nothing at all.  If you get #1, all is well and perhaps the list
traffic is at lull.  If you get #2, you had been, for a number of
reasons, unsubbed and are now re-subbed.  This will tell you that you
can talk to the server and it can talk to you.  If you get (3) no
response at all, then your mails are being lost along the way.
Sending test messages will not fix this nor will they enlighten.

The bottom line here, is that if you send an email to
majordomo at horus.sara.nl to resub, you generate only that traffic and
it's autoresponse to you and you alone.  If, however, you send test
messages to the list, hundreds of emails (useless to most of the
recipients) are generated.  AND the information you get is still
either I CAN or I CANNOT talk to the server.

Note that majordomo will unsub you if your server bounces an email
from it.

Note also that this list can have random and radical changes in
traffic volume.

Full details regarding commands that majordomo responds to can be
obtained by sending an email to majordomo at horus.sara.nl with the word
HELP as the first and only line in the body.  Commands in the subject
line are ignored.  You will receive, via email, a help file.

I hope this helps those with difficulties...


- Scott Gravenhorst (Synthaholic)

Spam Bait:  postmaster at flash.net