Geez, I can't believe I just did that. Suffice it to say the new keyboard
here at home and the one up at work are similar, but not the same.
Anyway, I was saying that for each of the 75 or so AOL subscribers on the MG
list, the last three or four hundred of the looping vacation responses would
have generated an error message back to me saying that the subscriber had a
full mailbox. Except for the ones who happened to be reading mail at the
time, realised what was happening and knew how to block mail from a specific
address. Then, each of the vacation messages would have generated an error
back to me saying the recipient had refused the mail. I already get 500 error
messages a day from the list, I didn't need to see 75 x 300 more in my
mailbox, all from AOL. I did, however, consider sending a bill to the
originator of the problem mail charging him my usual consulting fee for the
time spent in cleaning up after him, but doubled since most of it was between
midnight and 6 am. I could use a couple of fresh sets of race tires for the
'97 autocross season. But in truth, I still haven't requeued a batch of mail
that got shunted off to get sifted before restarting mail service. So the
jobs not done yet.
The "full mailbox" errors are the main problem. The second one is the folks
who get their AOL free trial disk from the cereal box, trade mag, dumpster or
whatever, try it out, sign up to whatever they can figure out how to get to
via point and click, even though they have absolutley no idea what a mailing
list actually is, or even what a valid email address looks like, and then
bail when it's time to pay. But the full mailbox error is much more common.
So, with the busy lists seeing 40 or 50 posts a day, a typical AOL user would
not have to be away for too long before I start getting 40 or 50 posts a day
saying that user's mailbox is full. So, moving all AOL folks on the busy
lists to the digest increases their inbox count to one, maybe 2, per day.
A LOT fewer error messages I need to wade through, a lot less bandwidth wasted
on uneeded mail, and everybody is happier, except AOL users who don't like the
digest format. So it goes.
mjb.
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