[Javascript] ADMIN: List Update & When List Will Go Back To Unmoderated

David Merchant merchant at LATECH.EDU
Mon Apr 7 17:27:55 CDT 2003


A short recap and some new information:

Over 2 years ago when eGroups (which was just archiving JavaScript list 
postings) was bought out by Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo, _without my permission_, 
basically usurped the list, made it appear that it was being hosted by 
Yahoo/eGroups. Yahoo also did not give me any access to my own list on the 
Yahoo side. So if any of the 900+ members of the JavaScript list that were 
on the Yahoo side of the list had any problems with their list membership, 
I could never be of help to them.

I repeatedly tried to get Yahoo to fix the situation. Finally I got someone 
to respond last week. They gave me access to the usurped side of the list. 
However, they now turned it back to mirroring and so all the people that 
had signed up to the list and were able to post via the Yahoo side (which 
was forwarding their posts to the real list address), were no longer able 
to post to the list. There was no way for me to send out a post to them to 
let them know what was happening (yes, I tried). I unsubscribed those that 
looked to have their membership disabled because of too many bounces. And 
then merged the two membership halves together. And then deleted the Yahoo 
side (since the older parts of the archives were being deleted by Yahoo 
anyway as the archives on Yahoo has a 64 MB limit, thus the archives of the 
list on its real home server contained more posts now).

Two problems occurred:

1) there were 6 bad addresses that just bounced and bounced and kept on 
bouncing like some perpetual ping pong machine. I got over 2,000 bounced 
messages. Took me forever to get through those (I needed to check as many 
as possible to make sure I was catching all the bad addresses causing the 
problem so I could unsubscribe them). My apologies for that. I figured 
there'd be some bounces, but not 2,000. Why those 6 bad addresses didn't 
have a bad bounce history on Yahoo! Groups is beyond me.

2) Unfortunately, since I was unable to access the usurped side for over 
two years, some folk had set their accounts to nomail and they forgot about 
the list, or at the company they worked at they were given the email 
address of a previous worker (a few companies do that, believe it or no) 
who had signed up to the list unbeknownst to the new owner of the email 
address, or maybe someone else signed them up without their knowing. My 
apologies to those people.

This email I'm sending out will be a test. The list is on emergency 
moderation so all bounces to the list should be blocked from getting to the 
list and just pile up in my box only.

If there is no problems, I will be putting the list back to unmoderated 
tomorrow morning and will monitor it constantly throughout the day.

On top of this all, LA Tech has upgraded the list serv software, and I'm 
working on learning the new features and functions and settings.

Thanks to the folks who sent me mature, civil and even supportive emails. I 
was pleasantly surprised to see that the positive emails outnumbered the 
negative ones almost 3:1.  I believe in the importance of this list, I am 
not doing this for money, and any time administering is out of my spare 
time and so I never intend to cause grief for the members, or to 
forcibly/secretively sign up people to the list (what would that gain for 
me? I get no money from having new members, and a larger list means more of 
my spare time to administer).

For the others who were very hateful and juvenile in their emails to me, 
sometimes despite all good efforts, bad stuff happens in life. The list 
will stand back up from this trip, and be the useful and important resource 
to JavaScripters that it has been for these many years. I now can help all 
members of the list, and not just half of them, and I've learned even more 
about list administration and so you've gotten an even more experienced 
list administrator because of all this.

TTFN,
David Merchant

Director of Integrated Technology
CATALyST
Louisiana Tech University
Carson Taylor Hall, Rm. 130
Adams Street
(PO Box 3179)
Ruston, LA 71272
Tel: (318) 257-4772
Fax: (318) 257-3852
projectlife.latech.edu
c3.latech.edu
catalyst.latech.edu
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