ADMIN: Answers to some of your questions...

Hey everyone...

A few questions have been asked, so I'll answer them all here in one fell swoop.

First of all, yes, the list was down for most of the day yesterday. I had a guy out at my house to do some work on our alarm system and while he was working, I decided to do some work on the server. I carelessly disconnected myself from the network and then shortly thereafter went to work. ;-) <sigh> You'd think it was a Monday or something. ;-) In any case, my apologies for the outage and thanks to everyone for being so nice about not complaining. You folks are great.

In a message, guy ruth hammond [mailto:grh_at_agency.com] wrote:
> Could you clarify the policy on attachments to email messages
> please? I posted an ASCII text attachment, and got told (presumably by
> a daemon) that posting binaries was not allowed. It's cool: I'll just
paste
> code into the body of the messages in future.

Attachments generally ARE filtered out by ListGuru. It is possible that some get through, but I'd say 97% of them get caught by my filter and turned into a text file saying something like "binary content removed...". This doesn't literally mean binaries, but more specifically anything that is base64 encoded. Generally that will be pictures, imagines, executables, etc, but depending on your mailer, it can also be simple text files. Uuencoded files, since they aren't usually sent via base64 encoding, will generally get through my filters, but that's just between you and me. ;-) Very few mailers send anything uuencoded any longer (MIME being more popular), but it does occur.

If you want to send text, you'd be better off just inserting it directly into the message body.

It's unfortunate that the majority get penalized for the few who have posted large binaries in the past, but it's just a safer policy NOT to allow attachments -- that way no one gets drowned in extra traffic they don't want, and we avoid complaints, death threats, etc.

There *IS* a way to send binaries, BTW. There is a ListGuru command called SUBMIT that allows anyone on this list to put any kind of binary file into the archives section of the list. That file can then be downloaded via E-mail by any other subscriber to the list. For example, if you had a .ZIP file with some cool PL/SQL in it, you could upload it to the archives using the SUBMIT command, then post a message saying "File xyz.zip is in the archives. It does..." to the list, and interested parties could then download it via the GET command. You can always send ListGuru a HELP or HELP SUBMIT for more information on how to use SUBMIT, GET or any other command, or just ask me if you have questions.

In a message, michael emilfarb [mailto:michael.emilfarb_at_tufts.edu] wrote:
> Do you know if Digest format being activated yet. I sent
> several requests for it with no success. Thanks.

Yes, DIGEST mode is available. You can turn on DIGEST mode at any time by sending a command to ListGuru like this:

   SET ORACLE-L DIGEST To get back to individual messages, use:

   SET ORACLE-L MAIL Note that all commands to ListGuru should be mailed to 'ListGuru_at_fatcity.com' **NOT** the list. A couple people have already sent some SET commands to the list, but they should have gone to the automated address. ListGuru filters out most commands, but I have chosen not to filter out SET commands because the word 'SET' occurs so frequently as to make it hard to ascertain which is which. You shouldn't see other ListGuru commands in list traffic, however.

Hint: if you get a warning from ListGuru about your message appearing to contain commands or be a vacation auto-responder, you can get around the filter by either deliberately misspelling the offending text, or by putting that part of your message more than 10 lines down from the top. ListGuru only checks each message in the first 10 lines -- after that it doesn't care what you put in the message.

Sorry, got off-topic there. If you've sent the proper command and ListGuru says you aren't a subscriber, then your address is likely different from your subscribed address. The easiest way to fix this is to contact me directly and I'll look into it for you. You can always reach me here or at my permanent address: bruceb_at_fatcity.com.

In a message, Khedr, Waleed [mailto:Waleed.Khedr_at_FMR.COM] wrote:
> I do not think you remember when I posted something two years
> ago about the hard coded REPLY-TO field in discussion groups.
>
> I believe we have it here is this new list.
>
> When you try to reply to or reply all any message it goes
> only to the list.

This is true, and I think I addressed this yesterday. Based on discussions I've had with other list managers, and my fellow peers who are also authors of MLM software, it's our belief that most people feel responses should always go to the list, not the individual. After all, that's why they call these discussion lists, not announcement lists. ;-) In any case, Jared has asked whether I'd be willing to change it so that they responses go back to the author by default. I'm willing to submit to the group's choice. If you have a strong feeling either way, please E-mail Jared or me with your vote. If you're ambivalent or really just don't care, just don't respond either way. But if you feel strongly one way or the other, PRIVATELY send us your preference. Using the typical net.news voting protocol, if there is more support for the reply-to-author method than for the reply-to-list method, I'll change the way the list works. Let's give it, say, a week for voting? So by next Friday?

In a private message, Terry Sikes [mailto:tsikes_at_netcom.com] wrote:
> DOes this list allow cross-posting with the ODTUG lists?

No list at fatcity allows cross-posting. Since this is a common ploy that spammers use to get to many lists at once, we have specifically disallowed it. In fact, if you try posting to more than one list at fatcity.com in the same message, you'll get a response back that basically makes you think NEITHER list exists. Again, this is a measured response so that the spammers think they don't have a hit. I'm sure they really don't care, but hey, it helps. ;-) If you want to cross-post to the ODTUG lists, or any other list here, you'll have to send individual copies to each list.

I think that's it. Again, please don't hesitate to contact me with any Received on Fri Apr 28 2000 - 15:46:46 CDT