[MacPerl] Administrivia: Moderation time again

[Matthias Ulrich Neeracher <neeri@iis.ee.ethz.ch>]

We now run our monthly awards ceremony for "Clueless mail administration at a
major site". And the winner is... (drum roll).

 #####   ######   ####    #####           ####    ####   #    #
 #    #  #       #          #            #    #  #    #  ##  ##
 #####   #####    ####      #            #       #    #  # ## #
 #    #  #            #     #     ###    #       #    #  #    #
 #    #  #       #    #     #     ###    #    #  #    #  #    #
 #####   ######   ####      #     ###     ####    ####   #    #

Not only did they send their bounces of Ernesto Gonzalez' and Era Eriksson's
messages to the mailing list, their mailer daemon was too cowardly to
announce his intervention and left the original senders in the From: field.
To be fair, best.com's intent was probably far more benevolent than NetCS',
but good intentions are no excuse for the cluelessness of picking message
headers instead of envelope headers as the recipient of a forward.

The most persistent competition to best.com has been provided by the folks
at demon.net/demon.co.uk, whose combination of incompetence and intransigence
keeps giving me historical perspective of why the British lost their empire.
However, although demon generates more irrelevant bounces than all other
subscriber sites together, they are at least reasonable enough to send the
bounces to the correct address, which keeps them from occupying the top spot.

I have switched the MacPerl mailing list to moderated status and have
temporarily removed the two "offending" recipients:

stearns@eliot.com
aaronson@ncnca.org

from the MacPerl mailing list until I am assured that no further bounces will
be forthcoming (best.com is the MX for eliot.com and ncnca.org).

To end on a few more positive notes:

 - We crossed the 700 subscriber mark a few times during the last day.

   200 subscribers were reached October 8, 1994
   400 subscribers were reached June 13, 1995
   500 subscribers were reached September 5, 1995

 - I'm *really* working on a digest version, and I hope to be able to offer
   one sometime in March.

Matthias

-----
Matthias Neeracher <neeri@iis.ee.ethz.ch> http://err.ethz.ch/members/neeri.html
  "They were gasbag creatures. Their netmail was mostly jabberwocky even
   after Relay's best interpretation." -- Vernor Vinge, _A Fire Upon the Deep_