[MR] List Admin - Old messages

[Tanner Lovelace]

In case anyone is wondering why a bunch of older messages just showed
up on the Merry Rose, it's because they were stuck waiting for
authorization to be posted.  Since only list members are allowed
to post, and because the list software holds certain messages 
(i.e. those that look like spam, have too many addresses in 
the To or CC lines, or those that are too big [such as image files]),
if a message gets held, I have to manually look at it and either
approve it, reject it with a message, or discard it (i.e. spam).

When the kingdom e-mail machine had connectivity problems I had
major problems getting the approval script to work correctly.
Because of that, there was a large backlog that I just took
care of today.  So, things should be back to normal again.

If you have had a post held, you can do several things to
make sure other posts don't get held in the future:

1. If you're not subscribed to the list you can subscribe.
   (Obviously everyone that is getting this message is subscribed,
    but if a friend asks you, please tell them that.)
2. If you are subscribed, make sure your return e-mail
   address is the one you subscribed with.  Your subscription
   information is sent to you at the first of every month,
   so if you don't remember what e-mail you subscribed
   with, look for that.
3. If you are posting from an e-mail address you don't want
   subscribed (i.e. a kingdom level address), e-mail me.
   I can place your e-mail address on a list of those 
   allowed to post.  Note that I am very strict about 
   which e-mail addresses go on this list, since this
   could be a way for spam (with a forged address) to get
   to the list.
4. Make sure you posts to the Merry Rose aren't sent to
   a gazillion different e-mail addresses.  This can be
   an indication of spam, and is therefore held.
5. Make sure you include the address of the Merry Rose
   in either the to or CC field and not the BCC field.
   This is also an indication of spam.
6. Don't send images to the list.  Besides being banned
   from the list, the will be held by the software because
   they very often go over the message size limit.
7. Send plain text.  HTML e-mail can increase your
   message size by about 2/3rds.  This will cause the
   message to exceed the size limit and be held.  In 
   addition, the Merry Rose is a text only mailing
   list and you shouldn't be sending in html anyway.

If you have any other questions, please feel free to
e-mail me at kendrick at wayfarer.org.

In service,
Lord Kendrick Wayfarer
Listkeeper, Merry Rose