Okay following is an answer on the subject. The way I read it is - this list
evidently has always been this way as well as others. I see no reason to change it based
on the following information. My suggestion would be for all of you not happy with the
way it is delivered is to change from list or mail mode to digest mode. As far as
answering individuals it takes very little effort to use your create mail instead of reply
to and type in INGRANT-L(a)rootsweb.com That way all the people can see the responses to a
particular subject.
Now based on what we now know, I suggest we just drop it and go ahead and use the mail
list for the valuable tool that it is. If not happy with my decision I suggest you
unsubscribe to the list. Sorry to be so blunt but I have invested enough time on a dead
horse. Let's get back to what it is all about, researching family history. Thank
you.
Sheila D. Watson/Grant County Coord and List Mom
----- Original Message -----
From: "Elsi" <elsi(a)augustmail.com>
To: "Sheila D. Watson" <tdtw98a(a)comteck.com>;
<Listowners-L(a)rootsweb.com>
Sent: Wednesday, February 18, 2004 10:40 PM
Subject: Re: [LO] problems with mail list
At 06:02 PM 2/17/2004 -0500, Sheila D. Watson wrote:
>I am having a lot of complaints by people on my mail list that they are
>getting the mail from the list in the peoples names instead of
>INGRANT. They can not identify the mail as coming from the list so the
>scrap it, instead of reading it. I don't know why my particular list does
>this and can't figure out how to change it so they get the mail from the
>list as coming from the list and not the particular poster. Please help me.
Sheila:
That's the way that mailing lists work. Mail is sent *FROM* an individual,
*THROUGH* the list. It isn't sent from the list -- unless you are getting
the Digest version. I've compared RootsWeb list mail and Yahoo! list mail
and it's the same way -- the "From:" header always indicates the original
sender.
This attribute is one reason why those anti-spam services which use
challenge/response web pages are simply deadly to a mailing list -- it is
unreasonable to expect each and every member to verify himself just to be
able to send mail to the list. I refuse to do so & will unsubscribe any
list member whose challenge comes to me -- unless he comes up with some way
to all list mail to bypass the anti-spam service.
The proper way to handle this is for your users to learn how to use their
e-mail programs to filter incoming mail. All RootsWeb list mail contains
special headers to indicate the mailing list name. As listowner, you can
make sure that your list mail goes out with a prepend in the subject line
(as in the [LO] in this message). I'm not fond of prepends, because they
give a false sense of security. A spammer can easily forge the subject
line to appear to come from a list.
I know that AOL does not offer much in the way of filters, but our friend
Joan Young tells me that RootsWeb mail coming from the mailing list servers
is white-listed at AOL and these messages will show an icon indicating that
this mail comes from a "friendly" server.
We could start up YAF (Yet Another Flame-war) on the subjects of prepends
and filtering, so I'll just let it go at this.
Regards,
Elsi