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elizabearI'm really sick and tired of people who complain to me about not being able to post to a mailing list I run. Actually, it's not the complaint, it's the fact that 99% of the time, they take it personally. It's usually something like "Why can't I post? I've been on this list since 1997 and I've always posted on-topic and people love me!".
60% of the time, the problem is that they're trying to post from an address that's not subscribed to the list. The lists have been set member-only for years, so maybe they've forgotten just *why* they get zero spam from my lists. All they have to do is let me know, and I can add an additional approved address for them to use for posting.
29% of the time, they're posting in HTML only to a list that is set to strip attachments. If the message went through it would be empty, so it gets bounced to them as "content type explicitly not allowed". Naturally, this is another opportunity for them to take the bounce personally and think they're being censored.
But what really irritates me is the almost constant tendancy to take the bounce personally! It's just software, people - it's not out to get you, it's just doing what it's told.
60% of the time, the problem is that they're trying to post from an address that's not subscribed to the list. The lists have been set member-only for years, so maybe they've forgotten just *why* they get zero spam from my lists. All they have to do is let me know, and I can add an additional approved address for them to use for posting.
29% of the time, they're posting in HTML only to a list that is set to strip attachments. If the message went through it would be empty, so it gets bounced to them as "content type explicitly not allowed". Naturally, this is another opportunity for them to take the bounce personally and think they're being censored.
But what really irritates me is the almost constant tendancy to take the bounce personally! It's just software, people - it's not out to get you, it's just doing what it's told.
