Subject: mailing list unreliable again

From: "D. J. Bernstein" <[email-masked]>
Date: 18 Oct 1998 21:05:59 -0000

I sent two messages to [email-masked] recently. One of them silently
disappeared after it was sent to cs.utk.edu. It was not sent out to
readers; it does not appear in the archive.

Last time this happened, Keith admitted that the problem was outright
incompetence: ``Spam filter blah blah blah /tmp blah blah blah
insufficient resources blah blah blah.'' (Edited for clarity.)

Have you been fooling around with your mail system again, Keith? Don't
you understand how bad it looks for an Internet mail working group to
have an unreliable mailing list?

---Dan
1000 recipients, 28.8 modem, 10 seconds. http://pobox.com/~djb/qmail/mini.html

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Oct 1998 14:41:53 -0400

> readers; it does not appear in the archive.

The message, as well as the complaint, were trapped by the spam filter 
when the MX for cr.yp.to couldn't be reached to verify Dan's address.  
(either that or it responded 4xx to RCPT, but I assume the former.)
The trapped messages go into a queue which is read by one of the 
postmasters to make sure that they're really inappropriate for the list 
in question.

The first of Dan's messages was not forwarded to the list due to a simple 
clerical error.  His complaint was similarly delayed because the postmaster 
who read it was so offended by the tone of Dan's message that she decided 
to refer it to me...and it took me a couple of days to find time to look 
into it.

Anyway, I've since found the messages and forwarded them to the list 
and archives.

Keith

p.s. In the future, I reserve the right to not respond to abusive messages
from Dan, even for complaints about how the list is run.