PSA from the Bridge

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE SPELLJAMMER & SPELLJAMMER-DIGEST COMMUNITY

	Please relax, one and all.  They haven't pulled the plug on us, or anything
that bad.  Rather, this is just a letter that the co-moderators HAVE to
send, but never wanted to send.

	Everyone on this list is aware of the growth of usage on the Internet, and
with growth comes growing pains.  The Internet is not immune to it: We've
all seen slowdown in service, troubles logging in, and periodical mail failures.

	You may have noticed that the occasional Spelljammer message hasn't reached
you: Well, the co-moderators have noticed it as well.  Rich and Eric have
received A LOT of bounced message notifications, to the point of up to 100
in a 24 hour period.

	Not only do we receive the messages, but the powers-that-be at MPGN receive
them as well.  So far, we haven't heard of any problems from anyone, but
sooner or later someone is going to say something.  And we fear that should
someone say something, it could cause the premature end of this mailing list.

	There's also the concerns of Rich and Eric' personal ISP's: Rich uses a
small private company for an ISP, and Eric's account is through the school
where he works.  If they continue to notice an increase in usage, there
could also be problems there.

	Like we said, nothing has happened yet.  However, Rich and Eric have come
up with a new policy concerning error messages, effective May 1, 1997:

A:	If any given address on the "normal" (Spelljammer) distribution list
generates more than ten (10) Timeout or Network Errors within a 72-hour
period, the subscriber will be switched from the "normal" subscription list
to the digest list (Spelljammer-Digest).

B:	If any given address on the "digest" (Spelljammer-Digest) distribution
list generates more than ten (10) Timeout or Network Errors within a 72-hour
period, the subscriber will be removed from the subscription list altogether.

	In either case, the subscriber will can resubscribe (either to the normal
or the digest lists) once they account has been reset or their connections
become more stable.  Occasionally, a name has to be removed from a
particular list in order to reset it.

C:	An address that generates an error of the "Unknown User" variety will be
removed from the list.  Once again, this is more than likely just a "reset"
problem, unless the user dropped an ISP or changed their address, and forgot
to inform the Majordomo.

	Please understand, we are not doing to any one person in particular, nor is
it a personal attack on anyone.  We are rather trying to get control of what
is becoming a large problem on the Internet as a whole: error messages.

	You, the subscriber to this list can do some thing to help us as well:

A:	If you know you're going to be unable to check your account for some time
(vacation, leaving school, whatever), please unsubscribe from this list.
We'll still be here when you get back, and a full e-mail account can cause a
tremendous amount of error messages.

B:	We mentioned this before, but it's worth mentioning again.  When
responding to messages posted to the group, please don't include everything
that was mentioned before. Cut off the unnecessary parts (other's .sig
files, pointless parts of a letter, stuff like that).  It will not only help
us, but it's also good netiquette.

	Thanks for bearing with us.  We've got the situtation...mostly under control.

Richard J. Pugh and Eric F. Schetley
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|Richard J. Pugh, MLS      | PUGH.RICHARD@???????.???.gov         |
| rjpugh@???????.net       | http://www.patriot.net/users/rjpugh/ |
| rjpugh@???.com           |                                      |
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