Re: "refuse attachment" message

["John S. Quarterman" <jsq@mids.org>]

Ken,

>I have attached the strange messages I received.(four)

Actually, you attached only a few lines from those messages.
There is much more useful debugging information in the headers
of the messages, which would show where the bounce message came from,
and what systems it passed through on the way.

However, you did include enough information for me to deduce a pattern.
All of the usernames (the names after "Your mail to") correspond to
usernames of subscribers on AOL.

So the offending system is AOL.  AOL should have sent the bounce messages
to me as the list owner, but it didn't.

However, if you only received four such messages, considering that
47 Sinclair discussion list subscribers are AOL users, it would appear
that AOL has some sort of per-user configuration that permits individual
AOL users to choose not to accept mail with attachments.  Maybe those users
who have chosen not to accept attachments are using slow dialup connections
and don't want to wait for attachments to transfer.  Maybe they just don't
like attachments.  It doesn't really matter.

So, the source of the bounce messages is some sort of AOL per-user
configuration, aggravated by misconfiguration of AOL's mailsystem
in not sending bounce messages to the list owner.  This is all pretty
normal.  Especially AOL being misconfigured (sorry; I couldn't resist).

Or it's possible that you Cc:ed those particular people individually
rather than through the list.  You can determine that by looking at
your original message.  If you didn't keep a copy, there's probably
one in the list archives that you can find through Paul's search page.

If you encounter further problems, please forward the entire bounce messages.
Also, you don't need to forward them to the whole list; just to me should
suffice.

>I think you spend a tremendous amount of time and energy on this project.

It's a way of distracting myself from my much more time-consuming real work.

>Ken W Sinclair

John S. Quarterman <jsq@mids.org>
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