[AV Media Matters] What Happened

[Jim Lindner <jim@vidipax.com>]

Go away for a few days and look what happens - - -
Sorry to all of you for the email abuse, it is over now -
What happened is that when my email went out a week or so ago I changed
the list to an unmoderated list, and then I changed it back when
everything was OK - or so I thought. The change to unmoderated DID work,
the change back DID NOT work - it did not "take" in the system - which
is a bit strange because I checked it when I did it. In any event it now
tells me that it is in Moderated mode and I will be checking again today
later.

What you experienced should actually be of some "technical" interest -
it is the internet equivalent of "feedback". When people put on
autorespond when they go on vacation (despite the fact that this
moderated has asked on MANY occasions for list members not to do this)
the autoreply sends out the message when ever it receives ANY message -
so one messsage triggers the autorespond - and then the autorespond
(which is a message) triggers another, and that message triggers another
and so on. This is only the case for an UNMODERATED list. On a moderated
list the moderater gets all the messages and specifically has to approve
them before they go out - so all the misc. messages like "unsubscribe"
and "on vacation" are stopped by the moderator. So if there was any
small benefit to this experience it may be the learning part for those
of you who did not already know this.

But to all an apology. When I have time I will speak to Topica and let
them know this happened - I suspect that there is some sort of bug in
the mode change part of their software.

jim

Jim Lindner - President
VidiPax - The Magnetic Media and Information Migration Full Services
Company
Telephone 212-563-1999
www.vidipax.com
Moderator of A/V Media Matters@topica.com