pjd@hpuxa.ircc.ohio-state.edu (Peter J. Dotzauer) (11/26/89)
I do not believe in the death penalty, but I propose stiff sentences
for postmasters who repeatedly ignore inquiries.
Does have anyone a better idea of improving this human component of
networking?
-=-
Peter Dotzauer: Numerical Cartography Lab, Dept. of Geography, OSU, Columbus, OH
VOICE: (614) 292-1357 FAX: 292-9180 DATA: 293-0081
BITNET: ts3285@ohstvma UUCP: ...!osu-cis!hpuxa.ircc.ohio-state.edu!pjd
FIDO: 1:226/50 INTERNET: pjd@hpuxa.ircc.ohio-state.edu [128.146.1.5]dce@smsc.sony.com (David Elliott) (11/26/89)
In article <496@nisca.ircc.ohio-state.edu> pjd@hpuxa.ircc.ohio-state.edu (Peter J. Dotzauer) writes: >I do not believe in the death penalty, but I propose stiff sentences >for postmasters who repeatedly ignore inquiries. There are a number of reasons for this kind of problem. 1. Postmaster is aliased to "root", and nobody reads root's mail. I would estimate that mail to root on most workstations gets ignored until it causes a space problem, at which time it is cleaned out, but not read. 2. Mail to the postmaster(s) gets ignored because it usually consists of messages about misspelled usernames or alias loops (many sites alias MAILER-DAEMON to postmaster). 3. The person who gets stuck with postmaster mail has no idea how to answer your question, and puts it on the "stack" to get looked at, and it just hasn't gotten important enough. Improvement requires a responsible and responsive person. If such a person isn't present, there's not a whole lot you can do. Sending repeated messages isn't a good solution, since it bothers the person in question, and annoys you. One thing you can do is to look in the map postings. If a phone number and name are given, call the person on the phone. If an additional email address is given, send to that address. Personal rapport with the staff at other companies can be useful in the future. A final thing you can try is to look for the site or domain in question in the files in the news spool directory, and send to everyone you see. That way, you get mail to real people at the site. Whatever you do, make sure that they know you sent them mail as postmaster and got no response. If they know postmaster messages contain meaningful messages, they may be less likely to ignore them. -- David Elliott dce@smsc.sony.com | ...!{uunet,mips}!sonyusa!dce (408)944-4073 "It's bigger than a breadbox, and smaller than the planet Jupiter."
dboyes@rice.edu (David Boyes) (11/26/89)
In article <496@nisca.ircc.ohio-state.edu> pjd@hpuxa.ircc.ohio-state.edu (Peter J. Dotzauer) writes: >[what to do with postmasters who don't read their mail] >Does have anyone a better idea of improving this human component of >networking? Saw a button at VM Workshop: "The more I deal with electronic mail, the more I understand terrorism." >Peter Dotzauer >pjd@hpuxa.ircc.ohio-state.edu -- David Boyes "... no love was left; All Earth was but one thought - and dboyes@rice.edu that was death Immediate and inglorious; and the pang of of famine fed upon all entrails - men Died and their bones were tombless as their flesh ..." - Lord Byron
fitz@wang.UUCP (Tom Fitzgerald) (11/27/89)
pjd@hpuxa.ircc.ohio-state.edu (Peter J. Dotzauer) writes: >I do not believe in the death penalty, but I propose stiff sentences >for postmasters who repeatedly ignore inquiries. There's a fair chance that the postmaster is "ignoring" you because he's on vacation with nobody reading his mail, because he only gets around to reading "postmaster" mail once in a while because of the time pressure of his real job, or because there's a mail-eating demon between you and him. It's real unlikely he's just deliberately ignoring you. I wouldn't assume this unless some other proof showed up. >Does have anyone a better idea of improving this human component of >networking? In the UUCP world, get his real phone no. from the maps and call him. In the Internet world, "whois" him, and call him. Grep the news for for other people at his site, and write to them asking them what's going on. In the UUCP world, write to the postmasters of his UUCP neighbors asking for help. If all else fails, post a message to the net - he's almost guaranteed to hear about it, even if he doesn't see it himself. --- Tom Fitzgerald fitz@wang.com Type-casting is the software Wang Labs ...!uunet!wang!fitz equivalent of KY Jelly. Lowell MA, USA 1-508-967-5278
brian@ucsd.Edu (Brian Kantor) (11/27/89)
>I do not believe in the death penalty, but I propose stiff sentences >for postmasters who repeatedly ignore inquiries. A good way to ensure a more prompt response is to enclose your politely-worded inquiry in an envelope along with a nice crisp $5 note. Urgent inquiries justify the inclusion of at least $20, particularly if a return telephone call is required. Pounds Sterling are also acceptable. Brian Kantor SCUD Postmaster
bei@puzzle.UUCP (Bob Izenberg) (11/27/89)
In article <1989Nov26.045020.9447@smsc.sony.com> dce@icky.Sony.COM (David Elliott) writes: [ in response to Peter J. Dotzauer's request for incarceration of impolite postmaster aliases ] >Whatever you do, make sure that they know you sent them mail as >postmaster and got no response. If they know postmaster messages >contain meaningful messages, they may be less likely to ignore them. I make a point of it to help out anyone who sends mail about something that bounced or someone they're trying to contact. But... not too long ago, I came in on Monday morning to see that sendmail on our NFS server had lost track of our "machine with modems." My mailbox was full of bounced messages, and most of the machines were nodes on people's desks that weren't known to the nameserver we use. I could have researched each bounced message, found the users who wrote them, mailed them the original text plus error to be resent, and count on it's being able to be delivered. The mentors I asked about this agreed that it wasn't worth chasing the authors down, so the bounce messages got deleted. It's perhaps easier on Internet or amongst uucp sites. >Somebody< is bound to have a smart host nearby that knows about an element of the path. I do wonder, though, whether most people would give up if the message to the author of a bounced letter itself bounces? -- Bob -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bob Izenberg [ ] Ralph Kirkley Associates attctc!puzzle!bei (or) cs.utexas.edu!ibmchs!auschs!evil-ed!bei ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ecf_hap@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Andrew Poling) (11/29/89)
In article <496@nisca.ircc.ohio-state.edu> pjd@hpuxa.ircc.ohio-state.edu (Peter J. Dotzauer) writes: >I do not believe in the death penalty, but I propose stiff sentences >for postmasters who repeatedly ignore inquiries. > >Does have anyone a better idea of improving this human component of >networking? Like Brian (sorta) said: be kind to him. Chances are he's some poor harrassed fellow who got stuck with the job because no-one else either could or would do it. I gotta protest the suggestions of waging pseudo-terrorism by grep-ing /usr/spool/news and mailing everybody you see, etc. This is likely to only cause irritation and alot of needless mail activity. My best suggestion is to talk to your local postmaster - he should be aware of the various methods for contacting responsible people on various networks. Perhaps he can even solve your problem without involving people at remote sites. Andy (have you kissed your postmaster today?) Poling Andy Poling Internet: andy@gollum.hcf.jhu.edu Network Services Group Bitnet: ANDY@JHUVMS Homewood Academic Computing Voice: (301)338-8096 Johns Hopkins University UUCP: mimsy!aplcen!jhunix!gollum!andy
fitz@wang.UUCP (Tom Fitzgerald) (12/01/89)
> I gotta protest the suggestions of waging pseudo-terrorism by grep-ing > /usr/spool/news and mailing everybody you see, etc. This is likely to only > cause irritation and alot of needless mail activity. This is not terrorism if you do it right. If I were doing this, I'd locate the most sophisticated poster (somebody posting sources is a good bet, somebody posting questions to news.newusers.questions probably not), and write them one (1) letter asking for the sysadmin's name, and whether people there know about the problem. If this doesn't work, get one more name and send one (1) more message, etc. Terrorism is the last thing you want in a case like this. A pissed off sysadmin is unlikely to help solve problems for you. If the sysadmin is not reading (or getting) his mail, you need to do _something_. --- Tom Fitzgerald fitz@wang.com It's a mistake to believe that Wang Labs ...!uunet!wang!fitz the die is cast. In reality, it Lowell MA, USA 1-508-967-5278 is injection-molded.
perry@ccssrv.UUCP (Perry Hutchison) (12/01/89)
In article <496@nisca.ircc.ohio-state.edu> pjd@hpuxa.ircc.ohio-state.edu (Peter J. Dotzauer) writes: > I propose stiff sentences for postmasters who repeatedly ignore inquiries. You think that's bad? I once sent mail to somesite!postmaster and it bounced with "unknown user". I commented on this to the postmaster of the next system back this way along the bang-path, and found out that the sysadmin at the Postmaster-less site was new, and unfamiliar with mail. I think the problem probably got fixed, but haven't had occasion to find out for sure. Closer to home, no one was reading the postmaster's mail here for some time after our previous sysadmin left. When I found out that there was such a job, I read through the old stuff and have been keeping up since -- fortunately it turned out that the only mail there was from various mailer-daemons. If unable to connect with Postmaster somewhere, you could try "news", "usenet", and/or "root", or check with a neighboring postmaster. If all else fails, there's always the phone. -- Perry Hutchison closest thing ccssrv has to a Postmaster ... tektronix!sequent!ccssrv!perry
bob@kahala.hig.hawaii.edu (Bob Cunningham) (12/02/89)
It's often more useful to query the next level up in the domain. For example, you might not get an answer from postmaster@arbitrarymachinename.hig.hawaii.edu, but you will get a reply if you query postmaster@hig.hawaii.edu (me), or postmaster@hawaii.edu. Another thing worth trying, if you're on the Internet, is "finger @somewhere" which actually seems to work most of the time. Bob Cunningham Hawaii Institute of Geophysics, University of Hawaii bob@kahala.hig.hawaii.edu
bob@omni.com (Bob Weissman) (12/02/89)
In article <496@nisca.ircc.ohio-state.edu>, pjd@hpuxa.ircc.ohio-state.edu (Peter J. Dotzauer) writes: > I do not believe in the death penalty, but I propose stiff sentences > for postmasters who repeatedly ignore inquiries. My policy as a point of contact for electronic inquiries has always been to refer the inquiry to the person who is the subject of the inquiry. That is, rather than replying to your request for Joe Blow's email address, I will forward your request to Joe and let him decide what to do with it. Blame Joe for not responding, not me. If you don't like this arrangement, pick up the telephone and call Joe. -- Bob Weissman, USENET admin for omni.com Internet: bob@omni.com UUCP: ...!{apple,pyramid,sgi,tekbspa,uunet}!koosh!bob
wcn@max.u.washington.edu (W C Newell Jr) (12/02/89)
In article <1267@borabora.omni.com>, bob@omni.com (Bob Weissman) writes: > In article <496@nisca.ircc.ohio-state.edu>, pjd@hpuxa.ircc.ohio-state.edu (Peter J. Dotzauer) writes: >> I do not believe in the death penalty, but I propose stiff sentences >> for postmasters who repeatedly ignore inquiries. > > My policy as a point of contact for electronic inquiries has always > been to refer the inquiry to the person who is the subject of the > inquiry. This is my policy too, unless the person's e-mail address is published in the staff directory. Many of our users choose to keep their e-mail addresses confidential. Many others are isolated on a departmental system, or have no account at all, and we'd have to contact the person by voice to find out. It is not practical for our staff to assume this responsibility, given a campus pop. of 50,000. We do try to reply to all inquiries, and we encourage users to contact their friends and colleagues by voice or surface mail to facilitate exchange of e-mail addresses. Some replies may bounce. Sometimes a query can get lost in the shuffle. I get an average of 100 mail messages/day, not counting what is sent to postmaster, which at our site is handled by several people. Of course, I can't speak for other sites. An admin of a departmental system may not look at postmaster or root for weeks at a time. "Terrorism", as defined by other articles in this thread, is >NOT< the way to go, unless you really want to be ignored. If the admin of a departmental system does not respond, it is OK to try a higher-level domain. > If you don't like this arrangement, pick up the telephone and call Joe. Absolutely. If there are extenuating circumstances, give us the details and we'll see what we can do. Usually this means sending you the address of a contact in the department, if we know of one. Other points: I give priority attention to postmasters and consultants from other sites. This is not done to be cliquish, but rather to share expertise, since the topology changes daily and we're all struggling to keep up. Thus it pays to befriend your local mail wizard. I also investigate problems with bouncing mail, so if you try an address at this site that should work but doesn't, it helps a lot to send me a copy of the message header. Last but not least, some of the articles in this group are UNIX-specific, and it is important to recognize that a lot of e-mail addresses are on non-UNIX systems. Some suggestions won't work with non-UNIX mailers. In fact, an increasing number of non-UNIX sysadmins read this newsgroup. Bill Newell Systems Analyst, Applications Consulting Group University of Washington WCN@MAX.U.WASHINGTON.EDU
dhesi%cirrusl@oliveb.ATC.olivetti.com (Rahul Dhesi) (12/06/89)
In article <880@ccssrv.UUCP> perry@ccssrv.UUCP (Perry Hutchison) writes: >If unable to connect with Postmaster somewhere, you could try "news", >"usenet", and/or "root",... Consulting my BITNET-English/English-BITNET dictionary, I find: postmaster. n. non-BITNET name for what we call POSTMAST. Rahul Dhesi <dhesi%cirrusl@oliveb.ATC.olivetti.com> UUCP: oliveb!cirrusl!dhesi