[LIS-Forum] Content-type of your postings and spams

[Mailing List Manager]

Dear LIS-Forum Member:

I would like to bring the following few points to your kind attention and
solicit your cooperation in the smooth running of LIS-Forum discussion
list.

1. Posting messages to LIS-Forum list:
--------------------------------------

On a rough average, 4-5 postings are received by LIS-Forum list everyday.
The Content-type of most of these messages is "multipart/alternative".
When the content-type of the mail you are sending happens to be
multipart/alternative, it will be sent as an attachment as well. This will
unnecessarily duplicate the message and in the process increase the size
of the mail you are sending. Please *ensure* that while posting messages
to lis-forum at ncsi.iisc.ernet.in, the Content-type of the mail you are
sending is set to "text/plain" as indicated below.

Content-Type: text/plain

You may be aware that as a matter of LIS-Forum policy, no mails to
lis-forum with attachments will be broadcasted. But, most of the lis-forum
mails are being received with content-type being multipart/alternative,
which means all such mails are being received with attachments. Although,
you may not have explicitly attached a file to your message, because of
the content-type being set to "multipart/alternative" you message is being
received with attachments as well. I request you to check the content type
of your mail, especially when it is being sent to lis-forum and ensure
that it is set to text/plain.

All along the way I have been treating such multipart mails is as follows:

If I am too busy, I return such mails with a request that it should be
re-sent without attachments. Many a times what I have been doing is that
forward such messages to the owner of the list, do the required editing,
re-post the messages to lis-forum at ncsi, and then broadcast such edited
messages. That's the reason why many a times you would have noticed that
postings seem to originate from mail at ncsi but not from the actual
originator.

As you can infer, all this editing process takes quite a bit of time and
effort, which can be avoided, if you can ensure that mails meant for
lis-forum at ncsi have their content-type set to text/plain. If you are not
sure of how to verify and/or change the content type of your mail pl. get
it clarified from your system administrator.

2. Junk mails:
--------------

As you may be aware, LIS-Forum discussion list is a closed list meaning
only subscribed members can post messages to this list. This feature works
quite well in the latest version of the Mailman discussion list software
that we use. Also, LIS-Forum is a moderated list meaning the messages
posted to this list doesn't get broadcasted automatically. Only such of
those messages approved by the moderator gets broadcasted.

In spite of LIS-Forum being a closed and moderated list, occasionally a
few "junk mails" (spams) do manage to sneak into LIS-Forum. Such junk
mails are discarded outright by the LIS-Forum moderator. To the best of my
knowledge such messages have never been broadcasted on LIS-Forum.

One peculiar thing that I am  unable to understand is that the messages
from *lisnet at yahoogroups.com* are being received by  LIS-Forum list for
distribution. Such messages will have its subject as:

Subject: [lisnet] ......

I'm discarding such messages outright.

People who have subscribed to both LIS-Forum and LISNET lists, tend to
think that such junk mails are coming from LIS-Forum. I have received a
couple of complaints from some of our members that membership of people
originating such junk messages be removed from LIS-Forum list. I would
like to clarify that such messages are not being originated by any of
LIS-Forum members. Such junk messages are being sent fictitiously and the
email addresses of originators such messages are not to be found in the
LIS-Forum membership list.

We are trying to set right a few minor problems that we are facing with
the latest version of mailing list management software. Please do bear
with us.

Sorry for the long mail and

thanks for your cooperation

moderator