Greetings,
I started this msg to an individual subscriber but thought that more might
be interested. It is technical. If technical stuff is not your interest
skip to the last few paras for advice.
The usual reason for labeling a msg "rec'd with a technical glitch"
is that the person REPLYing has put the jESSE address as a "cc" or
"bcc", and has put the original SENDer (the person who first posted the
msg) in the "TO" statement. Given the variable practices of today's
e-mail clients and how they process listserv (and other discussion list
msgs) this is not uncommon.
That is, the placement of what goes in the "TO" statement is in part
your choice, and in part the determination of your e-mail client.
The listserv software enables me to approve a msg for jESSE with a
simple OK command as a reply to the listserv software, AS LONG AS the
jESSE listserv address appears in the TO statement, and not any other one.
Some lists are configured to send a reply to a listserv post to the
individual, first poster (for example a disability list that I belong to,
which is incessantly rained with msgs like "please post to the list".
jESSE is configured to send replies to a jESSE post to the list itself
(hence the lack of rain).
It appears that some e-mail clients also have such configurations, in
that sensing a listserv or other discussion post, they are configured to
send a reply to such a msg to the original poster, with the jESSE list as
a "cc" or "bcc".
I recall some early e-mail clients who had only two REPLY functions:
REPLY and REPLY ALL, and who knows what they put into these two fields
when the msg was from a listserv (mailbase, listproc, etc) or whatever
software the discussion list was based on.
Once or twice a week I get msgs directed to jESSE which don't appear to
have the jESSE list address in the TO statement. I can't use the
automated OK mechanism which directly forwards the REPLY to the jESSE
list.
In this case, I have two choices: (1) work with the person trying to
REPLY to a jESSE msg to figure out what went wrong, and this person may
not be really comfortable with listserv software, STMP protocols, other
standards for e-mail, or e-mail clients, or (2) copy the REPLY person's
msg into a new msg that I know will get to the listserv software and get
out to jESSE readers right away. In that case, I include the REPLY
person's header information and the complete posting. I label these as
"received with a technical glitch" because I have no idea exactly what
went wrong.
But the msg goes out quickly and without a fuss. And it gets posted to
the jESSE archive so that you can see if your msg was distributed to the
jESSE list.
The difference between these two processes is this: If I can use the OK
mechanism, the msg is sent out clearly as sent in and without any editing
on my part. I clearly have not touched it. If I have to copy the msg to
a new msg and send it as one "received with a technical glitch" one could
fuss that I edited the msg. But I didn't and don't.
The point here is this: If you read a msg from jESSE that says
"received with a technical glitch" DO NOT assume that the person who is
REPLYing has a problem or is anything else negative. There are WAY TOO
MANY variables in listserv or discussion list software to sort this out.
And there is NO WAY IN H*** that I am going to insist that everyone use
the same e-mail client to comunicate with a community. People who do (and
we know who they are) are just (&^%$$#@).
DO assume that the msg so labeled is an honest copy of the original,
and that the original REPLYer (or sometimes SENDer) just unavoidably ran
afoul of the still-lacking standards for e-mail communication and clients.
I hope that this clarifies issues for everyone.
Send away. Neither rain, nor sleet, nor lack of standards, nor poorly
designed e-mail clients, will prevent the mail from getting through. At
least as far as I can help it. :-)
--gw
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Gretchen Whitney, PhD, Retired
School of Information Sciences
University of Tennessee, Knoxville TN 37996 USA [log in to unmask]
http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/
jESSE:http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/jesse.html
SIGMETRICS:http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2012 11:23:30 -0400
From: "listserv.utk.edu LISTSERV Server (15.5)" <[log in to unmask]>
To: Gretchen Whitney <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: JESSE: approval required (8C720435)
This message was originally submitted by [log in to unmask] to the JESSE list
at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU. You can approve it using the "OK" mechanism (click on the
link below), ignore it, or repost an edited copy. The message will expire
automatically. You do not need to do anything if you just want to discard it.
Please refer to the List Owner's Manual at
http://www.lsoft.com/resources/manuals.asp if you are not familiar with the
"OK" mechanism. These instructions are being kept purposefully short for your
convenience in processing large numbers of messages.
To APPROVE the message:
http://listserv.utk.edu/cgi-bin/wa?OK=8C720435&L=JESSE
