FAQ = Oof

[MacWheel99@xxxxxxx]

Suggestion box for populating non-iSeries/400 General FAQ Category.

We perpetually are reminded at holiday & vacation time (recently BPCS_L for
example) that most lists have newcomers who experience some trouble the first
time they start out-of-service e-mail notification.  Many lists also can have
participants sufficiently unfamiliar with this phenomena that they
unwittingly add to the volume of bounces.

The FAQ would point out that many e-mail systems permit you to receive from
list but not bombard list or senders to it with your notification & replies
to your replies.  There would be a separate FAQ posting for each of several
popular e-mail systems for which this is practical, with step by step
instructions how to accomplish that.

Users of other e-mail systems, for which there is no such solution, need to
suspend list service while they're gone, resume it when they return, and
check the archives to see what they have missed, that they might be
interested in.

There might need to be a short reminder check list how to do those steps for
those who have signed up for lists & mislaid the welcome instructions that
came with it in the beginning.  There may even be an automated help service
to get at a copy of those instructions for any given list.

Some day in the future David might once again offer the service that shows
statistics on a list's activities, or perhaps the search engine might show
what's been doing between some date range.  This would be to help both people
returning from being away, newcomers to lists who wish to see what on-going
threads are all about, and people considering joining a list ... what is the
volume of traffic here?

The FAQ would briefly explain the appearance of the problem to help those
individuals who might be new to it & otherwise at risk of posting replies to
the bounces & thus increasing their intensity.

Meanwhile, the rest of us need to promptly call this to attention of
moderator and/or list owner.

Categories in my mind

General
   non-iSeries/400
      list forum etiquette etc.
      out-of-office notification not to the lists PLEASE
      --------------------------------- post describing the problem
           oof alternatives if your e-mail system cannot avoid this
           ---------------------- post about stop subscription for duration &
archives reminder
           oof solution for XXXXXXXXXX e-mail system
           oof solution for YYYYYYYY e-mail system
           oof solution for ZZZZZZZZZZ e-mail system
                             and so on
           oof discovery reaction for everyone else
           ---------------------- post reminding us what to do to avoid
making it worse
                                                             and how to stop
it promptly

MacWheel99@aol.com (Alister Wm Macintyre) (Al Mac)
BPCS 405 CD Manager / Programmer @ Global Wire Technologies Incorporated
http://www.globalwiretechnologies.com = new name same quality wire
engineering company: fax # 812-424-6838