[sustran] Re: Fixed and next step Re: HELP Re: Out of Office AutoReply

[Paul Barter]

Dear sustran-discussers

As one of the two list managers it was very disappointing to see this morning that the list went into a feedback loop late last night east Asian time.  I always fear a flood of people leaving the list when these things happen. Many apologies for the irritation this must have caused many of you. 

Thanks to those of you who tried to find ways to stop it. Luckily Karl, my co-manager, was up late and was able to take action to stop the flood. Thanks Karl!

I am suprised this happened. The various safeguards usually seem to work. Every few days the system does catch an 'out of office reply'. If any slip through, it is usually just one, because of the way auto replies are usually set up.  


TEMPORARY (possibly permanent) SOLUTION

As a trial, I have just changed a key setting for the list. FROM NOW ON, IF YOU JUST HIT "REPLY" YOUR MESSAGE WILL NOT GO TO SUSTRAN-DISCUSS. IT WILL GO ONLY TO THE POSTER OF THE MESSAGE. This should prevent feedback loops like last night's. 

SO IF YOU DO WANT TO REPLY TO THE WHOLE LIST, THEN YOU WILL NEED TO COPY-AND-PASTE THE LIST ADDRESS (sustran-discuss at list.jca.apc.org) BEFORE SENDING.  For many email programmes 'reply to all' should also work

Note that this change should apply to replies to this message and new ones from now on. It will not apply to old messages already sent to the list.

By the way, Carlos' suggestion to have one or two more list managers is a good one and we may take this up for various other reasons. However, this kind of feedback loop can generate a lot of messages very quickly as we saw. So even multiple managers might not be enough. 

All the best,

Paul