Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!smsc.sony.com!dce
From: dce@smsc.sony.com (David Elliott)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: Jail postmasters
Message-ID: <1989Nov26.045020.9447@smsc.sony.com>
Date: 26 Nov 89 04:50:20 GMT
References: <496@nisca.ircc.ohio-state.edu>
Reply-To: dce@icky.Sony.COM (David Elliott)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Sony Microsystems Corp.
Lines: 42

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."