Paul asked on the list:

Hi. I'm not getting any mail from the list and am starting to go into
withdrawal. Can anyone out there help me?

We listmoms get various private versions of this occasionally
but since this was public I thought I would include a public
answer (copious details in the FAQ ;-).

The most common reason for suddenly not getting mail 
when the archive is working is being postponed by a 
listmom because you are bouncing.  One bounce does not 
get you postponed, glitches happen, unless the bounce 
message says your mail spool is over quota.  A couple 
consecutive bounces for someone on digest, or many 
individuals, gets you postponed to protect our mailboxes
from further error messages (the diligent elves at Cornell
try every 4 hours for 5 days for _each_ non-delivery, 
and report each successive failure).  If something blows 
up at a major ISP (like the att.net mess a while back) it
is extremely easy to come in Monday morning and find 300+
messages of which maybe 50 are real traffic.

We don't have hard rules on how many bounces to postpone
and try to be a bit more lenient to overseas folks since they 
have more tendency to glitches (the electrons get confused
sometimes or the only route into the country is temporarily
down..)

In any case, if you are not getting mail, send an ack 
to the listserv like coming back after postponing for vacation
in the FAQ.  That usually gets you back.  If it doesn't 
work, drop a line to the listmoms with what you have tried.
We rarely tell you when we postpone you on the theory that
if Cornell can't reach you neither can we.  The major exception
is when a bounce message implies your ISP is rejecting mail
as spam, in which case we usually send you a copy with suggestions 
for discussing with your ISP.  When writing a listmom it is more 
efficient to use the address oldtools-owner@l...
If you write to an individual who happens to be on vacation 
you will wait longer for an answer.

One issue sometimes implied in the private questions of this
sort: we _never_ just postpone or cancel somebody because 
we didn't like something they said.  If something like that
has to happen (thankfully very rarely!) you _always_ get 
a note telling you exactly what is happening and why.

Summary: when in doubt assume you were postponed and re-ack.

Esther
oldtools listmom
FAQ: http://www.brendlers.net/oldtools/OTFAQ.htm

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