Cob: Problem with the list??

[Shannon C. Dealy]

On Tue, 26 Jun 2001, Layth wrote:

> I would just like to check that I am not having a problem recieving
> messages from the list. In the past 2-3 weeks I just recieved 12
> messages. Can anyone please confirm that.

The coblist often fluctuates, sometimes there are no messages for a week
or more, often corresponding to holidays or when school starts or ends.
The quantity of messages you specify sounds about right.

Anyone wanting to determine if they have missed a message can check the
coblist archives by following links on the coblist home page at:

   http://www.deatech.com/natural/coblist/

Select the indexed archives, then the current year sorted by Date, and
look at the messages for the time frame you are concerned about.
NOTE: "today's" messages won't be in the indexed archives, since they only
get updated once a day at something like 3AM Pacific Time.

Even if you find that you have missed some messages, it does not
necessarily mean there is a problem with the list, many of the largest
internet service providers regularly have problems with their mail systems
and refuse, discard, or bounce all incoming messages for the duration of
the problem.  AOL, Hotmail and others have done this repeatedly over the
years, though lately the biggest offender has been Hotmail.  Unfortunately, 
the manner in which they (mis-)handle their problems creates alot of extra
work for me if anything is to be done about it, so the list policy is that
when your messages have problems due to your ISP, I ignore it and you
simply don't get that message.  I wish there was a better solution, but
so far I haven't seen one.

Shannon C. Dealy      |               DeaTech Research Inc.
dealy at deatech.com     |          - Custom Software Development -
                      |    Embedded Systems, Real-time, Device Drivers
Phone: (800) 467-5820 | Networking, Scientific & Engineering Applications
   or: (541) 451-5177 |                  www.deatech.com