The contents of all MAGPIE mailing lists are copyrighted by Steve Manes and Manes Associates. Republication, reposting or recirculation of any content from any mailing list in any form, whether by email, worldwide web or print media, or reuse of any subscriber's email address is STRICTLY PROHIBITED! No bots!
The following lists are available on MAGPIE. To subscribe to any of them, just click on the name.
| NAME | OVERVIEW | REQUEST | MODERATOR |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Bottom Line | International bass players | by WWW | Bill Bolton, Edwin Hurwitz, Harry Nuttall, Steve Manes |
| NYC Motorcyclists | NYC motorcycling issues | by WWW | Steve Manes |
| Triumph Motorcycles | Hinckley Triumph motorcycle discussion | by WWW | Steve Manes |
| WIST | Women In Sport-Touring (motorcycles, women only) | by WWW | Erica B. Smith |
Questions:
Answers:
Nothing.
See the instructions at the top of the FAQ.
This generally occurs for one of two reasons:
The instructions are in every message or digest.
Address your message to XXX@magpie.com, where XXX is the name of the list to which you want to post, like bass06@magpie.com. However, you must first have subscribed to the XXX list and returned the confirmation message (see "How do I subscribe to the XXX mailing list?") before your post will be accepted to the list.
See "How do I subscribe to the XXX mailing list?".
If you have a new email address and want to unsubscribe your old one, click on the URL included with every list message.
Don't annoy the moderator with unsub requests until you've attempted to unsubscribe yourself first. You won't like the response you'll get, providing you get a response at all.
And don't post administrative requests to the mailing list posting address! That is very bad netiquette, your request will be ignored and you may get a NastyGram from the moderator about it. If you're still having problems, email the moderator directly.
Unsubscribe the old one; subscribe the new one. Please avoid asking the moderator to do this except in cases where you no longer have access to your old account.
Don't feel bad. The mailing list software's error messages are, to say the least, cryptic. Providing that you or your ISP aren't filtering bounce mail, the reason for the bounce will be in the Subject line, although it may not be meaningful to you. Here are the likely reasons why your message was unacceptable to the server, and pretty much in this order:
Staple this to your monitor:
MAGPIE WILL ONLY ACCEPT PLAIN TEXT MESSAGES!
NO MIME! NO HTML! NO ATTACHMENTS!
If you don't know what a MIME or HTML message is, here's the tip-off: if your message includes bold, italicized or colored characters or alternate fonts in the text, it won't be accepted by the mailing list server.
As regards quoting, MAGPIE's list server will automatically bounce posts which contain more quoted than original text. This is intended to increase the readability of the digests. Please... only quote the relevant lines from a post you're replying to. We've all seen the message before, you know. Because MAGPIE's digests are propagated when the message queue reaches a fixed number of text lines, overquoting often means bumping someone else's message from the digest because you didn't take the time to clean up your own.
MAGPIE's mailing lists are restricted to permit posting only by subscribers. The server knows you only by the address you originally subscribed to. The three most common reasons for your posts bouncing are:
The above applies to 99% of these complaints.
PLEASE - before griping to the moderator, send yourself email, examine the headers and see if your "From:" address has changed. If it has, either fix it or unsubscribe the old address and resubscribe the new one. If all else fails, send the moderator a copy of any bounce messages so he or she can decipher the problem.
This is long but important to know before you bug a moderator about this.
If you didn't receive a "Not a subscriber" bounce message, the most common reason is that the message was rejected for protocol reasons.
First, check your mailer to make sure your email address matches the one you originally subscribed, especially if you recently started using a new mail client. This is a common mistake that I've made myself.
Second, if you are running Microsoft Outlook, Netscape Mail or AOL , see below.
Third, check for a bounce message with text similar to that listed in "Why does all my email bounce to MAGPIE?".
Fourth, MAGPIE.COM uses several RBL, or Realtime Blackhole Lists. These are spam blocks activated when mail is received from a domain on one of the RBL block lists. If your ISP landed on one of these lists MAGPIE.COM won't accept your post. In the case of SpamCop, the block might only last for a few hours. With others, it could last for weeks. You should get a bounce message indicating which RBL rejected your mail server. I can't do anything to help you if your mail server has been blacklisted. In fact, there's very little you can do either except gripe to your ISP.
Fifth, MAGPIE.COM manually blackholes several domains which are chronic spam houses, like CHINANET and KORNET. If you're on one of these nuisance ISPs, forget about posting to MAGPIE.COM.
MAGPIE.COM will always return a bounce message explaining, perhaps in very terse language, why your post was rejected. However, if you're using your ISP's mail server to send outgoing mail, the bounce message may be sent to the system administrator for that mail server instead and your ISP may or may not copy you on it. This is something that's beyond my control.
In all cases, check with your ISP first before sending me an "I can't post!" message. I can only tell you why a post I received on MAGPIE didn't make the list. I have no way of determining why your post never made it to my mail server.
DO NOT POST TEST MESSAGES TO THE MAILING LISTS! They will be deleted without notice, as will your subscription if you persist in doing so.
A mailing list isn't Usenet. MAGPIE is a private mailing list server. You have no implied right to have everything you submit published. Like the editors of any print magazine, the moderators of each mailing list reserve the right to decide which messages are acceptable for publishing to the list. This decision will usually be made in the best interests of preserving the intent, peace and integrity of the list for everybody. If this policy is unacceptable, don't post. Or unsubscribe and start your own mailing list.
If you suddenly stop receiving mail from MAGPIE, it was almost certainly an administrative removal. This typically occurs because:
MAGPIE's lists are strictly non-commercial, however if you are an established subscriber with a product or service topically relevant to the list you're free to post an announcement about it so long as it is brief, low key, free of commercial hype and you post it once. MAGPIE is a topical mailing list server, not eBay. If you have lots of stuff to sell, take it somewhere else.
Those posting spam will have their posts removed, their accounts terminated, their ISPs notified and copies forwarded to the RBLs, all with extreme prejudice. Otherwise, please feel free to use the list to advertise your used basses, motorcycles, etc. On the appropriate list, of course, and once only.
Most of MAGPIE's mailing lists have an international audience so, please, don't advertise local events!
Welcome to the internet, grasshopper. While gratuitous hostility and slanderous behavior won't be tolerated (unless it is entertaining or has some other redeeming value) you post at your own peril. Be aware that although everyone on a list may share a common interest we are all different people. Since MAGPIE hosts no political or religious lists, you won't run into that minefield (will you?!). However, some topics have have an inherent high-flame potential, including (for the bass list) "amateurs vs. pros" and "tab vs. standard notation" and (for the motorcycle lists) helmet laws and gratuitous cracks about Harleys. Don't feed the bears.
Because it's apparently not annoying to its participants. The lists are a community effort. We're all very different people here so there is bound to be conflict, bad taste, arguments, bruised feelings and all that other good stuff to remind us that folks from the real world post to the lists, not robots programmed for inoffensive, politically correct commentary. Moderators reserve the right to purge any post he or she sees fit but this action will be taken very reluctantly when it comes to censoring content and usually only in the longterm interest of keeping peace and topical focus on the list.
Microsoft demonstrated once again its "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" arrogance towards established standards by choosing to default outgoing messages from Outlook and Outlook Express in HTML format. Here's how you can fix this so you can send mail to MAGPIE, as well to the millions of internet users without HTML-aware email clients:
For Outlook Express:
For Outlook '97, '98 or 2000:
AOL 8.0 users: AOL, in it's increasingly limited wisdom, decided to remove any possibility of sending plain text from its email client. As far as I know, there are no work-arounds for this except to use AOL For the Web, or whatever their web mailer is called. Gripe to AOL.
In AOL version 9.0 the sender needs to first compose the message, then select all the text in the e-mail. Once highlighted, right-click to bring up the formatting menu and select "Compose as Plain Text".
Sorry. MAGPIE hosts several lists comprising several thousand subscribers. The moderators and site administrator do this as an unpaid avocation. They aren't customer service and shouldn't be asked to do tasks you can do for yourself.
If you receive a bounce message that says Client host rejected: cannot find your hostname it means that MAGPIE can't verify that your domain is who it says it is. The fault isn't with MAGPIE but with your ISP's domain name service (DNS). Usually, it's because of a missing or improperly configured reverse DNS (PTR) entry for your domain.
To reduce spam to list addresses from forged or nonexistent domains (a common practice among spammers), MAGPIE requires all posting domains to be properly registered with InterNIC and to have their domain names and IP addresses properly reported by DNS. Unfortunately, some ISPs cut corners with the latter, either failing to register the domain for reverse IP authentication on their DNS servers or by misreporting its domain name.
If you have access to a Unix telnet account, you can verify this by running 'nslookup YOUR_DOMAIN_NAME', i.e.
nslookup walrus.com
> 206.24.16.22
This should report your domain's IP address. Now, run nslookup again with that IP address, i.e.
nslookup 206.24.16.22
> walrus1.walrus.com
This time it should report the same domain name you gave nslookup, or a machine within that domain. If it doesn't, MAGPIE won't accept your post. There is nothing I can do about that from here. You will have to contact your ISP and scream about it.
By default, MAGPIE distributes its lists in digest format only. Direct feeds are available on special request for regular, established subscribers though, except for The Bottom Line. The main reason for this is aesthetic. Large, direct-mail lists tend to become pseudo-chat machines, producing large amounts of off-topic discussion, flame wars and dead horse beating that makes it hard to keep the lists interesting and on topic.
Yes, you can! Web your way to the Magpie List Archive Reader.
Note: the archive reader can only be accessed by reference from a www.magpie.com page. If you want to link a list into a foreign web site, use http://www.magpie.com/digests.html instead. This restriction was necessary after commercial web sites were found to have linked to MAGPIE's lists without permission.
Of course you're pissed about it. I would be too. However, moderators have the final word on what's appropriate on their lists. Please understand that what may seem like petty over-reaction and power-tripping to you will more likely be the moderator's experience with how a message will be perceived by the list at large and the off-topic responses it will generate. Killing one message to avoid having to kill a dozen flaming follow-ups is just defensive economy. None of us like doing this and it doesn't make you a bad person for posting it in the first place. But it's better to have one person angry at you than a dozen, or several dozen after that.
If you truly feel that you're being persecuted or retaliated against by a moderator, by all means contact me personally. But if it's just because you're in disagreement about whether or not a post was appropriate on the list, as stated above the moderators still have the final word on this, even if I happen to disagree with them too.
Then gripe to the moderator directly. Make sure to include a copy of any bounce message you received from MAGPIE. A complaint like "I can't post" doesn't give the moderator any information he or she can help you with.