Forgive me for some administrivial notes. ;) - 1) Yes, I am aware that a spam slipped through moderation last week. I use an inhouse-developed SSL-based interface to majordomo that is very convenient, etc. It's also unforgiving if I accidentally "Approve" a message I meant to "Discard" and tell it to process it. :) Sometimes I make mistakes. I apologize for the spam you saw. Usually the list gets between 2 and 10 spams/day. I figure if I accidentally screw up and let one past we're all still ahead of the game. - 2) I used to notify people (then discard) cross-postings. Nowadays I get so many that I discard them without notice. If your posting to firewall-wizards doesn't get through, one possible reason might be that it's a cross-posting. - 3) I sometimes let through questions that are repeats from earlier questions, or are not wizardly in stature. Please do not be rude to the questioners. I also filter out large numbers of "go read an FAQ" kinds of questions, which you never see at all. - 4) I have adopted a policy of immediately unsubscribing anyone who has: - a stupid vacation program that replies to the list - a bounce - a full mailbox - a mail loop if you suddenly find that you are not getting list postings, it may be because you were unsubscribed for one of the above. If you complain, you will get an unsympathetic response from me. Just resubscribe quietly. - 5) I travel a whole lot. Sometimes there are whole days where I will not process the list queue. Frankly, I think this provides useful flow control. If you don't see anything appearing when you post it you can always go to: http://www.nfr.net/firewall-wizards/ and check the last few days. I get very unsympathetic when I see 8 postings followed by a query to the moderator as to why they didn't go through, followed by a personal e-mail of complaint. If you think I don't process the queue often enough, you're welcome to try moderating a mailing list in realtime while running a company, teaching, and travelling a few hundred thousand miles a year. See how you like it. :) - 6) Remember how to unsubscribe. Posting to the list, "UNSUBSCRIBE ME NOW" is not the kind of thing firewall-wizards are expected to do. I hold you to a higher standard than that. To unsubscribe, mail majordomoat_private with a message reading, unsubscribe firewall-wizards you@whereever - 7) I reserve the right, periodically, to announce that a topic is being source-quenched. That means, "please stop hammering on this issue." If you feel that the issue is worthy of more attention, simply make more interesting postings. :) - 8) Sometimes someone posts a question that triggers a large storm of responses, all the same. (e.g.: "what is a firewall?") In the event that this happens, I will start to bounce later postings, if they say substantially the same thing as earlier postings. I will not bounce postings that say new or interesting things, are well-written, or well-explained, or otherwise meritorious. If you want to make snappy one-liner comebacks, make them in direct Email not to the list. This has been a public service announcement packet from your moderator. :) mjr. -- Marcus J. Ranum, CEO, Network Flight Recorder, Inc. work - http://www.nfr.net home - http://www.clark.net/pub/mjr
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Apr 13 2001 - 13:46:30 PDT