[Lowfer] Glad to see activity again.

[Doug Reed]

I'm glad to see activity on this list again after a long dry period.

There have been four messages to the list that have hung up because the 
sender's email address didn't match the address used to send email to 
their home accounts. The hung messages will cause a "Not a member" email 
to be sent to the sender's new address.

Sometimes this happens because you used a remailer address like arrl.net 
when you subscribed, but are using your ISP supplied email address when 
sending a message. The two don't match, so your message is held for 
review and you receive a "Not a member" message.

It could also happen if your ISP provides multiple email addresses with 
the account and you used one address to filter your hobby-related email 
into one account, but are using a different account to send your mail. 
I've also seen trouble when your "FROM:" address doesn't match your 
"REPLY_TO:" address in your email program.

There are many reasons you could have this problem and the answer is to 
fix the addresses. If you try to post a message but receive a "Not a 
member" reply email, compare the email address on the "Not a member" 
email with the email address on a regular message received from the 
LOWFER list. Most likely the two will be different and that is what 
caused the problem.

The easiest fix is to change the FROM: and REPLY_TO: addresses in your 
email program to match the TO: address on your LOWFER email. That just 
requires a change in your email program. Most ISPs don't care what you 
use for email addresses since they know who you are from your account 
login.

Another option is to Subscribe to LOWFER using your REPLY_TO: email 
address and Unsubscribe your original LOWFER TO: address. This results 
in one account on LOWFER but sending to the correct address.

A third option is to create a second LOWFER account using the REPLY_TO: 
email address but then change the email subscription options to "NO 
MAIL" for the second account. This is definitely the more involved 
approach but is usually the way I end up solving similar problems.

I recommend you save at least one of the monthly reminder messages sent 
from qth.net since it will include the account name and password you 
will need to make any of the changes I've suggested above. The reminder 
messages are sent the first of every month or when you first subscribe.

One final suggestion is that if you are only "reading the mail" and 
don't often participate in the discussions, you can reduce the number of 
emails you receive by selecting the "Digest Only" subscription option. 
You will need to login to the remailer program using the information in 
the monthly reminder message in order to make this change. The Digest 
message is usually sent once a day, or more frequently if there are a 
LOT of messages. Digest is the way I receive most remailer messages.

If you have a problem posting messages and just can't seem to solve it 
yourself, you can forward me copies of the email messages and I'll 
attempt to solve the problem.

If you do post a message and it hangs for "Not a member", I am alerted 
to such messages only once a day and may not see it even that soon. This 
is also one way that SPAM is trapped and held, so I will review the 
messages and accept the ones that look OK and kill the rest.

Good luck with the remailer and your LOWFER activities.

Doug Reed, N0NAS.
St Paul, MN
LOWFER List Admin