[Lowfer] Two common posting errors- Email size too large and not a member.

[Doug Reed]

I just want to remind everyone who is sending attachments to the
LOWFER remail that there is a 50KB size limit to any email messages
you send. Anything larger than 50KB total size (message + attachment)
is automatically caught by the mailer program and notice is sent to me
asking what to do with it.

I don't even look any more, I just let the message expire and it gets
dropped without any intervention. So if you send notice of an
interesting capture but nobody comments about it, you can guess what
happened..

If you want the best possible chance for the attachment to pass
through, you need to check beforehand and make sure it is 40KB or less
in size. That should leave enough "headroom" that the message will go
through. If you don't check the file size you are probably just
wasting your time to send the message.....

I say the attachment should be 40KB or less because it will grow a
MINIMUM of 10% when attached to an email. An image or picture is
considered to be a binary file type. It must be converted to plain
text before it can be attached..... The usual growth is about 10% but
could be a bit more. And if you attach it to a long string of emails,
those all add to the total size as well....

The other bounce warning I've seen recently is the good old "not a
list member" message. If you are not a member of the list, you can't
post to the list. I see this as two common problems....

The first is when a person who is a member of this list posts a
message and sends it to several other email lists in addition to the
LOWFER list. Then someone who belongs to the other list hits "Reply
All" and his message bounces when it hits the LOWFER list. You can't
do anything to solve this problem except to not cross-post to multiple
lists in one email....

The "not a list member" bounce is a little more obscure.... Once in
a while a person will be able to receive email from the list but gets
a "not a member" bounce when they send a message to the list. The
usual reason for this is because they signed up for the list with one
email address, but their outgoing email has a different address on it.
This is something that usually happens at the ISP level and you may or
may not be able to fix it without changing your email account on the
remailer.

The same problem occurs if you use a remailer address to point to your
real email address like I do.... In this case, my Gmail account allows
me to put my "@amsat.org" remailer address in the "Reply To" field of
the outgoing message and I have no problem with any list I belong to.
But some email accounts don't allow this option and if that is the
case you will have to change your email account on the LOWFER
remailer. If you have that problem I highly recommend that you send an
email "subscribe" message rather than use the web page to subscribe to
he LOWFER list.

Good luck with your LOWFER activities and happy holidays!

73, Doug Reed, N0NAS.
LOWFER volunteer list admin.