Re: Strange experience with posting to XyList [Private]

["N. Sivin" nsivin@xxxxxxxx]

Dear Robert:

Re your inquiry about your message that was not distributed:



I thought I had sent out, just before leaving Philly for a couple of days, a
message about an exceedingly odd "feature" of the mail server. The idea is
that, if the word "help" appears in the first 5 lines of the text, it will
not be distributed, but is bucked to the server and treated as a request for
help. So much for building intelligence into software! I checked the
bounce message for your latest missive (you don't get the message, but I do,
since the bounce is at the CCAT server end), and sure enough the fatal word
was there.

The way to avoid this nuisance is to scan the first 5 lines for the word
"help." If you find it, before sending the message, either creatively
misspell it, or put a few blank lines above it, as I did here, to fool the
"smart" software. I will try to catch it when I see bounce messages, but I
don't always have time to read the text in them (the problem usually lies in
the header).

Cheers,

N. Sivin
History and Sociology of Science
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-3325, U.S.A.
nsivin@xxxxxxxx