HACKETT-L Archives

Archiver > HACKETT > 1998-04 > 0892359561


From: Erin Bradford <>
Subject: [HACKETT-L] from the listowner...mass crossposting to lists
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1998 22:39:21 -0700 (PDT)


This was received from Brian Leverich, one of the main forces behind
RootsWeb. Although this hasn't been a problem on any of my lists so far, I
thought I would send this to prevent this problem from occuring on these
lists. What brought this message from Brian about was that someone had sent
a post to more than 50 lists at once...which is really excessive, If you
feel you need to cross post, let's make it a rule that you aren't to cross
post to more than 7 lists max:) (by the way, the only reason I cross post
to 7 lists is because I am the listowner for 7 lists and some messages I
would like every list to receive instead of just a few). Good luck everyone
in your search.

-Erin Bradford

Listowner for Barringer, Black, Bradford, Coventry, Eller, Hackett, and Kern
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Plains/6106/genlinks.html (+800 genealogy
links)
http://www.angelfire.com/mt/listdex/index.html (Homepage for surname lists
above)

>Hi all -
>
>Each of RootsWeb's mail servers is designed to receive about 1,500
>incoming pieces of mail each day and deliver them to the list
>subscribers.
>
>Cross-posting an article to too many lists (say more than 5 lists)
>can seriously interfere with the operation of one of those servers.
>
>Why? Consider what happened this morning, when someone cross-posted
>an article to 50 lists.
>
>This particular thread, because it has been cross-posted to 50 lists
>and spawned about 20 replies that were also cross-posted, has by
>itself generated about 1,000 inbound messages. That's almost
>doubled the load on the server.
>
>That's bad.
>
>What's worse, the servers are designed to receive an inbound piece
>of mail on average about once each minute. When something is
>massively cross-posted to 50 lists, though, the server has to absorb
>essentially a whole hour's worth of work arriving within a few
>milliseconds. That *really* jars the machinery.
>
>And here's what's *really* bad:
>
>A few poor souls were subscribed to all or most of those 50 lists.
>Within the span of a few hours, they received 50 copies each of 20
>messages. That means they were mailbombed by a 1000 pieces of
>e-mail, and that caused them all sorts of pain.
>
>So that's why RootsWeb discourages massive cross-posting. However,
>we haven't announced a formal policy because folks don't make this
>mistake too often, and anyway we're working on a technical solution
>that would simply make it impossible for users to accidentally do
>this. Cheers, B.
>
>
>--
>Dr. Brian Leverich Co-moderator, soc.genealogy.methods/GENMTD-L
>RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative http://www.rootsweb.com/
>P.O. Box 6798, Frazier Park, CA 93222-6798
>
>

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