🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <45fdho$o9o@giga.bga.com>, David Smith <bladex@bga.com> wrote:

(Quoting Chip Rosenthal) # :

# : So, now we have an AOL user whining that the utexas email gateway, a
# : service offered to UT users, and with informal and unofficial access
# : granted to the public, whining that they don't like it.
# 
# I narrowed the complaint down to that Fletcher was (1) blocking access to 
# the gateway because of domainism and (2) not notifying AOLers trying to 
# use the service that he was doing this.  Messages that they sent simply 
# never appeared.
# 
# Is your response to this still tough roogies?

If you were to ask me instead of Chip, I'd say yes.  Regarding
distilled point (1), I can imagine a decision such as Fletcher
made being done by the numbers, not by hoopla about AOL having
a bad rep...  In fact, I have heard that AOL invited their
domain to be blocked from the gateway after they received
complaints about spam originating from aol.com .  Fletcher may
have already had something public to say on that subject.  As
regards (2), well, he had an arrangement with somebody at AOL.
It is not incumbent upon him to take it any further...  Don't
see how he could, not being a wheel at AOL.  If AOL doesn't
advertise propagation problems caused by a bad rep amongst
news admins, that is surely not the news admins' collective
fault.  Ask long-time news admins if they know, even only
in camp-fire tales, of sites that have filtering in place
for Fidonet re-broadcasting...  I did, in a state far, far
away, to keep a neighbor from sending every article that they
received back to me with new article IDs (meaning, they showed
up as "new" when they really weren't, causing some distress.
I blocked them because of noise they were injecting into the
system....  that they were unable to fix themselves.  AOL
should have a kiddie pool mini-Usenet, supervised, where new
net citizens can learn what they need to know to play well with
others, without spattering the neighbors with baby food as
often as they do now.  Letting AOL's users inject noise, in
the form of spam, pyramid schemes (illegal!) and other
detritus, into the networks outside aol.com is bad
citizenship.  They know it, and in the case of the UT
mail-to-news gateway, suggested how to deal with it.
The poster of the original complaint may not have chosen
a provider with the best reputation at this time, but by
the poster's words, chose to be in character with the
worst of what people say about that provider's customers.

Followups directed to austin.internet .

Bob
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   Bob Izenberg                          home: 512-442-0614
   bei@io.com         work voice/fax: 512-250-4227/250-6424
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