The Rust List: Status -- February 19, 2003

After about 30 hours, Rust started flowing again tonight, and the messages are again available on the YahooGroups website.
. . . Rust Crew

The Rust List: Status -- February 19, 2003

As of yesterday afternoon, the Rust "messages" list has been inaccessible on the YahooGroups site, and YG is delivering no Rust mail. The Rust Crew is investigating the problem, and will report here as soon as possible. Unfortunately YG's "support" is notoriously hard to get through to, so it's possible that this could take a while. Please be patient.
. . . Rust Crew

The Rust List: Status -- October 7, 2002

The Rust List: Status -- May 26, 2002

Looks like it's ATTBI subscriber's turn for the problems that struck AOL subscribers a couple of months ago. They're apparently screening out YahooGroups mail bound for mailboxes on their domain, probably as a botched spam prevention scheme.

The advice given to the AOL subscribers applies here. Read the previous three posts below and replace "AOL" with "ATTBI" and follow those directions. Good luck in getting these behemoths to actually take the effort to fix this screw up!
. . . RE*AC*TOR

The Rust List: Status -- March 19, 2002   (mid-day)

Today AOL finally fessed up to there being a problem with incoming mail from YahooGroups, and as of late this morning (US Eastern time) Rust mail to AOL subscribers had begun. It remains to be seen whether mail sent between Sunday morning and today (approx 50 hours) will ever get through. Best bet is to catch up on the missed discussion via the digest archive.
. . . RE*AC*TOR

The Rust List: Status -- March 19, 2002   (early)

Currently it appears that AOL and YahooGroups are pointing their fingers at each other, while ~400 Rusties are missing their Rust mail. :-(

I urge everyone on AOL to continue to submit problem reports to AOL and to YG to keep the heat on. Do not let the AOL person put you off with a generic reply. Tell them that the group admin has told you that your subscription IS in place and that the Rust mail is flowing to everyone EXCEPT those on AOL or Compuserve. Tell them that they MUST pass your problem report on to the AOL system admins who investigate mail problems.

If anyone knows ANY actual human being at Yahoo who might respond to problem reports, try to get through to them. Their hostile "hide behind forms" support process really sucks. We've got to find SOMEBODY there that actually cares about the users of their service enough to focus on this issue. In the meantime, use this form.

Keep up the heat!
. . . RE*AC*TOR

The Rust List: Status -- March 18, 2002

Apparently YahooGroups is having trouble getting mail through to some or all of the AOL subscribers (and probably the CS subscribers, since that's actually part of AOL). I'll guess that it has something to do with the way that AOL screens out spam -- they might not have added the new server addresses (that YG switched to when they moved) to their spam filters. I have two suggestions:

1. Try to complain to AOL, in case it requires THEM to make a fix to their spam filters. Tell them that after YG moved, everybody else started getting mail except for the AOL people.

2. Try to complain to YG. The only way I know to do this is to use this form. Select "Why did I stop getting messages?" from the list, and be sure to tell them that the owner has told you that your rust subscription is NOT bouncing.

In the meantime you can follow the rust flow via the digest archive or on YG (most easily with this link, which will show you the last 10 posts in full and you can page backward from there to see earlier ones).

It's always something... :-(
. . . RE*AC*TOR

The Rust List: Status -- March 17, 2002

YahooGroups came back on-line this morning as scheduled. Now we'll have to deal with the sporadic delivery delays for a day or so while their backlog clears. Overall their move of their servers seems to have gone okay, so far.

Back when Topica moved their servers, their quality went downhill. Hopefully this won't be the case with YG. Time will tell.
. . . RE*AC*TOR

The Rust List: Status -- March 15, 2002

YahooGroups will be shut down for at least a day and a half this weekend, and thus Rust will not flow during that period.

Down time is set to start TONIGHT, March 15 at 9pm US Pacific Time. (That's midnight US Eastern time, in Europe it's Saturday 5:00 GMT).

They expect to be back up "Sunday morning" (no specific time given).

Note that after it returns, the backlogs will cause mail to have sporadic delays for probably another full day, so please be patient.
. . . RE*AC*TOR

The Rust List: Status -- March 5, 2002

As of about 10:00am EST the YahooGroups websites had returned and a few of yesterday's Rust posts have been distributed. But at that point the flow stopped. At least we know it hasn't gone away for good...

Hopefully it'll resume operations shortly. Please be patient while the backlogged messages clear. Check back here for further info if it doesn't resume soon....
. . . RE*AC*TOR

The Rust List: Status -- March 4, 2002

YahooGroups went down for "maintenance" this morning without warning. Thus no Rust flow for now. They say they're queuing all incoming messages, so if you sent something before the outage please don't resubmit after the flow starts again until you give the backlogged stuff time to flow...
. . . RE*AC*TOR

The Rust List: Status -- January 30, 2002

Topica committed a mortal sin: immediately after I defended them on Rust, they turned around and showed their worst face to the Rusties. At least 4 times in the last few weeks our digests stopped completely, one time not popping out for 4 days. And even when the digests were flowing, they slowed waaaaay down from their previously excellent service (i.e., the first half of 2001). And individual posts were very sloppily delivered.

I have emails from Topica telling me how "major mailing campaigns" have exacerbated other mail problems they have. In other words, discussion groups take a back seat to spamming. Yeah, yeah, they have to make a living. But I'll be damned if Rust will remain where it plays second-fiddle to spam delivery...

The move to YahooGroups is complete. Hopefully all Rusties were moved over cleanly. (If you were on Topica but haven't gotten anything from Rust since last night, go ahead and subscribe again using instructions here.)

Time will tell whether YG will be a better home than Topica. Right now it definitely is. The final digests at Topica STILL have not made it out to the world!

So long, Topica. Can't say I'm gonna miss you...
. . . RE*AC*TOR

NOTE: All posts still go to: rust@rustlist.org

The Rust List: Status -- January 27, 2002

I didn't realize that I wouldn't be able to directly move the Rust subscriber list over to YahooGroups all at once, so the move is slightly delayed while YG Support processes the request to add the subscribers there. However as soon as they do, all Rust subscribers will get a notice that their subscription has been added there.

Note that posting will NOT be immediately turned on there, though. I will first have to do some final housekeeping. In the meantime, just keep sending your posts to "rust@rustlist.org" as always, and they'll be directed to the correct place.

Rust posts (but not digests) continue to trickle out of Topica until the move is complete. If you're on digests on Topica, you can follow those rust posts on Topica's pages.

I really hope to have this all done by tomorrow. However we're now in the hands of YahooGroups' support...
. . . RE*AC*TOR

The Rust List: Status -- January 26, 2002

Topica has now made clear that their service has gone down the tubes. Based on email that I have received from their support people, they apparently have taken on massive spam campaigns who's delivery takes precedence over the delivery of their on-line communities like Rust.

After yet another two days of Rust Digest outage, the time has come to abandon ship. The move to YahooGroups has begun. God have mercy on us all...

Note that posts (and MAYBE even digests) will continue to trickle out of Topica for some time now. But once you get the first Rust digest from YahooGroups, the move will be complete. Each Rust subscriber will also get a notice (with further instructions) at the time that your subscription is moved. Watch your email for it.

There will also be full details about how to access rust on YG on the Rust Access page soon.

Here's hoping for a smooth transition...
. . . RE*AC*TOR

The Rust List: Status -- January 24, 2002

Rust delivery (and ALL discussion group delivery) from Topica has been pretty flakey for a few days now, and this morning it has come to a screaching halt (only a post or two since midnight EST). I'm pursuing, as usual. Stay tuned for the latest update.

Yes, I definitely AM looking at moving off Topica now. :-(
. . . RE*AC*TOR

The Rust List: Status -- January 17, 2002

Rust DIGEST delivery from Topica has been stuck again, since yesterday afternoon. I'm again pursuing this with Topica's support people, and again it's not clear how much priority they are applying. :-(

Again, to help raise the priority, I urge as many of you 2000+ digesters as possible to flood Topica's "support@get.topica.com" line with urgent problem reports. Don't use these exact words (form letters don't work as well as individual notes do) but tell them something like "Once again I haven't gotten any rust@topica.com digests over a period where I know there should have been 10 or more sent out, and I'm missing important discussions! Why does this keep happening there? Should our list move to Yahoo?"

They'll probably just respond (eventually) with something like "use the website until it's fixed", but if every one of their support people gets a couple of dozen of these reports, maybe they'll huddle up and figure out that FIXING the damn problem once and for all is easier than using excuses. Take a minute and submit a report ASAP.

Note that your report will get an automated answer that you must reply to -- so that the "problem number" on the subject will be sent back -- before a human at Topica will look at the report. Be sure to watch for that auto-reply and take the second step to get the problem submitted...

Please be aware that when this gets fixed, there could be a whole bunch of digests pop out all at once -- I apologize in advance if that overflows your mailbox... :-(
. . . RE*AC*TOR

The Rust List: Status -- January 11, 2002

Rust DIGEST delivery from Topica has been stuck since yesterday morning. (If anybody HAS gotten a digest since #5247, please let me know.) I have been pursuing this with Topica's support people, but it's not clear how much priority they are applying to it. :-(

To help raise the priority, I urge as many of you 2000+ digesters as possible to flood Topica's "support@get.topica.com" line with urgent problem reports. Don't use these exact words (form letters don't work as well as individual notes do) but tell them something like "I haven't gotten any rust@topica.com digests in over 24 hours, even though I know there should have been 15 or more since the last one, and I'm missing important discussions!" They'll probably just respond (eventually) with something like "use the website until it's fixed", but if every one of their support people gets a couple of dozen of these reports, maybe they'll huddle up and figure out that FIXING the damn problem is easier than using excuses. Take a minute and submit a report ASAP.

Note that your report will get an automated answer that you must reply to -- so that the "problem number" on the subject will be sent back -- before a human at Topica will look at the report. Be sure to watch for that auto-reply and take the second step to get the problem submitted...