ALL PLEASE READ--Changing mail settings, bouncing, and other administrative gobbledygook

Hi, gang!

It's hard to believe, but over the last six months, Yahoogroups is actually improving its services to us members and owners in certain ways.

One of them is by allowing a listmember to change his/her mail setting by e-mail.  This is especially useful when going on vacation or coming back from vacation.  There are four addresses, one for each type:

To change to "Individual E-Mails":  Send a blank e-mail, or one with "normal" in the subject line (minus the quotes) to:
<NameOfGroup[email protected]> (where I've shown "Name of group", insert group name.  For example, <[email protected]>.)

To change to "Daily Digest":  Send a blank e-mail, or one with "digest" in the subject line (minus the quotes) to:
<NameOfGroup[email protected]>

To change to "No Mail":  Send a blank e-mail, or one with "nomail" in the subject line (minus the quotes) to:
<NameOfGroup[email protected]>

To change to "Special Notices": Send a blank e-mail, or one with "special" in the subject line (minus the quotes) to:
<NameOfGroup[email protected]>.  Note:  With this setting, you'll only receive special messages such as this one, or ones generated by Yahoogroups.

Of course, you can also change your mail receipt method via the group web site.  Go to the group home page, and click on "Edit my membership".

Please remember to do this on your own.  My assistant moderators and I will not ordinarily do this for you.  But we are here to help you if you have an extraordinarily difficult time making these changes.

Now we come to the issue of bouncing memberships.  When a member goes on the bouncing list, he/she won't receive any more messages from the group until such time as the member reactivates his/her account or the listowner or moderator attempts to reactivate the account.  So, if you're wondering why you're not receiving Yahoogroups messages, this is probably why.

Bouncing memberships are either "Soft Bouncing" or "Hard Bouncing".  A "Soft Bounce" is usually one which results when the recipient's mailbox with the ISP is full--i.e., has run out of megabytes of storage.  As I mentioned, this affects what you see on your ISP home page--NOT what your e-mail application shows.  The only way to keep this under control is by frequently downloading of messages from your ISP.  If you receive your mail as "Individual E-Mails" and your messages have lots of JPEG (.jpg) attachments, which is standard for the groups I run, you'll run out of room more quickly.  For that reason, many listmembers prefer to go "Daily Digest" or "No Mail", and view the attachments on the web site's message archives.  WARNING!  If you have a "yahoo.com", "hotmail", "webtv" or other freebie address, your mailbox storage is more limited than on most other services.  More than half of "Soft Bouncing" memberships come from members with "yahoo.com" addresses.

A "Hard Bounce" is more complicated.  It usually means that:
  1.  Your ISP is down temporarily.
2.  You haven't paid your Internet service or phone bill, and your ISP has deactivated your account (or made it unavailable, unknown or cancelled).
3.  You have cancelled this account yourself.
4.  Your ISP is barring messages from Yahoogroups temporarily.

Regardless of the type of bounce, my moderators and I will attempt to reactivate the account up to five times.  Yahoogroups will auto-send the member a Reactivation Message, to which the member will respond to reactivate.  On the third attempt, my moderators and I will change the member's mail setting to "No Mail".  If, after five attempts, the member is still bouncing, we will remove the member, and he/she will have to re-subscribe to return to the group.  Sometimes Yahoogroups will indicate that a Reactivation Message did not bounce, but they haven't reactivated the account, and we can click a button to Reactivate.  Members whose e-mail delivery method has been changed to "No Mail" by us during the bouncing period will be required to re-set their preferred mail method themselves.

Frequently, members with "yahoo.com" addresses have their accounts turn up "This account is Disabled or Discontinued", and they become "hard bouncing",  This is a real annoyance, both to the individual members and to the listowner and moderators, because these accounts have the appearance of being active since the member can still send messages into the group through this address.  But when Yahoo sends a copy of the message to the member, it bounces.  For this reason, my moderators and I will pay close attention to "yahoo.com" members who become disabled/discontinued, and they will be removed immediately.  To re-subscribe, those members will be forced to use a different address.  We will reject a prospective reinstatement to any member using a "yahoo.com" address which is known to have been "disabled/discontinued".

The bottom line:  As regular Internet users, we all have a responsibility to keep our e-mail accounts up to date.  That includes keeping your Yahoogroup memberships current, keeping up with the flow of e-mail going through your ISP, and basically staying off the Bounce List.

Now for e-mail address changes:  This is an area which has confused many of you.  Yahoogroups doesn't make it simple.  Basically changing your e-mail address on Yahoogroups means adding your new address to your "Account Info" page and making that address the primary address.  Most of the time, in order for this to work, Yahoo will send you a confirming e-mail with a special code on it so it can recognize your new address.  Once you have made that address your primary, you can delete or suppress your old address.  (If you find you have one of those pesky "yahoo.com" address which is disabled/discontinued, you can get rid of that, too!)  Here's where you can get help from your listowner or moderators.  We're glad to help!

Now that you've gotten this far, have a Happy New Year, gang--and keep up the good work!

Milantram (Peter Ehrlich)
listowner
<[email protected]>

Assistant moderators:  
  Val Golding <[email protected]>

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