Question to Moderator

[Alex Rudd]

On Sun, 2 Apr 2006 19:45:34 -0400 Vladimir Padunov said:
>What is the point of messages like the following if you provide absolutely
>no information on remedy?  Is that doing a "professional service'?  The
>message I sent about the latest issue of KINOKULTURA, a journal devoted to
>contemporary Russian cinema -- and therefore within the purview of the
>readers of this list -- was NOT sent by anyone else and was not a repeat.
>And yet getting in touch with you is absurdly difficult.  What do you gain
>by this antediluvian way of operating?

Dear SEELANGers,

I apologize for taking up your time and disk space with this, but
Mr. Padunov posted his question for all to see, so I might as well
respond in kind.

Dear Mr. Padunov,

First, I am baffled about why you would send a "Question to Moderator"
to the list address.  You have been subscribed to the SEELANGS list for
about 10 years.  Surely you know that SEELANGS is not a moderated list.
(In other words, I'm the list owner, but I'm not the moderator.)  Also,
I have posted often that I can be contacted at the list owner's address,
which is SEELANGS-Request at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU.  This information is also
found in the Welcome message sent to new subscribers and on our Web site.
(The Web site address is at the bottom of every post to the list.)  And
if you're really tech savvy, it's also in the mail header of every post.

In any event, I will be pleased to respond to the substance of your
question.

In your message, you quoted the one you received from LISTSERV.  It
began like this:

>--On Sunday, April 02, 2006 5:11 PM -0400 "CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW
>YORK/CIS LISTSERV Server (14.5)" <LISTSERV at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU> wrote:r
>
>>Your message  is being returned to  you unprocessed because it  appears
>>to have already  been  distributed to  the  SEELANGS  list.  That  is, a

>From that message, please take away the following: LISTSERV sent it at
5:11 PM on April 2, 2006.

Next, I note that your subscription options are set such that you are
sent a copy of every message you post to the list.  I will safely assume,
then, that you received a copy of this message, which you posted to the
list the day before.

--- Begin ---

Message-ID:  <44296392.1143878636@º192.168.0.102º>
Date:         Sat, 1 Apr 2006 08:03:56 -0500
Reply-To: Slavic & East European Languages and Literature list
          <SNIP>
Sender: Slavic & East European Languages and Literature list
        <SNIP>
From: Vladimir Padunov <padunov+@<SNIP>
Subject: ºSEELANGSº KINOKULTURA 12 (April 2006)
Comments: cc: Vladimir Padunov <padunov@<SNIP>
To: SEELANGS@<SNIP>RV.CUNY.EDU

The April issue of Kinokultura (#12) is now available on line.
www.kinokultura.com
This issue features festival reports and articles based on a roundtable at
AAASS in 2005, as well as film reviews. This issue's video has been awarded
two top awards at recent festivals!

<SNIP>

--- End ---

My point here is this:

 - You first posted your message about the latest issue of KINOKULTURA
at 8:03 AM on April 1, 2006.

 - LISTSERV informed you that it would not distribute a duplicate of
that message (as I mentioned above) at 5:11 PM on April 2, 2006.

>From this we can conclude that one of two things happened.  Either you
submitted your message a second time (33 hours after the first one was
distributed) or else your message inexplicably remained in the CUNY
mail server for more than a day and was delivered a second time by the
mail server to the list server, at which point the list server sent you
that message.

Can I state definitively for you what happened here?  No... because I
don't have access to the CUNY server logs and I don't feel like
bothering the LISTSERV maintainer with this.  I can, though, state with
some authority that in the 13 years I've been running SEELANGS, I do
not recall an instance where the mail server has delivered a second
copy of a message to the list server more than 24 hours after it first
did so.  If I were you, I would first check my "Sent Mail" folder in
Mulberry (your mail client) to make sure you didn't, in fact, submit
your message twice.  I included the Message-ID number above so you can
check it against the Message-ID you might find in any other copy of
your message.  If it is a true copy, the Message-ID will be the same.
If it is a second iteration, it will be different.

I'm not sure what "information on remedy" you hoped to see in that
message you received.  If a message has already been distributed,
then what's to fix?  You were trying to post a message.  Hurray!
It's been distributed.  Done.  If you want to double-check that it
was, in fact, distributed, then check the archives.  Every message
posted to SEELANGS is archived.  There's information about that
and a link to easy web-based searching on our Web site.

Finally, in his follow-up to your message, George Mitrevski was
absolutely right (though I wish he'd put it a little more gently).
I administer the SEELANGS list as a volunteer in my free time.  If
I billed you at the same rate I bill out my time in my full-time
job, you could not afford me.  :)  It did take me some time to respond
to your message, so I hope you appreciate at least that much, even
if my volunteer status renders the "service" something less than
"professional."

Getting in touch with me is not absurdly difficult, by the way.  Just
send me e-mail.  I checked, and I have not received any e-mail from
you lately.

Regards,

- Alex, list owner of SEELANGS
--
Alex Rudd
List owner e-mail: seelangs-request at listserv.cuny.edu
Personal e-mail: ahrjj at cunyvm.cuny.edu
http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
Any opinion expressed above is not necessarily shared by my employers.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------