[TowerTalk] "test" messages

[Dick Green]

Sorry to clutter up the reflector with yet another post on this subject, but I really can't let this go without responding. I think that under certain circumstances it's completely appropriate to send test messages to the reflector. In my case, I did so because the reflector appeared to be the *cause* of the problem.

Somehow, an extra set of quotes was being added around my name in the From and Reply addresses. The two symptoms were quotes around my name in the From field (annoying but benign) and an "unknown sender" error message several people got when trying to reply directly to messages I sent to the reflector. The latter problem forced people to cut and paste my e-mail address from the message header. Some said it was annoying enough that they wouldn't bother to reply to me again. By the way, K7LXC was among the most vigorous complainers, and urged me to do something about it (he didn't make any threats, of course.)

I began troubleshooting this by sending an e-mail directly to myself and examining the header. The extra quotes were not there, my name appeared normal in the From field, and there was no problem with the address formed for a Reply. Then I tried sending test messages to several friends. In each case, the quotes were not around my name and the recipients had no problem replying to me. Therefore, it appeared that the problem was only cropping up in the messages I sent through the Tower Talk reflector.

It turned out that the source of the problem was elsewhere. Evidently, my ISP is using a third party's mail server and that server reformats the header information incorrectly. The bad format did not show up in messages I sent to myself because my ISP routed them directly back to me instead of through the third-party server! The format problem did not show up in messages I sent to friends because their e-mail packages were smart enough to strip out the quotes. It turns out that only certain mail packages are vulnerable to the bad format.

I finally tracked it down by doing a private test with another Towertalk subscriber. This time, he sent my own e-mails back to me as attachments so I could examine the headers myself. Fortunately, I was able to repeat the tests through a different ISP, and that's how I nailed the problem. I sent one more set of test messages, one from each ISP, to Towertalk to verify that the problem had indeed been fixed (that might not have been strictly necessary, but 25 years of troubleshooting software have taught me not to make assumptions.)

I think this was a legitimate use of the reflector. It's important to me to be able to send and receive correctly through the reflector, and I don't want to annoy anyone with messages that are difficult to handle. Also, I think it is sometimes appropriate for subscribers to ask each other if their messages are readable (e.g., should I use HTML?, etc.) in order to ensure that we have the highest level of compatibility possible. The rapid proliferation of dissimilar e-mail packages and servers makes this imperative.

I apologize for taking up so much bandwidth with this issue. Hopefully, it is more useful than the recent forays we've had into tower sexuality, True North, Internet ripoffs, spam, etc. You will find me in the camp of persons who want to see the content of this reflector tightly controlled, but I'm not intolerant of OT postings if there's a legitimate reason.

73, Dick, WC1M

-----Original Message-----
From: Bill.Fisher.-.W4AN. <w4an@contesting.com>
To: towertalk@contesting.com <towertalk@contesting.com>
Date: Wednesday, January 14, 1998 8:10 AM
Subject: [TowerTalk] "test" messages


>
>Excuse me for picking on Dick Green... nothing personal.   But I just 
>want to make sure that everyone understands that this type of message is 
>inappropriate for a reflector.  
>
>If you have no friends or relatives to send a message to see if your 
>email is still working... then send it to yourself.  If you get it back, 
>your email is working!  If sending a message to yourself doesn't feel 
>right, then send it to me or K7LXC.  We'll answer you.  
>
>BUT please don't send "test" messages to 1500+ subscribers of 
>this reflector.
>
>73
>
>Bill 
>
>--
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