Email troubles

[dex@SYSLINK.MCS.COM]

 > Date: Tue, 10 Aug 1999 15:24:57 PDT

 > From: "Jorge Llambias" <jjllambias@hotmail.com>
 > 
 > 
 > For some reason I became unsubscribed from lojban-list
 > about three weeks ago (I only now realized that's what
 > happened, I thought we were going through one of those
 > silent periods). Now I'm trying to resubscribe from my
 > usual address, but onelist won't let me do it. It says
 > mails sent to me bounce, but I'm receiving mails ok from
 > other places. Anyone knows what I can do about it?
 > 
 > ki'e doi sidju
 > co'o mi'e xorxes

 I have a somewhat different problem with email from the
 lojban list.  It doesn't come with a return address from
  <lojban@onelist.com>, instead it comes with a return
 address for the original author of the individual message. 
 This makes it awkward to reply, as it's very easy to remember
 I'm talking to a list, and forget that that is not where
 <R>eply will send it.  I can work around it, but it is tedious
 and error prone, and easy to forget. 

 I don't yet know why some lists do this to me; most don't. 
 Well intentioned instructions to click on a different place
 would be pointless; they assume we are all using the same
 interface.  We are not.  There isn't any other place to click,
 the only automatically addressed Reply is <R> for <R>eply. 

 I get my email on a traditional BBS operated by keyboard. 
 I don't "click".  (I might do that in some offline game software,
 where it is easier on the wrist than repetitive typing of the same
 few keys; not in typing, where it is much harder on the wrist). 

 We who have been online and open for the public since 1975 
 have software standards that were well established and in
 worldwide use since long before Internet left the labs; but
 so far as I can tell some software authors neglected to fully
 consider those standards before joining us out here in the
 real world in the 1990s, and the patches to link software
 originally written for different networks sometimes makes too
 many assumptions about what extensions and additions are in
 universal use, and what hardware is available.  In some places
 I might even receive HTML (which comes out as mishmash) instead
 of US-ASCII. 

 The list owners I've talked to seldom have a clue about how
 to adjust the software, they just use defaults set up by
 someone who never even heard of the list in question, and has
 vested interests in a particular OS.  I've read a lot of manuals
 in the last three dozen years, but I've never had one for listserv
 software.  It must be awfully hard to read, if no-one can make
 sense of it.  I knew (online) one guy who once (after a few weeks
 of trying) figured it out and fixed it, then unfortunately retired,
 a few months later, so that ended that. 

 On one other list where I sometimes get the problem and
 sometimes not, I asked the individuals I was getting it from
 what there were using, and got three replies.  All were using
 Microsoft Outlook, and when they <R>eplied to the list it came
 with the correct (List) return address, but when they hand
 addressed a message, it came wrong, with the individual return
 address.