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Dodi Schultz
March 29th, 2007, 11:48 AM
>> This is NOT the Tapcis connection, which has caused ONE (count 'em
>> ONE, user-error) problem in the last two years. This is a Yahoo Group
>> problem, and there have been more problems with Yahoo than with
>> Tapcis.

If you say so, Judy. But why are we then getting things (messages addressed
to the Cory group at Yahoo) bounced with messages about a full tapcis
mailbox? Including the TAP site in the game seems from out here to be an
unnecessary complication, that's all. (I speak, as you know, as a member
and participant of BOTH the Cory group AND the TAP Website.)

--Dodi

Tim Lodge
March 29th, 2007, 01:21 PM
Dodi

>> But why are we then getting things (messages addressed
to the Cory group at Yahoo) bounced with messages about a full tapcis
mailbox? <<

The repeating message problem is clearly nothing to do with
Tapcis.com. Have a look at the Yahoo Answers page at
http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/index;_ylt=AjFR2ORqX3Lfnfr5HXm5CU7zy6IX?
link=over&sid=396546285 which is full of people bleating about
repeating messages in lots of different groups today.

-- Tim L

Tim Lodge
March 29th, 2007, 01:27 PM
The link in my last message may not work properly. Ytry this one:
http://tinyurl.com/239p8l

-- Tim L


--- In coryphaeus (AT) yahoogroups (DOT) com, "Tim Lodge" <iel7j001@...> wrote:
>
> Dodi
>
> >> But why are we then getting things (messages addressed
> to the Cory group at Yahoo) bounced with messages about a full
tapcis
> mailbox? <<
>
> The repeating message problem is clearly nothing to do with
> Tapcis.com. Have a look at the Yahoo Answers page at
>
http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/index;_ylt=AjFR2ORqX3Lfnfr5HXm5CU7zy6IX?
> link=over&sid=396546285 which is full of people bleating about
> repeating messages in lots of different groups today.
>
> -- Tim L
>

Daniel B. Widdis
March 29th, 2007, 04:21 PM
On 3/29/07, Dodi Schultz wrote:
> But why are we then getting things (messages addressed
> to the Cory group at Yahoo) bounced with messages about a
> full tapcis mailbox?

If indeed the tapcis mailbox was full, then that message would have
represented a "bounce" that yahoogroups should have caught and handled
by appropriately stopping delivery to that mailbox. This would have
affected players who choose to play at tapcis.com but should have been
completely transparent to the rest of the players, just as it would if
your compuserve.com mailbox filled up.

While there may have been a full mailbox (in a test account that I
don't think is actually affecting the game play right now) the fact
that you saw that message is an error of Yahoo Groups, not tapcis.com.

> Including the TAP site in the game seems from out here to be an
> unnecessary complication, that's all.

IMO, including yahoogroups at all seems to be an unnecessary
complication. There is a wide variety of mailing list software out
there, and many of us have servers on which we could configure such
software. There are other groups besides yahoo groups which do not
have such a horrible record of delayed messages, repeated messages,
lost messages, and otherwise deplorable customer service.

If we hadn't moved here in a rush when the TAPCIS forum closed, I
think we would have carefully considered more options. This location
would have been among the last on my list to consider if we were
picking a mailing list/LISTSERV today. The only reason we're still
here is inertia. Apparently these problems have not gotten bad enough
to encourage people to move.

Also IMO, the tapcis.com forums would normally be a much more
preferable place to play the game, with many features such as threaded
messages. Email play tries to maintain message threading, but players
using old clients that do not pass threading info and don't even
bother to display the "From" address of group messages, thus requiring
everyone to quote back add signatures to their messages. *That* is an
unnecessary complication.

--
Dan Widdis

Paul Keating
March 29th, 2007, 05:57 PM
> Also IMO, the tapcis.com forums would normally be a much more
> preferable place to play the game, with many features such as threaded
> messages. Email play tries to maintain message threading, but players
> using old clients that do not pass threading info and don't even
> bother to display the "From" address of group messages, thus requiring
> everyone to quote back add signatures to their messages. *That* is an
> unnecessary complication.

The reasons we didn't go to tapcis.com were simple.

While we were waiting for the axe to fall, there was a wide-ranging
discussion about where the game should go, during which a lot of people said
they didn't like the idea of a Yahoo group, but nobody wanted to go to the
trouble of setting up an alternative for players to try out.

When CompuServe finally switched us off, a fair amount of effort had already
been invested in making the Coryphæus group a place that we could move to in
a hurry, in mid-round if necessary.

Then, the folks at tapcis.com told us at the very last minute that we were
expected there. It was too late then to point out that
(1) the game needs more than just messages, it needs an analogue of the old
Files section, and sticky messages really aren't good enough, and
(2) some players dislike a browser interface so much that they would abandon
the game if forced to use one, so the game also needs some sort of listserv
emulation for them.

Yahoo offered both of these things, and at the time email delivery was not
the problem it has since become. (And not all of the email problems are with
Yahoo. Mail from Yahoo regularly gets snagged in spam filters, and many of
our players seem to be with ISPs that silently delete whatever their filters
deem to be spam, with no opportunity to review and release it or whitelist
the sender.)

If players were prepared to forgo the email interface, then they could use
Yahoo without these problems, or they could use tapcis.com. In terms of
functionality, the Yahoo browser interface isn't so very inferior to
tapcis.com. It has threads too, quite well implemented. Players may have
reasons to prefer one interface over the other: nobody likes reading
Yahoo's ads, for example, and the tapcis.com hot-thread flags are (for our
purposes) quite pointless. I have managed to get Coryphæus to read
tapcis.com threads, but I can't do that with Yahoo because there are just
too many barriers erected to keep the spammers' bots out. Yahoo lets us
provide a searchable database of used words; tapcis.com can't. And so on.
Matters of personal taste aside ("I think the blue/grey colour scheme is
hard to read"), it's six of one and half-a-dozen of the other.

Yahoo isn't a listserv. It's a browser-based forum with a listserv
emulation. The emulation is a stepchild and always will be, because Yahoo is
funded by advertising and you don't get click-throughs from ascii-only
email.

If you stop using the email interface most of your annoyances will just go
away.

What we really need to do is abandon the message format altogether and set
up a website that knows how to count votes and keep scores. (I originally
hoped we could use Yahoo's poll feature for that, but it wasn't flexible
enough.) The dealer edits the defs, uploads them, sets a deadline, and sits
back, and lets the application collect and count the votes and announce a
winner.

Using general-purpose forum messages for this purpose was state of the art
when the game started. Not any more.

--
Paul Keating
The Hague

Guerri Stevens
March 29th, 2007, 09:03 PM
When we were discussing where to play, back before the TAPCIS CompuServe
forum was closed, I assumed I would play in tapcis.com. As it turns out,
I am playing by Email. And I like it. I tend to collect my Email at
least daily, and sometimes more frequently. The tapcis.com forum
software is, to me, still a bit clunky, possibly because I have not
tried hard enough to learn all its features and understand the best way
to make it work for me and possibly because I thought the message
handling and threading in the old CompuServe forums worked well,
especially in conjunction with the TAPCIS software.

Would I drop out if we moved to tapcis.com? Probably not, but I don't
know that for sure.

Maybe it is time to seriously consider other options, tapcis.com
included. Right now, my preference would be something that would deliver
messages via Email, but I am willing to do whatever seems best for all
of us.

Guerri

Daniel B. Widdis wrote:
> Also IMO, the tapcis.com forums would normally be a much more
> preferable place to play the game, with many features such as threaded
> messages.

Judy G. Russell
March 30th, 2007, 12:30 AM
why are we then getting things (messages addressed
to the Cory group at Yahoo) bounced with messages about a full tapcis
mailbox? Including the TAP site in the game seems from out here to be an
unnecessary complication, that's all. (I speak, as you know, as a member
and participant of BOTH the Cory group AND the TAP Website.)

The problem is that Yahoo doesn't know how to handle things. This was a problem on every Yahoo board yesterday and every time a recipient couldn't handle the flood, Yahoo went berserk sending out bounce notices.

Judy G. Russell
March 30th, 2007, 12:35 AM
Also IMO, the tapcis.com forums would normally be a much more preferable place to play the game, with many features such as threaded messages. Email play tries to maintain message threading, but players
using old clients that do not pass threading info and don't even bother to display the "From" address of group messages, thus requiring everyone to quote back add signatures to their messages. *That* is an unnecessary complication.

As you know, the forum is more than willing to accommodate The Parlor and the game in any way we can. There are polling features that might be used for voting; messages are threaded (and people can choose how the threading works -- linear, hybrid or totally threaded), there are RSS features (especially in the new version we're hoping installs without a hitch on Sunday morning...).

In short, we're here, we're available. And in any case the mail echo can continue with ANY mail list you choose to use.