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From: Hugh Messenger
Date: Mon, 9 Dec 1996 23:32:00 -0600 (CST)
Subject: ADMINISTRIVIA - please read

[Long ramble, only read if you are puzzled as to why we "need" compulsory
harp-l accounts]

A couple of folk have expressed concern about my decision to insist on all
harp-l users registering for an "account". Although I have said most of
what follows before, I probably need to say it again.

There is no hidden agenda behind my decision. Harp-L is not about to
start charging for services, or anything of that nature.

The reason for insisting on accounts is simply to keep harp-l running as a
viable *free* concern. Here's why. Over a 3 month period in the middle
of this year, the harp-l/spurs-list mail server had grown to be a million
message a week server. At an average of 2Kb per message, that's two
gigabytes of data going through garply.com's link to the Internet a week.

This rivals some of AOL's mail servers for sheer volume of traffic. AOL
have around 6 millions users, and hundreds of mail servers. We have about
1,500 users on the two lists, which share a single mail server. AOL use
hundred thousand dollar rack systems with multiply redundant and hot
swappable everything, with 24/7 operations and systems support staff. We
use a single a 7 year old desktop server held together by chewing gum,
string, and me.

Around 3 months ago, I knew that I could no longer hold the system
together at those levels of use. I had several choices, which boiled down
to either getting more hardware and software to deal with the load, or
reduce the load.

Those of you who were invited to join harp-l-funding before I announced it
to the list can attest to the fact that we seriously discussed buying new
hardware, but that even the most tightly budgeted solutions cost more than
we could realistically raise. So I had to come up with ways of reducing
the traffic.

As many of you have observed in private mail to me, I have always
exercised fairly tight control, in a very "relaxed" way, over "content".
I will jump on any petty bullshit, excessive posting, bad manners, low
harp content. I try and be as nice about it as I can, and also as
unobtrusive. I always put my ADMINISTRIVIA hat on when I do it, and
likewise make it clear I'm spouting personal opinion when I don't have the
sysop hat on.

I upset one harp-l'er of long standing and good conduct by putting my foot
down about itinerary postings. I felt bad about doing it, but it's like
the saying goes, "if I let you do it, they'll all want to do it". We
probably have at least 100 acts of one sort another represented on harp-l,
and that's why we have Danny's gig list. He has worked long and hard on
making it the most up to date source of itninerary information for
harmonica music anywhere in the world, and has made a significant dent in
harp-l traffic by so doing.

So I'm just doing what I see as my job, which is to ensure that harp-l
uses it's *very* finite resources efficiently.

You may have noticed that when I pick on someone about something, I always
choose someone who's been around for a while, and isn't going to take it
personally. Sometimes I still offend people. If it ever happens to you,
I'm sorry.

But I can only do so much to reduce traffic by policing the list focus.

Next is bounce mail, which is an ever increasing problem on large mailing
lists. This was the first thing I asked harp-l-workers to do, and the
- -workers are doing a great job on this stuff, especially "Bouncing Brian".

Their efforts have removed about 60 "dead" addresses from harp-l(-digest),
which has greatly increased the efficiency and reduced total traffic by
about 10%. After they've been doing it for another month, I expect the
savings to peak at around 100 dead addresses 25% of *total* traffic level
a month ago (the math gets screwey because of the exponential effects of
bouncing mail).

However, this still leaves an unknown quantity of addresses which don't
generate bounced messages to tell us that the account is dead. Mail to
them just ... well .... disappears. The lights are on, but nobody is
home. I'm guessing (and this is a fairly informed guess) that there is
at least 100 accounts on harp-l(-digest) which haven't been read for ages,
and never will be. The mail just gets delivered, and either diligently
saved away by a robot, or simply dropped into that big bit bucket in the
sky.

If I can find those accounts, I can save harp-l a further 30% or so, which
will bring us well back within "safe" load levels. The system will have
plenty of headroom, a certain amount of room to grow, and will not be
constantly springing leaks and busting internal organs trying to keep up
with the flow of mail.

I hope you see where this is leading.

I need to find the dead accounts. To do so, I need a response from every
harp-l reader who exists, and is reading their mail some time during the
months of Nov and Decemeber. Knock twice if you can hear me.

But rather than just do a single shot "please let me know you are alive"
and prune the subscription list back once, I want to make sure that we
don't accumulate this much dead wood again. It really does drain a lot of
resources, which cost *money*. And time.

So I'm asking you to register a unqiue, short username (your harp-l
username), the email address(es) you are subscribed to harp-l(-whatever)
with, and a password so I will know it's "you" if you ever want to change
this information about yourself in the future. I'm also asking for a
"real" name, although I don't give a hoot if it's your real name or not,
just something other than a computer mnemonic to know you as.

I need these things to efficiently track the harp-l "user base", in order
to run an efficient (and hence *cheap*) system.

Everything you see in the new harp-l-web pages is just byproducts of
having a database of usernames and other information. Some of the fun
things you can do with a userbase that is "trusted" (in the computing
sense, i.e. you have to supply a username and password, so we can let you
do things only "you" can do) and a web server and some perl scripts.

One of the next things I'll be putting in the pages is the ability to
alter your subscription details (sub, unsub, a fake "set nomail" for
liserv devotees, etc), without having to go through the majordomo email
command process (which is inherently unreliable and seems to confuse the
living ^&*$ out of most people).

I also intend to set up a "keep alive handshake". If you are on either of
the "real" lists (i.e. not harp-l-friends) this would require you to
either log in to your web account, or send a message to a specified
address (like working-here-bo~armonica.org ... name that movie ...) at
least once every three months. If you go missing in action and don't poke
your button once a quarter, you'll get moved off of the live list onto
harp-l-friends, and get sent a couple of notices about it, before we just
leave you alone.

These subscritpion related mechanisms will help to keep the list
fluff-free, so our server(s) don't waste time, resources and money trying
to deliver to dead addresses or delivering to unread addresses.

I also wish to provide places for folk to "socialize", without bogging the
main list down. The various secondary lists springing up (-funding,
- -workers, and soon to be -sounds and probably -faq) are also attempts to
remove "meta discussions" from the "harmonica dicussion" list.

[a "meta" discussion is a discussion about a discussion. i.e.
discussions about the mechanics or funding of the list, or very specific
aspects of the theory and operation of the list. As any mailing list
grows, it spawns such meta-lists, which serve many valuable purposes].

That's probably enough explanation. As you know, I can go on a bit. The
basic message is ... I'm trying to keep the main list focused, and channel
any meta-discussion or significant "class" of mail (i.e. giglist) through
more formal or even separate delivery paths.

If you have *any* problems or questions, please drop me a message, Cc the
list if you want.

-- hugh