[Gpdd] ANNOUNCEMENT: Attention All AOL Subscribers - missing GPDDs

[GPDD Admin]

This applies to everyone, but mainly to GPDD members that are AOL
subscribers. 

The GPDD has been having a LOT of problems with some of the main internet
provider services, causing you to miss Digests or even having your GPDD
subscription to become disabled. Almost *all* of the GPDD members who have
been having problems are AOL members, although a few are from other online
services.

>From what we can determine, the problem lies with AOL. Evidently their
base-level spam filter sometimes sees a random pattern of letters and
numbers as a "reject", and it either deletes teh message, or bounces it
back to the GPDD. The GPDD server sees the message come back, and says "oh
- AOL didn't deliver this Digest! I'll send it again!". 

This goes back and forth like a ping pong game until the GPDD server says
"AOL sent it back again! I guess this e-mail address isn't valid. I'm going
to suspend the subscription, and send a note. If they're really there,
they'll go to their membership page and re-enable their subscription!"

And so you may have gotten an e-mail from the GPDD saying your subscription
was disabled.

In other instances, AOL will just delete a GPDD and won't tell you. Again,
it's most likely that random element - but getting your missing Digests is
difficult at best: members and Moderators have seem first hand that in most
cases a missing Digest just can't simply be e-mailed: AOL simply deletes
the message if it's sent as a message, or the attachment if it's sent
attached.

The long and short of it is, we can't do anything about AOL, and they can't
seem to document exactly what causes this problem. But, you don't need to
sit by and do nothing. Every GPDD member that is an AOL member and is
having problems *may* want to contact AOL customer support and report it.
If AOL gets enough people complaining about the same issue, they may do
more than just shrug it off.

Sadly, this may continue, as mailing lists are becoming obsolete. The GPDD
has resisted going the route of blogs and posting boards simply because we
are what we are: the GPDD was based on the premise of being able to provide
something to look forward to in your e-mail every day. We don't plan on
changing our format in the near future - but we will need your patience in
dealing with this growing inconvenience. 

If you have subscription (or other problems), you can always contact us at
gpdd_admin (at) gpdd.org

The GPDD Team