I can't reach you at the location you said to use. When you delete extraneous replies to a posting would you please delete them from the email? I am receiving some wacky stuff in my email that is supposedly in reply to my posting. This stuff is not on the forum--you must have thought it was way off topic yourself. I would appreciate not having it on my email. Thank you. Pam

-- Pamela (jpjgood@penn.com), December 24, 1999

Answers

Pamela,

When someone posts a reply, or a new thread/question, the forum software (the basic behavior of which we have no control over) IMMEDIATELY sends email messages to anyone who indicated they wanted to be notified. It can be anywhere from seconds to minutes to hours before a sysop identifies the posting and decides whether it's a troll attack, an obscene message, a pornographic GIF/JPG image, or some other unacceptable posting. The sysops have the wherewithal to then delete the individual reply, and/or the entire thread -- but they have no control over whatever email messages the forum software may have generated automatically BEFORE they did the deletion...

Sorry about that -- it's one of the downsides of having a completely open forum with generously-provided public-access software. There have been several times, during the two years this forum has been in operation, when it has been HIGHLY tempting to convert it into a "closed" forum, with passwords, in order to keep out the trolls and spammers. But then it would be impossible for "newbies" to lurk at a safe distance and decide for themselves whether there was something of value here.

I hope this helps to explain what's going on...

Ed

-- Ed Yourdon (ed@yourdon.com), December 24, 1999.

Pamela,

See what I mean? You wouldn't want a hard-nosed, closed forum to keep out the gentle invitations from Spanish royalty, would you?

-- Ed Yourdon (ed@yourdon.com), December 24, 1999.

Pamela: Do you like to mudwrestle?

-- King of Spain (madrid@aol.cum), December 24, 1999.