12Wonder
September 16th, 2005, 03:38 PM
Effective November 1, 2005, the Mailman email lists feature will be permanently disabled from ALL accounts on all servers.
This is due to a combination of several factors ranging from security issues & vulnerabilities with the program, to server load issues, even to flat-out abuse of Mailman by some users to "sign up" other people and send emails to recipients who have not double-opted in to the list/s. While the couple of spammers we had were instantly shut down, the other issues remain. Basically our own tolerance for Mailman has reached zero due to the inordinate amount of time it takes to deal with the many issues that keep cropping up because of allowing this program to run on the servers. For a program that only about 5% of our users are using, it is taking up way beyond its share of support time.
Shutting down Mailman is not a decision arrived at lightly; we have been watching closely and considering this for a long time now. I am very sorry for any incovenience this will cause any of you. But we need to keep our servers running smoothly and reserve our support time for those of you who use our services for what they are intended for: the actual hosting and service of WEB SITES.
Those of you who have active Mailman lists may want to consider an alternative such as Yahoo Groups or a separate list-serve company that specializes in mailing lists. Unfortunately to my knowledge Mailman lists and archives CANNOT be migrated to other servers; we have tried this in the past and it just doesn't work. So you will have to start your list/s from scratch elsewhere. Or you may want to consider installing a regular forum/bulletin board at your web site and making it completely private/members only. Either way I have tried to provide as much notice as possible to lessen the inconvenience somewhat.
Anne
This is due to a combination of several factors ranging from security issues & vulnerabilities with the program, to server load issues, even to flat-out abuse of Mailman by some users to "sign up" other people and send emails to recipients who have not double-opted in to the list/s. While the couple of spammers we had were instantly shut down, the other issues remain. Basically our own tolerance for Mailman has reached zero due to the inordinate amount of time it takes to deal with the many issues that keep cropping up because of allowing this program to run on the servers. For a program that only about 5% of our users are using, it is taking up way beyond its share of support time.
Shutting down Mailman is not a decision arrived at lightly; we have been watching closely and considering this for a long time now. I am very sorry for any incovenience this will cause any of you. But we need to keep our servers running smoothly and reserve our support time for those of you who use our services for what they are intended for: the actual hosting and service of WEB SITES.
Those of you who have active Mailman lists may want to consider an alternative such as Yahoo Groups or a separate list-serve company that specializes in mailing lists. Unfortunately to my knowledge Mailman lists and archives CANNOT be migrated to other servers; we have tried this in the past and it just doesn't work. So you will have to start your list/s from scratch elsewhere. Or you may want to consider installing a regular forum/bulletin board at your web site and making it completely private/members only. Either way I have tried to provide as much notice as possible to lessen the inconvenience somewhat.
Anne