On Sat, 5 Jul 1997, G.L.Sandborn/Uncle Fester wrote:

    Forgive me if this comes across as spam but I feel it
involves a situation that may very well determine if I remain
with this ML or not.

Considering how much I like your story, I'd vote to boot the person who's
ISP is having problems and keep you. ^ ^ I also note that Hearts of Ice,
MASN and a number of Richard Lawson's stories would have problems with
that 100k limit (all of which are extremely good stories or writers), so I
don't think you're alone in the boat on this one. 

    On 27 June, I was notified by a sysop that my latest chapter
of 'Nabiki - New Horizons' was bounced at his E-mail site due to
its size.  He went on to note that any file of over 100k
delivered to his site would be bounced and that bouncing would
produce an unrequested 'unsubscribe' from the FFML.

I presume you mean the person who was on his system who was subscribed to
the mailiung list would have this unsubscribe happen to them, not you
yourself.  If he tries to unsubscribe you, I think your ISP should have a
little talk with his ISP (or perhaps your lawyer should have a little talk
with the ISP).

 As this would be highly undesirable from his standpoint, he went on to
request that, in the future, I break up my stories into smaller chunks to
prevent further trouble to his system.  He also noted that he was passing
on this request to the list moderator. 

I think this is that sysop's problem.  I know both ISPs and companies I
have worked with have no problem simply setting an upper limit and
rejecting an mail sent that is over that limit.  They don't need to
generate an unsubscribe or any such nonsense to the sender of the email.
Since the mail bounces back to the mailing list, the list's moderator
becomes the one to deal with the problem and decide whether or not to
either boot that person who's ISP won't allow larger posts or ask people
to keep their post below the limit of that particular ISP.  100k is pretty
small for a limit, especially since 5meg is pretty common storage for
internet accounts these days.  Personally I think the ISP is being
unreasonable in this case.

    On the other hand, I am a little taken aback at the amount
of problems his request would create for me.

[snip good argument about nature of this mailing list and current limits]

for posting, the only way to 'after the fact' break it into parts
is for me to cut and paste massive quantities (up to 100k each)
of the story into separate files - hardly a reasonable suggestion

Good point - anybody know of any public domain multiplatform software
tools that allow one to easily break large text files up into specified
sections of text?  I don't.

I will continue to do as I always have and if I get tossed out of
the 'club' for being contrary - so be it.  

Personally I think this problem is between the subscriber X and his ISP
sysop who emailed you, not between the sysop and you or the sysop and our
mailing list's moderator.  I think it was poor taste on that sysop's part
to expect you to abide by his arbitrary rules for his little bitty bit of
the internet.

Perhaps a better thing to do would be to find out how many people on this
mailing list have restrictions on the size of emails they can receive and
determine from that information if any reasonable action should be taken.
If 50% of the people can't receive stuff above 100k, that's one thing.
But if less than 5% have this problem, perhaps they should consider
finding a better ISP (the great thing about the internet, the ISP arena is
extremely competetive right now).  My two cents, definitely IMHO, and if
you think I'm wrong, please speak up and let me know! :)

Charles K. Hurst - Sun Microsystems - RPI BS MechE - ITT Tech AAS EET
Northern Oregon and Vancouver Anime (NOVA) Treasurer/Secretary     MI = 96
"The chap who is legally responsible!" - charlesh@teleport.com     MB = 76
Chocolate and Anime Forever! 2 years a fan and counting.  VoE = 26 FY = 52!
http://www.teleport.com/~charlesh/ - 1st year Nihongo student, nights! ^ ^
Miracle Girls eps. 28  Hime-chan no Ribon eps. 4 - 21/57 episodes to go!
SMJ = 25 Nadia = 39 ICT = 26 FBC = 26 NARSOS = 39 GX = 39 KOR = 49 and more!