Florinet Maintenance

[Jim Lemon <lemon@agvax2.ag.ohio-state.edu>]

Hello,

There have been several recent concerns that need to be addressed
to help subscribers understand the listserv and be good users. These 
concerns fall into 2 categories - subscriber maintenance and attachments.

First - List Maintenance

Florinet is an open email distribution list that was set up to serve as a
communications channel for the floriculture industry. 

Florinet gets a fair amount of traffic and has around 185 subscribers at 
the moment (1/27/98) and the number can on occasion be higher.
There is also a fair amount of turnover. The turnover generally happens 
as students leave school or subscribers change Internet Service 
Providers and accounts are eliminated. When this happens, messages 
sent to the defunct accounts are returned to the florinet host system 
and list manager. Frequently multiple error messages are generated for 
each message that can't be delivered. Needless to say, this creates
overhead on the system end. The practice here is that when messages 
can't be delivered because the user doesn't exist, or when there is a 
flurry of error messages, that user is removed from the florinet list.

You can help out by unsubscribing when you're changing your
email - send email to listserv@agvax2.ag.ohio-state.edu with
the message unsubscribe florinet

If you should be inadvertently removed you get back on the list
by subscribing - - send email to listserv@agvax2.ag.ohio-state.edu 
with the message subscribe florinet

Next - Attachments

Following is taken from a email document created by the OSU Extension
Comp Operations group (thanks to Harry Laufman):

-----------

Email Guidelines

Many commercially maintained e-mail services flatly refuse 
E-mail messages over about 25 thousand bytes.  

Disk space on any E-mail server is a finite, shared resource.
Intentionally filling a disk disrupts service to all customers
and is called a denial of service attack.  It is illegal.  

Attachment suggestions:

- Generally speaking, do not send attachments over 300 kilobytes 
(300,000 bytes).

- Use optimal file formats.  A JPG image is frequently less than 10% the
size of the same BMP image with the same resolution.

- Use a compression utility.  PKZip and WinZIP can compress a text,
database, or spreadsheet file up to 90%.  Learn to use these tools.

- Post large files (images, books, etc.) on your web site.  Tell your
customers the URL, something like 

http://www.mysite.edu/~myhomepage/myimage.gif

and they can fetch the file at their discretion.

E-mail is a excellent tool for communicating but like any other tool,
intentional or unintentional misuse can have unfavorable consequences.

-----------

thanks for you interest and consideration. If you have questions,
please get in touch.

Jim Lemon
lemon.1@osu.edu