At 8:09 AM -0400 10/3/00, Werner Reisberger is rumored to have typed:
BTW: It seems to me that there are more questions from webhosting customers looking for support at this list. I like to give support but I don't like to support webhosting companies who are making money with free software and delegating the support to lists like these.
I'm with you. Obviously, we can't punish the poor people who have been suckered in by their webhosting providers, but I'm beginning to think it's about time we forward copies of these people's messages to their host provider's support address(es), as well as recommending to these people that they find providers who actually give support. (It's annoying but simple to figure out who their webhost companies are with a couple of simple whois lookups. Like EASYHOSTING.NL hosts Jelmer Jellema's site; in their defense, they don't seem to be touting a mailing list server on their "Specificaties" page, though. Hum...maybe we should copy the upstreams as well, since most of these folks are resellers or single-host leasors at server farms?) I've helped out a couple of people now who have completely clueless but different web host providers, who have this same "control panel" which occasionally forgets to write the pipes to flist to the .procmailrc file, and it's getting frustrating. (My guess is that this "control panel" is actually a freeware, shareware, or low-cost package as well, since I've seen the exact same one on two different providers, both mom-and-pop outfits, and have heard at least one other person reference something that sounds like the same thing.) Of course, from the _user's_ point of view, they are doing the right thing since their provider is _telling_ them to ask their questions here; so the provider is effectively pushing off their support problems onto us. Like I said, it ain't the user's fault, and the user shouldn't be punished, but I too am getting a little tired of acting as an unpaid employee of these unscrupulous outfits. Charlie