Common UUA Email List Problems & Solutions

  • "You are not subscribed to this list" error message: This may occur if you use an email alias, or use one Internet Service Provider (ISP) to connect to the Internet, and another to send mail.
    Solution: Check to make sure your "message-from" address matches the address you have subscribed to the list. You can do this by sending an email to yourself. If the addresses are different, try subscribing only with the "message-from" address; or subscribe both addresses to the list, and set one to "no-mail" by disabling message delivery (see "Changing Account Settings").
  • "The message's content type was not explicitly allowed" error message: This has nothing to do with the text of your message; it refers to HTML formatting or attachments included in your message.
    Solution: See "Don't Use Styles in Your Messages."
  • Not receiving messages from the list: A likely cause is that messages from uua.org, or at least from the list in question, are being identified as spam.
    Solution: Look through your "junk" folder to see if the list messages are there. If they are, add the list address (listname@lists.uua.org, or whatever shows up in the "message-from" field) to your "allowed" list.
  • Your messages are not reaching the list:
    • One possibility is that your message included an attachment or HTML formatting that is not allowed on the list.
      Solution: See "Don't Use Styles in Your Messages."
    • Another possibility is that your message is being held by our spam filter, Postini, and needs to be identified as a "false positive" and released for mailing. Postini doesn't give very satisfying reasons why something gets held. It just says, "This message was blocked because the junk rating exceeded your junk message threshold." It doesn't say whether the message matched "Sexually Explicit, Get Rich Quick, Special Offers, or Racially Insensitive," so we can't give specific feedback that might help other messages make it through.
      Solution: Whenever a note doesn’t make it to the list in a reasonable period of time, send a note to web@uua.org; if we know the sender’s email address and the message's subject line, we can search specifically for that message and send it through.
    • It's possible your subscribed address doesn't match the sender information in your message header, and your message is being discarded as spam. This might happen if you use one Internet Service Provider (ISP) to connect to the Internet, and another to send mail.
      Solution: Check to make sure your "message-from" address matches the address you have subscribed to the list. You can do this by sending an email to yourself. If the addresses are different, try subscribing only with the "message-from" address; or subscribe both addresses to the list, and by disable message delivery to one of them (see "Changing Account Settings").
  • "That address does not exist" error message: Check to make sure you've spelled the name of the list correctly. Many list names have a lower case "l" in the name (the letter L); mistaking this for a "1" (number one) is very common and causes the system to reply that there is no such list.
    Solution: Check the spelling of the list name at http://lists.uua.org and try again to send mail to listname@lists.uua.org.

If your error is not listed here, or you've tried the solution offered and are still experiencing trouble, send an email to web@uua.org for further help. Please forward as much information as possible, including the date and time you tried to send mail to the list, and complete error messages if you received any (with full headers). The more information you can provide, the easier it will be for us to help diagnose the problem.