On Thu, 21 Jul 1994 17:38:05 -0500 Ol' blue eyes
<[log in to unmask]> said:
> But it didn't do it before 1.8, did it?
It did it since 1.7f. LMail didn't translate SMTP's delivery errors
before 1.2a.
> Seems to me that its handling of this sort of error, which is
> usually much less of a problem than systems holding undelivered
> messages for X days before telling the listowner about it
> (grrrrrr...), is unduly harsh and arbitrary.
Then disable it. Some people have time and patience with broken systems,
some can't afford to be that patient.
> It's *easy* to set a bad address nomail, so 'renew' will
> eventually delete it, or delete it.
Most lists do not use "renew", and a user that got set NOMAIL is as good
as a signed off user. In fact, setting NOMAIL would be even worse. The
user, not seeing any mail, would send a SUBSCRIBE command, and be told
he's already on the list. Ah well, looks like everyone's on vacation.
With a clean deletion, he can at least re-subscribe.
> OTOH, there's nothing to do except grin and bear it when you
> know that you'll be getting bounce messages from somewhere for
> the next X days.
There's not much LISTSERV can do about it.
> WRT the specific address that caused me to write, it's ironic
> that I received a personal note from the very same person at
> almost exactly the same time that the auto-deletion message got
> here.
Call it ironic if you will, I call it sad. There is nothing particularly
difficult with making a system that does exist (and accounts which do
exist) look like they do indeed exist, even when the machine is down or
the links are down. I don't believe any of the systems I manage ever gave
a LISTSERV the opportunity to delete a user that did exist. All it takes
is the same level of attention when updating your configuration that you
use when writing a check or the like. If you wrote a check for $50,000
when you meant to write $50 and the bank bounced it and locked your
account, you wouldn't say they've been harsh, you'd think "Darn, that
will teach me to be more careful when writing checks, I really shouldn't
make such mistakes!" The bottom line is that there is no excuse for not
having a working setup. Blaming LISTSERV for following the advice it
received really doesn't accomplish much. On the other hand, if a system
administrator meets a mob of angry users at his door every time he
doesn't pay attention when updating his system, there is a good chance he
will learn.
Eric
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