On Mon, 18 Aug 2003 17:05:19 +0100 Warhurst, SI (Spencer) said:
>I decided to try and find out how many of our subscribers are set to NOMAIL
>earlier.
>
>To do this I issued the command:
>
>  QUERY * WITH NOMail FOR *
>
>Unfortunately this resulted in a process that tied up our Listserv server
>for 8 minutes and resulted in a 16Mb file. Due to our internal Exchange
>system only allowing through emails of less than 2MB I could not see the end
>of the 16Mb mail to find out how many subscribers we have set to NOMAIL.
>
>So, first question, is there a way of just getting the count?

do it on a per list basis

QUERY listname WITH NOMAIL FOR *@*

>
>
>I am a little concerned that there may be alot of subscribers who set
>themselves to NOMAIL and then forgot about it, and since then they may have
>left their organisation, so they could be removed from the list. Trouble is,
>I can't think of any way of determining who those users are.

It will also be in the Change-Log if you have that turned on, which
I highly reccomend.

>
>If I knew when the user set themselves to NOMAIL I might be able to make
>some sort of judgement along the lines of "if they have been on NOMAIL more
>than 1 month set them to MAIL" - that way, if their address was no longer
>valid they would get removed by the autodelete mechanism.. otherwise they
>might have their memories jolted that they are on that mailing list and
>either take active part again or unsubscribe themselves.

Or if you only allow private postings to some lists, it might be someone
who gets their email on one account, and can post from multiple accounts
or their email services changes their posting method.  Do what you
suggest at risk of users being upset.

>
>Have any of you with larger services thought about this problem before and
>tackled it in some ingenious (or obvious) way I've not thought of?!

Passive probing.

>Spencer Warhurst
/ahw