Ben Parker <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>On Wed, 10 Dec 1997 13:53:34 -0500, John Witherspoon <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
>
>>After getting tired of weeding through a lot of error messages, I recently
>>set my e-mail filters to automatically trash any incoming message with
>>From: containing "L-Soft" and Subject: containing "error report" or
>>"monitoring report".
>>
>>All my list headers have:
>>
>>* Renewal=         2-Monthly,Delay(7),Probe
>>* Auto-Delete=     Yes,Full-Auto,Delay(5),Max(5)
>>
>>Am I running any risks or creating any problems for myself with this
>>approach?  What message of importance might come in that I would miss?
>
>Any error msgs that reach you inspite of the above settings are ones which
are
>in a non-standard error msg format that LISTSERV does not understand.  If you
>trash them and take no action on them (such as deleteing the problem user)
>LISTSERV will also take no action and not delete the user either, so the
error
>msgs will continue.  They are not counted towards the Auto-Delete unless
>LISTSERV can parse the error msg (in which case it does not send it to you,
>except as a line item the daily summary monitoring report).
>
>The way to reduce the error msg count is to deal with the specific
problems, >not wish for them to go away.  If you are managing a lot of
lists, handling >errors is a documented part of the job whether you do it
or find someone else >to do it.

Well, that's certainly true, and I don't have a problem dealing with
errors, but I don't think I need to be constantly told what the software is
doing for me through its sending me "Renewal Monitoring Reports" or "Error
Monitoring Reports" (or do I?).  What I think you're getting at that and
that an owner does need to address are "Error Reports" generated by servers
(mostly AOL) and sent on to owners when the Listserv software can't
decipher them.

What if I set filters to ignore "Renewal Monitoring Reports" and "Error
Monitoring Reports" and then put "Error Reports" into a special mailbox.
That, it seems to me, would have the added advantage of allowing an owner
to look at the "Error Reports" mailbox and jump directly from error message
to error message to see if there were patterns that needed to be addressed.

-- John