>
> I agree with David Sitman's recent posting favoring unsubbing
> bounced addresses vs. the alternative(s).
>  I immediately delete most bounced addresses these days, because some
> systems generously shower me with rejections for up to 13 days
> after the initial failure to deliver. Most often (always?) the
> rejections include the full text of the rejected message. As
> Yogi Berra said, "it's deja vu all over again."
>  Perhaps patience level depends on one's job. If I were a comp.
> center employee, I might feel differently. But to get rained on
> often because someone hasn't bothered to sign off a list or
> clean up their mailbox just isn't worth it. BTW the subscribers
> haven't complained, and the Renewal feature seems to be
> working well on biosph-l (set at 4-Yearly).
> -dave phillips
>
I find that 90% of the error messages I get are not repeated for more
than 1 or 2 days at the most, and if I ignore them, they go away.  There
are a myriad of reasons why a post did not go through, and often it is a
problem with an intermediate site, not the sender or receiver at all.
 
LITSERV often gives enough info on the subject line to identify repeated
errors from the same place.  I then just delete all but one of them and
read the last one, then ignore it for a couple of days.  This actually
REDUCES my workload, because I don't have to NOMAIL or DEL anyone.
 
When an error repeats, I send a message to the account, with a cc: to
the postmaster telling them I am setting the account NOMAIL and how to
set MAIL once the problem is fixed.  (This is a form letter - I just
load it in on top of the error, then delete the text under the headers
of the message in error, and send it off - takes less than 30 seconds.)
 
Then I save the error in a folder called "NOMAIL" Every few months or
so, I send out a general mailing to all NOMAILED folks reminding them of
their status. Some of them had no idea what NOMAIL was, and were very
appreciative.
 
I prefer NOMAIL to DEL, as I have a record of all people who might have
been having problems, and also, the subscriber does not lose their
option settings when NOMAIL / MAIL is used, like they do with DEL / SUB.
 
It really isn't that much work, and for the kind of list I operate,
which has many people from outside academic environments, many of whom
have never used computers before, let alone the Internet, I think it is
time well spent.
 
Bruce
 
--
Bruce P. A. Dienes                     Beware the iniquitous Disk Trolls!
BitNet:   dienes@uiucvmd
Internet: [log in to unmask]      or       [log in to unmask]
Phone:    Home:  217-328-7720 (best)   or       Office:  217-333-3704 (msg)