In response to the number of errors.  I know I am going to get flamed
for saying this in public by someone, but....
 
I think everyone is willing to accept that as a listowner or Listserv
admin, you have to live with errors...it goes with the territory, but
their is a limit and that limit is crossed more often these days.
 
There have been days when I have gotten hundreds of errors, and this
is unacceptable as far as I am concerned.  As you take a close
look at many errors, you realize that it isn't listserv but the
way some site admins have set up their mailers or their mail system
for their clients.  Probably not a very good example, but it will make
the point, are the bounces because the user's disk is full.  What the
system administrators have done is to make the userid's home directory
the default directory for incoming mail instead of the system disk.
Why?  Because when the system disk starts geting full, things start
shutting down.  So, instead of writing a script to delete the oldest
mail in mail directories on the system disk when they reach beyond
a certain quota (which is what we do here), they make the user's
directory quota the default for any mail and put the responsibility on
the user to keep it cleaned up...but we know they don't so mail bounces
and when it does bounce back to a list, listserv sends out an error....
 
So, let's make Listserv responsible because we get too many errors and
get Eric to write some additional code so Listserv will take care of
this kind of bounce for us.  The hundreds of errors I referred to
above were as a result of a mailer, a stupid mailer, that an admin set
up imporperly.  Well, not really stupid because the system admin knew
that with regard to mailing lists, they would just bounce and the
listowner or listserv admin would have it in their lap.  Should code be
written for listserv to handle this kind of error as well?  I think
not.  I vote no.  This is what I did.
 
I sent a complaint to the postmaster the first day.  When I got
hundreds again on day 2, I sent the postmaster a note telling them
that I was going to filter their mailer's "From:" so mail would be
deleted before I saw it.  Now, if their is a problem with our site,
the postmaster mails me from a different userid to make sure that I
get it.  It did not require new Listserv code. The responsibility is
still at the offending site, and I don't care if they don't.  Any
complaints from users are referred to their admin.
 
--Trish
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Trish Forrest
Computing Services, University of Windsor, Canada