On Tue, 5 Oct 1993 16:35:05 EDT Mike Ramundo said:
>On Tue, 5 Oct 1993 14:07:24 CDT Cecil Riddle said:
>>Over the weekend, LISTSERV here was just about brought to its knees by
>>someone doing a Netwide Global delete for about 1600 userids.
>>What I want to know is where or not there are any rules or guidelines
>>for acts such as these? Ifso, where can I get a copy of them?
>>
>If that was the total, then it was probably me
>I did follow what guidelines were available - I submitted small jobs
>( < 250 ids / job ), marked them for off-hours ( Prime= QuietNo ),
>and submitted them over several days ( Wed. thru Sat )
>(Even though our small sys group (VAX) was desperate and
>started rejecting mail ( by 1000's ) on Wed. )
 
We here at MU also purged a total of 1440 computer IDs of students who are no
longer enrolled.  We check enrollment after the last day to add a course, put
non-enrolled IDs on "hold", and a couple of weeks later delete the ID and
send out batches of global unsubscribes.
 
If we don't unsubscribe these deleted users--as we forgot to do once a
year ago--there are howls from list owners all 'round and lots of bouncing
traffic.
 
I'm surprised that there aren't more October and February massacres of this
type!  Even if all sysadmins are as conscientious as Mike, we could
cumulatively boggle listservs.  It's usually in our interest not to do this
since we too have a listserv.  Maybe we could submit low-priority batches
like these to a central point to be trickled out to the backbone.
 
*Greg Johnson, Sr Scientific Pgmr/Analyst, Campus Computing *offc 314-882-2000*
*233 Heinkel Building, Univ of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65203 *fax  314-884-5240*
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