> Does passive probing in version 1.8d of list serv software greatly assist
> in removing email bounces from a distribution list.  From your experiences
> as list owners does it only send a probe email to users with "flaky" mail
> systems?

Passive probing is much superior to both plain Auto-Delete and active
probing.  It handles nearly all bad addresses and generates no
annoying probe messages to subscribers who aren't causing problems.

It isn't true, however, that no bounce messages go to the list owner.
Ones that get sent to the list address and are picked up by the filters
still come to the owner, and, it appears, some badly formatted bounces
too.

> How do you ensure it does not send a probe message to the entire
> distribution list?

The parameter is Probe(n) on Auto-Delete.  What that means is that
about 1/n of the subscribers get passively probed each day that any
message is sent to the list.