As far as I recall, the reference to auto-del and validate
have to do with list defaults, not what you can explicitly
customize.
 
AUTO-DEL is ineffective for non-conforming mail transfer
agents, so depending on the nature of the bounce, it might
be a NOP.
 
As far as hosts that bounce over the weekends + holidays,
you'll want a DELAY that is sufficient to cover that period
+ maybe two days more.  Likewise, take into account the
number of message that are likely to be generated so that
they might cause a bounce.
 
There has been lots of previous discussion: pros+cons and
suggestions to the developer on this topic.
 
Maybe in the .MIL or other .COM sites, things are different,
but ...
 
My takes on this are if a subscriber from a site that does
not maintain good network connectivity then subscribes to an
active list, thus causing much more work for the list-owner,
then they should either be set to a DIGEST (if one is
supported), be set to NOMAIL, be unsubscribed, or have their
system made MORE available.
 
--  co-owner:   INFOSYS, TQM-L, CPARK-L, ERAPPA-L, JANITORS, LDBASE-L, et -L
URL:mailto:[log in to unmask]                "I get paid by the millisecond"