> - a demonstration of familiarity with Internet mail errors and debugging them
 
How much listowners need to know about errors and debugging depends on how
they plan to manage the lists.  I know next to nothing about such matters
but haven't gotten any complaints in the years I've been running lists (two
listserv lists, one listproc list).  With regular subscribers, it becomes
obvious after a while which sites have flaky systems that go into temporary
tantrums.  Unless the error messages for those sites get up into the
hundreds, I let them slide by.  If the error messages are many and I don't
have reason to believe the system will be back to normal quickly, I delete
or set nomail.  If I tried to debug every error message, I'd have to quit
my job and devote full time to playing with Net stuff -- which would be fun,
of course, but I might lose my account if I had no affiliation with a
university and I would sooner or later starve to death with no income --
and my dog would be deprived of snausages.
 
I have all error messages filtered into an errors/ file, which keeps the
clutter from getting mixed up with my regular mail.  And I have to admit
that when I was about to leave for Europe for a week last month, I changed
those filter-rules from "save in [path][filename]" to "delete".  If having
all error messages deleted for a week hurt anything or anybody, I haven't
heard about it.
   --Natalie ([log in to unmask])