> Somebody recently suggested setting autodelete=off.  What does that do?
 
It makes things the way they were before the autodelete feature was added.
It keeps listserv from making decisions about who should be deleted.
 
> Would people get deleted off of the list without the listowner being
> notified?  And why do they get (auto)deleted in the first place?
 
Without autodelete nobody will be deleted unless they unsub or the
listowner deletes them.  Autodelete deletes subscribers if their mail
bounces with error messages like 'user unknown'.  The idea is to save
the listowner time and prevent further clutter since an error message
of that kind means *in theory* that that user has gone away -- e.g.,
a student who leaves at the end of a semester without unsubbing from
lists.  In fact, however, lots of temporary system glitches produce
errors of that kind.  Before I turned off auto-delete, I was auto-deleted
from one of the lists I'm listowner of.  That caught my attention quickly.
Although I would have turned it off anyway, since sooner or later it would
have kicked other "regulars" off of the list inappropriately, it is rather
dramatic to see yourself being kicked off simply because your system
exhibited one tiny, quick false quiver.  Some people love auto-delete,
of course.  That's fine.  I personally hate it.  I wish I could turn it
off for the listproc list I run.
   --Natalie ([log in to unmask])