Will Sadler <[log in to unmask]> says:
 
>I sent mail at one point to all of the users on my list which were
>not bouncing mail from the demon.ac.uk site.  I pleaded with them
>to tell their postmaster to fix his error message configuration, since
>it was inundating my lists with hundreds of error messages each day.
>I had sent a lot of mail to the postmaster there, only to have him
>respond and say "something must be wrong at your end."  Wanker.
>
>I know of at least one other postmaster who has also contacted him
>and not gotten anything done.
 
Here is a message I have made up (have not had an opportunity to use it
yet) to send to potential demon subscribers.  BTW, does Listserv have a
way to automate (a) rejecting subscribers based on a domain address only
(e.g., demon.co.uk)  (b) customizing the MAILTPL to send the reason for
this (yes, I realize this would not be customizable for _each_ domain)?
 
Shahrukh Merchant
[log in to unmask]
 
================================================================
Sorry, but we cannot accept subscriptions to mailing lists from
subscribers to demon.co.uk.  This is simply because their configuration
causes too many headaches for our list administrators.
 
We understand that demon provides dial-up access, and that the mail is
not delivered until the user actually dials up (unlike most dial-up
services where the mail is stored in the users' mailbox whether or not
he or she is actually logged on).  Owing to the sometimes once-a-week
access by their users, demon has set the delay for mail bounces on
undelivery to EIGHT days, and it continues trying for a total of 31
days.
 
This means that if someone stops accessing his demon account, eight days
later (and not before), the list administrators start getting bounces.
Even if they remove the address right away from their lists, there are
still 8 days worth of bounces pending, and furthermore, this may be
periodically repeated for up to 31 days!   For high-volume lists (tens
to hundreds of messages per day), this could result in literally
hundreds to thousands of largely redundant bounce messages to the list
administrators, all from ONE demon user, even after the user has been
deleted from the list.  This severely impedes the ability of the list
managers to run the list.
 
Demon is the only site we are aware of that has this setup and, therefore,
this problem; to date, they have been unwilling to modify it.  Please
contact them directly if you are unhappy about this.  To reach the list
administrator directly to report an improvement in this situation, or
suggestions for circumventing it, send e-mail to
[log in to unmask]
 
Thank you.
 
Shahrukh Merchant
"Ballroom" mailing list administrator