>Date:    Sun, 11 Sep 1994 23:14:00 +0100
>From:    "Ir. E.R.Kooi" <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: How to count and identify the NOMAIL-subscribers.
>
> I am a co-owner of a list with between 500 and 600 subscribers,
> depending on the time of the year. In the last year the two
> co-owners had to set quite a large number of subscribers to NOMAIL,
> due to unstable mail servers.  Also, quite a large number of
> subscribers set themselves (temporarily) to NOMAIL. I find, that,
> when sending a message, the message is send to approx.  360/370
> subscribers. Reviewing the list shows there are about 520
> subscribers.  Could anyone of you tell me how to obtain a list of
> the "to NOMAIL set" subscribers, so I can check, by regularly doing
> such, whether it is temporary or just a forgotten subscription.
> Greetings from Kooi.
 
        Am I missing something here?  It's very simple to find out who's
        nomail and when the deed was done.
 
        I've seen a suggestion to force the entire list to confirm their
        subscriptions.  Not only would that be an unneeded bother for the
        majority of the list, and produce much unnecessary net-traffic, it
        still won't differentiate between 'real' nomails and mail/digest;
        this process *might* identify forgotten subscriptions, largely from
        the bounced renewal requests.
 
        I've also seen the idea of querying the entire list, then processing
        the huge file you'd receive in order to find the nomails.  This
        wouldn't distinguish the temp nomails from the forgotten
        subscriptions (nothing to tell you when the last listserv command was
        issued), but it would take up a big chunk of your own diskspace.
 
        My method is to do a simple 'get <listname>  (nolock'.  Strip off the
        list header, then sort the remaining file on column 82 -- blank is
        currently receiving messages, m is nomail, D is digest.  You can
        further sort on columns 86-90, which gives you the date of the most
        recent listserv command concerning that subscriber; it may not be the
        date they went nomail, but *something* was done by/with that person on
        that date (my list is set to renew every 6 months, so it's often the
        confirm message).  It's then your decision how old a 'last command'
        must be to consider it a dead account.
 
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