>Well, if you can think of a better subject line, you are welcome to change it.
>
>As a rather young list owner, i am wondering just how tolerant I should be
>with bounced mail for any reason.  How many bounces from my readers should
>I tolerate from a specific address before I axe them from the list.  Should
>I issue warnings for habitual bouncers?  I have been keeping a running list
>of the bouncers and have unsubbed a couple on what I considered to be
>excessive bouncing.  But am now wondering what my fellow list owners
>consider excessive.  So any suggestions out there for how tolerant I should
>be of my bouncers will be welcome.
>
>thanks.
>
>Paul Rice
>mailto:[log in to unmask]

I've been away for a bit, and so my response may be a few days late, but I
hope not.

Yesterday, I experienced a problem whereby due to some configuration
changes of the system at my university, I was unable to post messages to
my own list, and I was also unable to recieve the list header information
from listserv because I was no longer at [log in to unmask], but was
somehow at some other server name here.  I'm not exactly sure how that
happened, but it may have caused a few bounces in between, aside from my
rejected postings to my list.

As far as how tolerant you should be, keep in mind the following:

How large is your list?  If your list is small in the number of
subscribers and messages posted to the list per day, you may be afforded the
ability to wait around a bit more than if you have 1000 subscribers with
100 bounces a day.  Your list members should be aware of this fact, and if
they are not, they do not belong on your list.

Is the problem with bounces temporary or permanant?  Often, listserv will
tell you something like "host unreachable" which is a temporary error.
These you can do little about and generally go away reasonably quickly.
Often, you can determine the answer to this by e-mailing either the
postmaster or root of the host machine and requesting information about
whether or not the offending address is in fact valid.

Sometimes, listserv will tell you "No such host", or "No such user at
somehost.com" or something similar, and
this is a false statement.  I haven't figured out what causes this, but I know
that I have had a few such messages from the host machiones of regular
participants to my list.  I would wait a few days on these as well and see
if they resolve themself.  Granted, this is not always a false statement.
The only way to know is to contact the particular sight and find out for
sure.

I guess what it comes down to is how much you are willing to wait for
problems to resolve themselves, or how much effort you are willing to put
into resolving problems.  It's really all up to you.

Glenn