Brian Lingard wrote:
> What I do whenver i get a message indicating mail cannot be delivered to
> one of my list subscribers for any reason is issue a quiet delete of the
> user or all users at the affected site if the error indicates a site
> wide problem e.g. host unknown or connect failed.
 
Brian,
  Depending on the cause of the errors you mmention, your approach appears
to be quite naive.  Do you not take into consideration the possibility that
network or name-service problems may only be temporary?  Do you axe
subscribers, only to find that their net connection is alive and kicking a
week later, prompting them to send you messages asking to be resubscribed or
reassured that their deletion was a mistake?
 
  In recent weeks, my list of about 200 subscribers has encountered a rash
of delivery errors to various sites, a lot of which are local to each other
-- indicating that perhaps a service provider or name server may be acting
up.  A recent example involves users at Delphi.com and BIX.com:
 
eg> <[log in to unmask]>,<[log in to unmask]>... Deferred: Connection reset by peer
eg> with delphi.com.
 
> This minimizes the errors i get and allows me to retain some sanity.
 
  By extrapolating your methods, minimizing your error messages would
involve deleting all users from your list.
 
> i really wish I could set the listserv to auto delete anyone who had any
> problem including 4 hour delays in receiving mail.
 
  LISTSERV would suffer from bloat if it had to deal with every single
variant of mail-delivery error messages.  It would be better to conform the
error messages themselves to some standard.  Be careful what you wish for.
 
> Sometimes the list serv will autodelete someone on the first occurrance
> of an error but this seems rare.
 
  Depends on the formatting of the error message, from what I've understood
from discussion on this list.
 
> As far as advising the listowner of a user with a full mailbox, I also
> wonder at this but vax does it too and I guess the idea is to tell the
> ender the mail cannot be delivered and perhaps to cease sending new
  sender = list? or sender = listowner?
> mail.
 
  What I do to try to minimize the lost time for subscribers with
mail-delivery problems is to forward a copy of the error message to the
postmasters concerned.  If messages to [log in to unmask] bounce, I'll send
the message to [log in to unmask], and probably even [log in to unmask] until the
mail goes through.
 
  I wonder, though: do postmasters automatically receive reports of errors
such as these?  On second thought, no that can't be possible; how could they
possibly receive "host unknown" messages?
 
> I interpret mailbox full, file system full, disk quota exceeded and
> device not available as a cue to delete the subscriber immediately.
 
  Unnecessarily harsh, don't you think?  What if the system was down for
scheduled maintenance?  What if their name server was malfunctioning?  What
if their routers were fried (or flooded) in a storm?  What if they were
planning to install more hard disks but their shipment hadn't yet arrived?
These are all conditions that can be repaired, and often are within some
reasonable period of time.  I'd rather have dozens of NOMAIL subscribers
(some of which know how to SET xxx-L MAIL) that I didn't have to ADD again,
than a bunch of angry people who think I deleted them without cause.
 
> If they are a local telephone call to me, i will call them to ask them
> to remedy the situation but at lest one system in town has a gateway tht
> breaks a lot and a slow admin so i just delete when the gateway breaks.
 
  ...only to have to resubscribe these folx once their admin fixes whatever
was wrong?  Sounds like more work for you than it's worth.  Do you have
co-owners?  Maybe effective delegation of duties would help ease your
administrative headache.
 
- Michael;   NAUSICAA list owner: <[log in to unmask]>
             Subscription= By_owner; Errors-to= Owners; Two co-owners
 
[ Michael S. Johnson <[log in to unmask]> Computer Science, U of W ]
<     List Owner, the Hayao "Nausicaa" MIYAZAKI Discussion Group     >
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