Len Rugen  <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>I wish these mailers whould just be patient....
>Warning: message still undelivered after 5 days
>Will keep trying until message is 1 week, 3 days old
 
Eric Prestemon <[log in to unmask]> responds:
>I have seen mails on LSTOWN-L that say:
>"Can you believe the insensitivity of mailers that don't notify you for
>8 days that mail isn't going through? I get an extra 8 days of bounces
>as a result, even after I delete the person!"
>...And now one that says: "Don't notify me after 5 days ...
>...That's even worse for the people in the first group.
>...I don't see how to please everyone in this situation.
 
I'm definitely in the first group ("don't wait that long!").  There's a
certain level of service that's considered the norm.  Based on today's
expectations, a message being stuck at *one* node for more than 24 hours
should, for all practical purposes, be considered an anomaly (of course,
under unusual conditions at a node, the local administrator would always
have the option of disabling and/or extending the time--the problem, of
course, is that some nodes always seem to be incurring "unusual
conditions").
 
Obviously, there's the problem of accumulated bounces for list managers.
But even for personal one-to-one e-mail, many messages that take longer
than 1 day have often lost their purpose, or at least the recipient would
like to know that it hasn't been delivered yet.
 
In this model (which I don't expect everyone to agree with, given the
plethora of nodes that wait 3, 5, 7, 10 and even 30 days), there would
be a 24-hour "warning" message to the sender, and then finally a longer
(perhaps 7 days at most) undeliverable "bounce."  If the warning in turn
were undeliverable, it would not generated another warning or bounce but
simply be discarded.  If the permanent bounce were undeliverable, it would
not generate a warning, and would go to the usual place (some
postmaster's lap) if it were finally undeliverable (like it does now).
 
Or rather than trying to change the world (and in the continuing
tradition of LISTSERV compensating for all the sins of the networks
around it :-)) LISTSERV could detect bounces for messages for members
who have been deleted, and simply ignore them.  This feature could be
turned on and off for each list owner, and perhaps even be programmable
for the number of days.
 
IMHO.
 
Shahrukh Merchant