On Tue, 7 Nov 1995 15:08:36 -0500 Tom Newell said:
>Hello,
>
>I apologize if this has been discussed before, but can anyone
>make some recommendations regarding Do's and Dont's for big
>list migrations from majordomo to listserv?  We are faced with
>moving two 25K+ lists (Scout-Report and Net-Happenings) to the
>listserv environment and would appreciate the advice.
 
Hi, Tom!  (Small world...:)
 
I just added about 25K subscribers to a list today using the
ADD IMPORT scheme and basically it's very simple.  It suppresses
some checks but won't add duplicates to the list (and tells you
that it didn't).  The only thing you should be aware of is that
LISTSERV doesn't check to see if an address is bogus, so if you
add a bad address and send mail to the list, it will generate an
error message.  That's easy enough to deal with, just delete the
user.
 
The basic method is
 
QUIET ADD listname DD=X IMPORT
/X DD *
user1@host
user2@host
(and so forth)
/*
 
If you have "real names" you can add them on after the userid, e.g.,
 
user1@host His Name
 
Otherwise LISTSERV adds them with a name field of "(No Name)" unless
they're already subscribed to another list on your server (in which
case it uses the value in the SIGNUP.FILEs).
 
I've done this several times with a couple of our large EASE lists,
one of them with addresses that were captured by a web page (about
10% bogus) and have had very little (if any) trouble.  If you're
working from an existing list, you will find that the migration is
very smooth.  It's so smooth that I haven't put together a Do's and
Don'ts list.
 
The only problem with this method (as mentioned) is when you use it on
a database of addresses that you've built with a web page and a
CGI script.  And the problem lies in the fact that many people
either don't understand what's wanted when asked for their e-mail
address, or that they mistype it altogether.  Some of the "addresses"
I've had to deal with this way were actually home page URLs, others
were userid but no host, others were Compuserve addresses without
COMPUSERVE.COM at the end, etc.  So if you use a home page to gather
subscriber addresses, you should probably run them through a "pre-filter"
of some sort to eliminate the obviously-bogus addresses before sending
them to LISTSERV.  Tom, you're not doing that as far as I can tell,
so this is just a general warning to others who might want to use
the IMPORT feature.
 
Nathan