>I'm not clear on how autodelete works:
>
>In Auto-delete=yes,semi-Auto,delay(4),max(10):
>
>how does "delay" work.  I assume the number is number of contiguous
>days.  When the first bounce occurs, an entry is made into the
>listname.autodel file so they can be monitored.  Then what?

It sounds like you understand it.  An address starts being monitored
when LISTSERV receives a bounce (in a format it understands) for the
address in question.

If four consecutive days pass without another bounce being received,
the address is no longer monitored.

If another bounce is received on day #4 the address is removed.

If ten bounces are received in a four-day period the address is
removed after the 10th bounce.  (So for instance if ten bounces are
received on the first day the address would be removed immediately;
LISTSERV wouldn't wait another three days to do it.)

Because of the way this works, an An Auto-Delete= setting of the type
you quote tends to work best for discussion mailing lists.  For
announcement mailing lists you generally have to make some
adjustments for this to work well.

>1. Is this entry removed from the autodel file on the 4th day if no
>more errors have happened.  That is, does monitoring stop 4 days
>after the most recent bounce?

Yes.

>2. Suppose one error happens every day for the next 3 days.  Is the
>subscriber removed from the list on the 4th day.

No.

>3. Suppose 12 errors happen on the next day.  Is the subscriber
>removed based on the "max(10)" setting?

Yes.

>4. Suppose an error happens every 5th day.  The subscriber will
>never get removed, right?

Right.

>5. So on a list that gets one message per week,  if you want to
>remove a subscriber if they bounce two weeks in a row, you should
>code delay(8) or perhaps delay(9) in case the bounce message takes a
>while?

Sure.  Something like the following:

        Auto-Delete= Yes,Full-Auto,Delay(8),Max(2)

would work OK for a weekly announcement mailing list; if two bounces
(which hopefully correspond to two consecutive mailings bouncing) are
received in eight days then the address is deleted, otherwise not.
Alternatively you could just set the mailing lists to remove bouncing
addresses immediately.

Thanks,
--
Jacob Haller, Technical Support
L-Soft international, Inc
http://www.lsoft.com/