On Wed, 25 Jun 2003 07:55:56 EDT, Mark Schwarz <[log in to unmask]>  said:
> As stated in my earlier message, I only need to know the distribution
> count, not recipients. Our mandate states that we must have electronic mail
> lists for new information posted to our website. One requirement is to
> track (among other things) the subscribers the message was sent to.

OK. You're keeping track of a number to solve a problem.  Unfortunately, nobody
except Mark Schwarz seems to understand what the problem being solved is.  This
makes it a lot harder for us to help solve the *REAL* problem.

I'm having a *really* hard time understanding the usefulness of a metric that doesn't
even reliably measure anything.  Consider that you can look at your logs and see:

25 Jun 2003 05:47:07 Processing file 6318840 from [log in to unmask]
25 Jun 2003 05:47:07 Processing mail from [log in to unmask] for MYSTERY-LIST
25 Jun 2003 05:47:07 Distributing mail ("MYSTERY_LIST") from owner-mystery-list@LISTSERV.VT.EDU...
25 Jun 2003 05:47:07 Mail posted via SMTP to [log in to unmask]
25 Jun 2003 05:47:07 Mail posted via SMTP to [log in to unmask]
25 Jun 2003 05:47:07 Mail posted via SMTP to [log in to unmask]
25 Jun 2003 08:48:37 Done - 1 outbound file (3 rcpts).
25 Jun 2003 08:48:37 Message DISTRIBUTEd to 3 recipients.

So riddle me this:  How many recipients are there?

Does it make a difference if I tell you that [log in to unmask] is itself a
mailing list with 250 subscribers, so in fact 252 mailboxes got a copy of
Fred's posting?  For bonus points, what if george, irving, and 17 of the
warthogs are over quota and their mail is bouncing, so they never actually
received the mail?

If it *does* matter, you're not chasing the right number.. And if it *doesnt* matter,
why are you bothering when it doesn't reflect reality in the slightest?

So if you can explain to us what useful information you're getting out of
'message to mystery-list distributed to 3 recipients', maybe we can find a
better way to address it.  If it's just going into a graph to give a PHB some
warm-and-fuzzies, tell us that too, we can probably come up with easier
ways to get info for pretty pictures. ;)

/Valdis