Here at K-State we try real hard to keep these 'policy' types of decisions
away from the IT staff.  These types of issues have been handled by the
university for a long time before IT became part of the mix so we try to
follow the policies that have been in place (and let other groups make new
policies when needed - although we sometimes like having a lot of input
into those decisions! :-).

In this case, that means we wouldn't remove these types of users but
leave that up to each list owner (we run the LISTSERV software and the
owners make these decisions for their own lists).  When the e-mail
address expires (and "deceased user" accounts get an extended ammount of
time) then we do a global delete from all lists here to clean up.

On Mon, 12 Jan 2004, Pete Weiss wrote:

> Other than simply doing a mass-delete of a userid@node when that address
> is no longer valid, how do you "handled" the case when that userid@node
> is a colleague and has died?  E.g., do you do so QUIETly and perhaps then
> edit the report and e-mail the list-owners (-REQUEST) why you have done
> the delete; or perhaps you do a non-QUIET delete and await inquiries
> (sometimes angry, either because the list-owner did not interpret the
> auto-generated message properly, or thought they were the only one that
> could affect subscription), etc.
>
> Our organization has thousands of lists, and some proportional larger
> number of thousands of list-owners spread across the university and world.
>
> Pete Weiss @ Penn State
>
>

   ====================================================================
 James Morrill  office: HL 11, 785-532-4909   www-personal.ksu.edu/~james

 And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought
 are still at issue around the globe--the belief that the rights of man
 come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God. - JFK