My World Wide Words list has passive probing enabled, but I'm wondering if there isn't something wrong somewhere. The header has the line * Auto-Delete= Yes,Full-Auto,Delay(18),Max(2),Probe(4) As the list is announce-only and there is one mailing a week, by my understanding every subscriber should be passively probed every fourth issue. Why then are there dead subscribers on the list with counts of 14 errors? Obviously, these are subscribers who forward their mail to another address, so that the LISTSERV doesn't have the bounce address on file, but why doesn't the passive probe pick them up? -- Michael Quinion Editor, World Wide Words <[log in to unmask]> <http://www.worldwidewords.org/>