> > I agree with David Sitman's recent posting favoring unsubbing > bounced addresses vs. the alternative(s). > I immediately delete most bounced addresses these days, because some > systems generously shower me with rejections for up to 13 days > after the initial failure to deliver. Most often (always?) the > rejections include the full text of the rejected message. As > Yogi Berra said, "it's deja vu all over again." > Perhaps patience level depends on one's job. If I were a comp. > center employee, I might feel differently. But to get rained on > often because someone hasn't bothered to sign off a list or > clean up their mailbox just isn't worth it. BTW the subscribers > haven't complained, and the Renewal feature seems to be > working well on biosph-l (set at 4-Yearly). > -dave phillips > I find that 90% of the error messages I get are not repeated for more than 1 or 2 days at the most, and if I ignore them, they go away. There are a myriad of reasons why a post did not go through, and often it is a problem with an intermediate site, not the sender or receiver at all. LITSERV often gives enough info on the subject line to identify repeated errors from the same place. I then just delete all but one of them and read the last one, then ignore it for a couple of days. This actually REDUCES my workload, because I don't have to NOMAIL or DEL anyone. When an error repeats, I send a message to the account, with a cc: to the postmaster telling them I am setting the account NOMAIL and how to set MAIL once the problem is fixed. (This is a form letter - I just load it in on top of the error, then delete the text under the headers of the message in error, and send it off - takes less than 30 seconds.) Then I save the error in a folder called "NOMAIL" Every few months or so, I send out a general mailing to all NOMAILED folks reminding them of their status. Some of them had no idea what NOMAIL was, and were very appreciative. I prefer NOMAIL to DEL, as I have a record of all people who might have been having problems, and also, the subscriber does not lose their option settings when NOMAIL / MAIL is used, like they do with DEL / SUB. It really isn't that much work, and for the kind of list I operate, which has many people from outside academic environments, many of whom have never used computers before, let alone the Internet, I think it is time well spent. Bruce -- Bruce P. A. Dienes Beware the iniquitous Disk Trolls! BitNet: dienes@uiucvmd Internet: [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask] Phone: Home: 217-328-7720 (best) or Office: 217-333-3704 (msg)