On Tue, 26 Oct 1993 15:56:41 PDT Dave Gomberg <[log in to unmask]> said: >Eric, you are saying that it is the obligation of mailers to generate >bounce messages that listservs can automatically process by dropping >unreachable users? I'm saying this is the only method that scales up. Look, I'm getting the impression I'm trying to explain some philosophical theory in Chinese to a crowd of Madonna fans. Every time I say that netwide delete does not scale up, period, people answer "but it is a useful function". Of course it is a useful function, but it can't be done this way, so it has to be done another way. The only reason it's been tolerable so far is that less than 50 sites use it. This is like if anyone could hop into the Concorde with a regular charter ticket provided that they genuinely thought they had a good reason to get to NYC in 3h, lie detector and everything. Well I bet you'd find thousands of people every day who genuinely think they need to get there in 3h and not be jet-lagged, and I also bet they wouldn't keep this offer up for long. People can install mailers that generate delivery errors LISTSERV can understand, or they can develop their own procedures to send non-netwide SIGNOFF commands when a message from owner-whatever is received for a user that doesn't exist. Of course it is easier to send a netwide signoff, just as it is more comfortable to travel with the Concorde. But who will pay? Eric