On Fri, 2 Aug 1996 08:45:41 -0400, David B. O'Donnell - AOL wrote: >In a message dated 96-08-01 18:04:02 EDT, [log in to unmask] (Rob Woiccak) >writes: >> just out of curosity, what constitutes a full mailbox for an aol >> subscriber? > >An AOL mailbox is "full" if there are 550 pieces of mail on the host system. 550 pieces is a LOT of email! I've been a busy emailer for more than a decade and rarely have a backlog exceeding 200 (of course, I do NOMAIL lists when I leave for a vacation :-) One way to get 550 pieces of email in a HURRY is to be the victim of one of the bozos who subscribes people to a couple thousand lists. Hence, it *might* be useful to generate an UNSUB * (NETWIDE message to LISTSERV _anytime_ a mailbox accumulates 550 unread messages (probably reducing waste on AOL's end as well as ours). Note however, that the netwide unsub command ONLY works for LISTSERV. Listproc, Majordomo, and other lists would still generate round trip traffic. Frankly, I find AOL a whole lot easier to live with than a number of smaller hosts (that bungle their DNS entries regularly and can't always remember from one day to the next who their users are). AOL plays by the rules, responds to inquiries, and generally pays attention. Those of you who remember the good old early, early LISTSERV days will recall that (it seemed as if) every holiday in the UK was occasioned by some JANET mailer daemon sending endless loop mail to multiple lists (mail queues of 10,000 overnight items per list affected at the US-UK gateway were not uncommon). Only the fact that BITNET was operating at 9600 bps limited the number of redundant messages received by list subscribers to a couple of hundred before a gatemaster discovered the problem and purged the queue. IMHO, compared to 10 years ago, list ownership these days is relatively placid. AOL is not likely to favor wasting resources bouncing mail to subscribers that won't or can't read it. Thoughtful, effective solutions to identified problems might take a little time but are likely to be more satisfactory to everyone than some quick fix that benefits only a limited constituency. For the impatient, there's a simple rule (I've mentioned it before). Simply make all subscribers aware that your policy is: "If your mail bounces for ANY reason whatsoever, you will be unsubscribed immediately. Please resubcribe when the problem on your end has been addressed." /s Murphy A. Sewall <[log in to unmask]> (860) 486-2489 voice Professor of Marketing (860) 456-7725 fax http://mktg.sba.uconn.edu/MKT/Faculty/Sewall.html