There seems to be confusion here. A bounce (or "Non-delivery notification" or "Delivery status notification" which is something similar but with a fixed format) is just a message detailing the non-delivery, or successful or delayed deliveries in some systems and especially with use of Delivery Status Notifications, about a message that was sent.
When a mailing list manager (the bit of software that runs a mailing list) receives a bounce message, it must somehow determine the cause. It parses the bounce, which is often different with different mail software, trying to work out which member of its lists are responsible for the errors in delivery of the mailing list messages. Modern mailing list software does a fairly good job of this, but it's still fiendishly tricky. A scheme, once thought very difficult and expensive, is now being reconsidered for making this process more-or-less automatic and guaranteed to work, that being Variable Envelope Return Path (VERP): the idea is that the mailing list software, instead of sending out one message to many users, sends out one message to each user, but sets the return address to a unique address, per sender, per message. That way, the address the bounce goes to fingers precisely the subscriber and message implicated in the original delivery error. The BrailleNote list does not use VERP. Which brings us to Mailman, used by HumanWare. It's decent enough mailing list management software, and it tries very hard to forgive temporary delivery errors, as distinct from permanent errors, that is, those which cannot be recovered from, like an invalid address. It uses a bounce score system. Each time a temporary problem occurs, the score goes up by 0.5. Each time a permanent error occurs, the score goes up by 1.0. A maximum score (set by the list owner) determines some final action to be taken, which defaults to disabling the subscription and then sending out periodic reminders, but it can include immediate unsubscription without further fuss. So, in summary, the reason why you see what you do is that you (or your mail server) is losing posts (or accepting them but sending a bounce, which is highly broken, but it's possible) for the BrailleNote list. The list software gets the bounces back, and your score is adjusted accordingly to match the type and number of bounces, and if no bounces occur for a while, automatically reset. Also note, that the bounce can happen anywhere; if you send a message to the list and immediately your bounce score goes up, it's possible that HumanWare's own mail server is rejecting the post sent for distribution in the process of doing so. However, I haven't seen this problem, so I think it more likely that the subscribers themselves are causing the bounces (their ISP's stupid spam filters, for instance). Hope this has helped somebody somewhere. :-) Cheers, Sabahattin ___ Replies to this message will go directly to the sender. If your reply would be useful to the list, please send a copy to the list as well. To leave the BrailleNote list, send a blank message to [email protected] To view the list archives or change your preferences, visit http://list.humanware.com/mailman/listinfo/braillenote
