On 17-Sep-98 Hanno Wagner \(Debian-Listmaster-Mails\) wrote: > On Wed, Sep 16, 1998 at 09:37:04PM -0000, Darren Benham wrote > On 16-Sep-98 Ralph Winslow wrote: > >> It seems that everytime my ISP has the slightest interrruption of >> e-mail service, I get unsubscribed to this list. Might it be > > you should define slightest :-) Our listserver count the > bounces someone is having at (actually) at the count of 10 > he unsubscribes him from the particular list. debian-user > is a high-traffic list and the count of 10 is reached > easily.
I've been watching this thread. Now that you've replied, Hanno, I wish to add my voice to support the original complaint. A while ago, your list server wrote to me: ***Your mail address [EMAIL PROTECTED] has been removed ***from the debian-user@lists.debian.org mailinglist. ***It generated an excessive amount of bounced mails. ***>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***>Subject: failure notice ***> ***>Hi. This is the qmail-send program at murphy.debian.org. ***>I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following ***addresses. ***>This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out. ***> ***><[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: ***>130.88.200.93 does not like recipient. ***>Remote host said: 550 relaying to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ***>prohibited by administrator ***>Giving up. On the other hand, nothing seemed to be wrong when I myself looked into our local mail system (and specifically 130.88.200.93, which DID like me). Why so?? I asked my local admin friend. To which the reply was: ***This was a temporary problem between 0700 and about 0930 yesterday ***morning. I had a real tantrum about it... but it won't've done any ***good... So, as a contribution to "you should define slightest :-)" I offer the above snippet of empirical evidence -- namely a temporary local misconfiguration lasting a mere 2-1/2 hours can cause people to be dropped from the mailing list, and have to re-subscribe. Now I know you have a big mailing list there, which inevitably generates many bounces because of the amount of traffic. However, the important parameter in determining whether a user is really unmailable is not the _number_ of bounces but the length of time, combined with the reason, for which the remote address generates bounces. So, therefore, a "retry" bounce generated say every 5 hours usually indicates that some host on the route is temporarily down, and re-try for at least 24 hours (and most mailers keep trying for up to 5 days) is in order. On the other hand, an "unknown-user" bounce is more indicative of genuine unmailability. Even so, on one of the lists I run (which has several subscribers in the FSU, Central Asia and Turkey) it is not uncommon for an address to become "unknown user" for a few days at a time, and then to rise again from the ashes when someone out there puts the system right again. So (admittedly on a list with under 1000 members) my own policy is to check that it remains "unknown user" for at least 5 days. Similarly (but for a longer period) for "mailbox full" bounces. Admittedly such an approach is far more feasible using "bare hands" when there are few users. But nowadays list-server software can be prgrammed to handle these things more automatically, and the above-mentioned mailing list (which now runs under L-Soft LISTSERV) automatically probes suspect addresses for a while, repeatedly, without involving the list itself, and automatically removes persistently recalcitrant adresses, where "persistently" is of course configurable and could be anything from a few hours to a few weeks. What is finally needed for a smooth integration with the list itself is for the list server to set suspect addresses to "no-mail" or equivalent on the list itself, so that the list does not generate bounces; meanwhile the list server probes in the background. If the address comes back to life, then the address is restored to "mail" on the list and all is well. Otherwise, in due course the list server removes the address (or sends a message to the list-owner requesting approval for removal). Either way, however, junking users who become unmailable for very short periods (such as the above) is definitely unreasonable, in my opinion. I hope this is a helpful contribution to the discussion. Best wishes, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: 17-Sep-98 Time: 12:06:23 --------------------------------------------------------------------
