I am using Mailman 2.1.1 I have several lists and my setting for SMTP_MAX_RCPTS = 500. If I have a list with 4000 addresses will this setting segment the message into 8 messages with 500 recipients per message? This SMTP_MAX_RCPTS = 500 was the default setting when I installed it. Is it the recommended setting or should it be changed?
Keep in mind that the RFCs only require that you allow at least 100 recipients, and many sites lower this number even further. Check to make sure that your own MTA is configured to allow as least as many recipients as you want to specify.
In addition, some sites are sneaky and figure that there's a higher probability that you're sending spam if you have too many recipients per message.
So, if you have any recipient domains that have large numbers of subscribers, the MTA will have to do more work to split the envelopes on those messages -- thus increasing the risk of multiple deliveries of the same message to certain sets of recipients, increasing the risk that some recipients won't get the message at all, etc....
Another factor to consider is that some people set up local reflectors, or have their e-mail forwarded from one account to another. Unfortunately, some mail systems munge forwarded mail sufficiently that you may get bounces from an address you can't find anywhere on any of your mailing lists, and you may not be able to figure out how to unsubscribe this user.
Mailman supports a feature called "VERP" (which also has to be supported by your MTA) that allows you to have 100% certainty of which message was sent to which person (so long as the reply address isn't also munged), which greatly increases your probability of successfully identifying a bouncing address and removing it.
Unfortunately, this means you send out one message for each and every recipient on your list. It will take a longer to get the mail out, but you'll have a much higher probability of being able to cleanly manage your lists.
Back in 2000, there was a fairly long thread in mailman-developers about large lists. Start with <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-developers/2000-May/006795.html> and work your way through.
There's also an interesting message from Chuq to mailman-developers that is more directly related to this issue at <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-developers/2001-June/008928.html>. In short, he says that you probably want to set SMTP_MAX_RCPTS to be at least 2, and beyond 5 it doesn't seem to buy a whole lot.
These are all issues you need to balance when setting this variable in your mailing list and MTA.
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