[Mailman-developers] Re: [meta-sig] mailman problems

[Ken Manheimer]

On Thu, 23 Apr 1998, Guido van Rossum wrote:

> Ken writes:
> 
> > Furthermore, i do have some questions about the strategy of qualifying
> > registration addresses according to matches against a static list of
> > known top level domains - i'd be interested to hear input about this on
> > the mailman-developers list...
> 
> I think this is bogus; as Dmitri's mail shows it is a maintenance
> nightmare waiting to happen.  If you really want to do a validation of
> an email address, use DNS to see if there's a host by that name or an
> MX record for that domain.  What is the reason for validating
> addresses in the first place?  If the address is invalid, the mail
> will bounce and the user won't be registered.  Simple.  Effective.

While i'm inclined to agree about the list-of-known-domains check being
too maintenance intensive, i do see a reason to have the check in the
first place.  The benefit comes into play when the web interface is in
play - the user is there, and can get definite feedback about faulty
addresses.  Without it, they only see address failures as the absence of
any subscription confirmation - a decidedly vague and uncertain kind of
feedback.

At this point i'm inclined to withdraw the known-domains criterion, but
leave in the more definite, unchanging criterion, like presence of an
'@' sign.

Ken