[Mailman-Developers] Re: bounce agressiveness

[John Viega]

On Fri, Jun 12, 1998 at 06:05:26PM -0400, Barry A. Warsaw wrote:
> 
> >>>>> "JH" == Jim Hugunin <hugunin@cnri.reston.va.us> writes on the
> >>>>> jpython-interest list:
> 
>     JH> Everybody on this list should know that the mailman software -
>     JH> which handles the jpython-interest mailing list - is
>     JH> reasonably agressive in suspending mail to any addresses that
>     JH> produce excessive bounce messages.  This feature makes the
>     JH> life of the list administrator much more pleasant, but can
>     JH> occasionally lead to people having their mail suspended who
>     JH> still want to be on the list.
> 
> I've been thinking about bounce policy.  I wonder if what Mailman
> should do is have the same policy for all bounces, regardless of
> whether it looks permanent (user unknown) or not.  Once the bounce
> threshold is reached and the account is disabled, a cron job could be
> used to retry the address for some number of days.  If the account
> becomes live again, it can be re-enabled.  Or perhaps the user has to
> explicitly re-enable it when they finally see these warning messages.

Sure, but then again I've never seen an error message as a list admin
for a non-transient error that was actually transient (ie, 'no such
user' only lasting a few minutes).  It really doesn't matter, might as
well be safe about it.  I think the real problem is addresses that
can't be reached for a little too long for whatever reason.

I do like the idea of sending daily mail for actually an extended
period of time.  Maybe it could be every 3rd day for 60 days, since
mail generally doesn't get rejected as undeliverable for 3 days.  We
could use the confirmation mechanism to let people get back on the
list.

By the way, does the confirmation mechanism clean up unanswered
confirmation mail?  How long does it sit there if so?  If not, we
probably need to add that :)

John