[Mailman-Developers] Suggestions about Mailman bounce processing

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Executive summary:

It seems to me that your best bet is to modify Mailman as I suggest,
and at times when you have a lot of paper signups, switch off "bounce
processing" temporarily, and switch on (preferably it wasn't off in
the first place) "bounce unrecognized goes to list owner".  If
modification scares you, surely somebody around is willing to check
your work.

Of course you may not have access to the Mailman installation, but I
would think that the ssite admin would at least consider this simple
change, especially if Mark or Barry wants it for their next
release(s), since it at worst ends up sending some extra mail to list
owners who have volunteered for admin work in some sense, and only
those who switch off bounce processing.

Superticker2 (Mark) writes:

 > 1) We are a University campus group and the University currently
 >    provides a Mailman service to us.

Sure, been there, done that, and the settings you propose make sense
for you.  They'd just really annoy a lot of people, to no purpose
whatsoever, as defaults.

 > During our bi-annual university Club Fair, we can collect 200 email
 > addresses--on paper--from prospective students/staff wanting on our
 > list.

Surely somebody has a cheap old notebook that you could let people
type on at the booth?  It doesn't have to be hooked to the net there.
(That's a suggestion; I understand it may not work for you for various
reasons.)  Or have them mail you from their cellphones.  For people
who wish to use their cellphones as list address, set up a cellphone
with the subscribe address as the prmary address of the owner,
temporarily and exchange addresses.  (Ditto the previous caveat.)

 > I appreciate your suggestion to set bounce_processing=1,
 > bounce_score_threshold=0, but wouldn't this would cause "existing
 > addresses" with scores at "2" to be removed immediately, which we don't
 > want to do.  We want the existing addresses to remain until their bounce
 > score reaches 2.5.

I don't think it causes them to be removed immediately, but it would
cause those with scores at 1.5 to get removed on the next bounce, so
it's probably out for you.

 > If so, maybe you're on to something.  But wouldn't it be prudent to
 > make this the default behavior for all Mass Subscribes/Invites?

Not default, for the reasons given.

 > Isn't it better to correct typos and such right away 100% of the
 > time?

Remember, I don't make typos of that kind, though I'm human enough in
all other contexts.  I suspect that most people using mass subscribe/
mass invite are not transcribing from paper, and if so, they probably
don't make typos very often either.  People do make such typos,
though, and if they do, there's little you can do about it even if you
want to.  It's a bad idea to try to guess a correct address from an
incorrect one, especially if you don't know the spelling rules of the
language in question.

 > 2) I agree with your comments.

Then AFAICS you agree it should not be default. ;-)

 > Thanks for listening and your suggestion for #1.  I'll try that, but I
 > still maintain that for any Mass Operation, you should be informed
 > immediately of the typos

Sure, I'd want that too.  But the computer can't tell if they *are*
the list admin's typos.  You have a special case which generates a lot
of correctable typos, and in my (limited but non-nil) experience, it's
a rare one, and getting more so all the time.  So it's not a great
default.

Note that the final decision is Marks (v2.x) or Barry's (v3)q, of
course.  But I tend to think they'll agree with me.