[Mailman-Users] follow up: help request: new 1300 member listresults inmostly bounces

[Mark Sapiro]

Nathan wrote:

>After getting some advice from the list - specifically Mark - last 
>week, I asked the hosting provider if there was in fact some limit on 
>outgoing mail, or some other setting on their end which might be 
>causing the bounces I'm getting. (see previous post for details, but 
>basically, I set up a new mailman list with around 1300 subscribers and 
>as best I could tell - without going through ALL of them one by one - 
>most bounced. I did sample 30 addresses, of which 29 bounced).
>
>Below is the response from the host. They seem to feel it's all on the 
>recipient's end. Does this make sense? or is it passing the buck?


Brad has addressed this response from the host, and I agree with Brad
with one minor exception. The header Mailman adds is 'Precedence:
list', not 'Precedence: bulk', but as Brad and Todd both point out,
mail in not generally bounced because of this header.


>They suggest sending out 10-15 emails at a time - is there a way to set 
>mailman up to do this? (and would there be a point?)


Todd mentioned setting SMTP_MAX_RCPTS. This may help, but as I recall,
you said in your original post that you are dealing with Mailman
hosted by the same host that gave the bogus reply to your inquiry. So
you have no control over these 'site' settings.

Thus, the situation appears to be that that this host offers Mailman
lists as a service to it's customers, but they are unwilling and or
unable to make it work, and when you ask for help they offer threats
that you can get into trouble for using it.

Note that 1300 is a modest list size for a Mailman list. You certainly
aren't asking anything out of the ordinary here. If you are interested
in getting this to work with this host, you are going to have to try
to escalate this to a management level within the host that cares that
they are offering a service that doesn't work, and if that is
unsuccessful, Your friend should take her business elsewhere.

BTW, Since you are just setting up, you can do the following:

Mass remove the 1300 members (with notifications set to No).

Go to the Bounce processing options and set bounce_score_threshold to
1.0 (or less). Be sure bounce_notify_owner_on_disable is set to Yes.

Mass subscribe the 1300 (with notifications set to No)

Send a post.

This time every bounce will result in a disable, and the owner will be
notified, and the notice will include the bounce.

This may help in your discussions with the host.

Finally, after the problem is resolved, you can remove the 1300 members
and re-add them with a welcome message if it is important that they
get that (their passwords will change when you remove and re-add
them). The remove and re-add is the easiest way to reset their
bouncing status in this case.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <msapiro at value.net>       The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan