[Mailman-Users] Uncaught Bounce Notification

[Grant Taylor]

On 02/14/2009 07:04 PM, Mark Sapiro wrote:
> That question hinges on whether or not the bounce should be 
> considered a permanent or a temporary failure. The bounce itself says 
> "This is a permanent error."

Agreed.  However I believe the permanent or temporary nature that the 
bounce is speaking of is on the SMTP level, thus the sending server 
should not try to send this given message again.  I think it is a flaw 
to extend this SMTP meaning up to actual future (different) message 
delivery.

> I disagree. I think it is likely to be an abandoned account, but in 
> any case, with default bounce processing settings, The user's 
> delivery won't be disabled until a bounce like this is received on 5 
> separate days.

Possibly.  My experience with my customer shows that people are likely 
to hit their quota over a weekend or a vacation.  When they come back 
the following week (or when ever) and POP all their messages out of 
their box, the /temporary/ error is corrected.  Granted my experience 
may be limited to my customer scope and more than likely does not apply 
to someone like GMail or HotMail or Yahoo.  I guess it depends on the 
customer base.

> So probably when we disable the user's delivery after 5 days of 
> bounces, the disabled notice we send to the user might be accepted, 
> and with default settings, the user won't be unsubscribed until 3 
> weeks and two more notices later.

Agreed... as long as there is not < 23 kB worth of email received in the 
next 3 weeks.  However if the user does not clean out their mail box in 
that time this leads credence to the likely hood that the account is 
abandoned.

> Granted, this could be a user on an extended vacation (over a month), 
> but in that case, ultimately unsubscribing the user is easy to 
> reverse and is small penalty for the user's forgetting to disable 
> list delivery.

True...



Grant. . . .


P.S.  I find it interesting that the bounce is eluding to the amount of 
space remaining in the account.  This is (in my experience) extremely 
unusual.