[3643] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
ADMIN: "cause a bounce, get unsubscribed"
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Perry E. Metzger)
Fri Nov 13 12:48:03 1998
To: cryptography@c2.net
Reply-To: perry@piermont.com
From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>
Date: 13 Nov 1998 12:43:44 -0500
Hello, all.
I used to have the policy of leaving users subscribed to the mailing
list if I got "temporary" bounces associated with things like overfull
mailboxes, brain dead "on vacation" messages, etc.
Unfortunately, the number of bounces I have to deal with has gone up a
lot lately, because people using various commercial mail services seem
to clean out their mailboxes too slowly and go over quota.
As a result, I have to institute a new policy -- if your mail starts
bouncing, even with a message like "user temporarily over quota" or
"mailbox full" or the like, I'm going to unsubscribe you. This is not
to say that you couldn't then later re-join the list, but I'm not
going to give you a grace period any longer.
The same policy goes for things like "I'm away for a week"
messages. For some reason, a lot of commercial mail packages seem to
(very stupidly) reply with "on vacation" messages in reply to mailing
list mail. I can't deal with that any more. If your mail reader/mail
system is too stupid to follow the rules, too bad -- you'll have to
resubscribe when you get back from your week away.
I'm very sorry to do this, but I'm now dealing with literally hundreds
of bounces a day, and I just can't do that any more. If I could
automate the process it would be different, but unfortunately, every
mail system on earth insists on having a radically different set of
error messages from every other.
Perry
