There seems to be a discussion going on over deleting users from the list that
needs to be cleared up.
 
As listowner, I sometimes see up 300 bounced mail messages each day. This is on
top of the correspondence I must keep up with, a full-time job, and school. I
have developed a general policy that follows,
 
1. When I get messages telling me a system is down, I will wait a week before
removing a subscriber. The most common is something along the lines of "unable
to connect to remote host for 3 days". Currently there is a site that is
generating these error messages, TMN.COM although they are still getting mail
okay from the list.
 
2. Another common one is "No Such User". This is common for Unix systems when
their mail system is down. Once again, I wait a week before I remove the person
from the list.
 
3. Mailbox is full. Often students and subscribers to commercial services do
not have sufficient disk quota to handle large volumes of e-mail. I wait a day
or two on this.
 
Also, with the new listserv software, some systems generate error messages that
cause the software to do an "auto-deletion". I get a message from the
listserver software telling me that a person was removed.
 
There it is in a nutshell. I will try to verify that a site is really down, and
I will try to contact a postmaster to make sure everything is okay. If you do
receive a notice that I have removed you from the list, please contact me AND
contact your site administrator.
 
--john chadwick
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