I'm not a subscriber to this list, so please include me
superticker2{at}iastate.edu on your cc: line.
I have two suggestions I would like to make concerning Mailman bounce
processing:
1) All bounces from either a Mass Subscribe or Mass Invite operation should
be unconditionally and immediately sent to the list owner.
There can be many typos in these Mass Subscribe/Invite lists, and the list
owner needs to correct these typos _immediately_. In addition, some of
these mass subscription lists come from paper sign-up lists by foreign
students where the English alphabet is new to them. Trying to decipher
their email addresses can result in 10% typos and bounces, which need
immediate corrections.
2) All bounces should be immediately directed to the list owner if bounce
processing is switched off.
For small lists, it makes the most sense for the list owner to handle
bounces manually. Often he'll know the recipients personally and their new
email addresses, which he can fix himself when they bounce. As it stand
today, there could be 100s of bad addresses on an email list without
anyone's knowledge if bounce processing is off; this is bad design.
Years and years ago (2000, I think), I implemented a script in PHP that
allows us to test whether our server will be able to deliver to an email
address. It's based on some code by Jon S. Stevens <jon(a)clearink.com>
(google that + "validateEmail" and you'll find examples). It first does a
DNS lookup for the MX record, then if that's successful it attempts a
standard SMTP HELO/MAIL FROM/RCPT TO/QUIT sequence and checks for errors in
the mail server's response.
If you have some familiarity with PHP, I'd be happy to send you the version
I wrapped into a function which you could easily loop through. The RFC822
class from PEAR could help process the text file for addresses. Or perhaps
someone here knows more about how to do it in python. Such a utility could
make a slick addition to the admin page in version 3.
There are also commercial tools to do this.
--
David Brown
dave(a)aasv.org ; webmaster(a)aasv.org
-----Original Message-----
[...]
If there's a service or utility that can verify a list of email addresses
(prior to a mass operation), please suggest it.
[...]
