On Fri, 2003-09-26 at 12:45, Greg Stark wrote:
That sounds great, except I'm subscribed to 183 lists, mostly low volume. Periodically I get interested in some project I put aside long ago, check my mail folder for it and discover I've stopped receiving messages months ago. That sucks.
Agreed.
I don't see why using a message with known content is any more of a "negative" test than basing the decision on list messages with unknown content. If you get a bounce from a probe you disable the recipient. That's as much a positive test as looking for bounces.
Let me see if I understand your proposal then:
Once your bounce score reaches a certain level, you don't get disabled, but you get on a "hello? are you there" list.
We probe your address for a while, and if we get a bounce, then we disable you and do the normal notifications for reinstatement.
If we /don't/ get a bounce from you for, what? X number of days, what happens? We send another probe and don't disable you? The probe could contain a message similar to the reinstatement message so that you could stop the probes, but otherwise, how long do we keep sending probes? I don't necessarily trust that we can send only one, but OTOH I don't want to fill up your inbox with probe messages.
-Barry