blankety-blank AOL bounces (not accepting mail from...)

Mailman 2.1.1
Apparently AOL has a "feature" that you can use to bounce email from certain senders. See example below. Aoluser123 (email address aoluser123@aol.com) is not accepting mail from jkl@gryphongardens.com who has posted to list abc@gryphongardens.com in this example.
On verped deliveries, this bounce is counted as a bounce for aoluser123@aol.com
On non-verped deliveries, this bounce is returned to list-owner as unrecognized.
While I like the idea of having the aol user bounce off, it's probably not the correct answer. Probably all of these bounces (verped and non-verped) should be silently discarded.
I guess this is a feature request/bug report.
Thanks for a great product!
-Jeff
example bounce------------------------------------------------------------
Received: from omr-d07.mx.aol.com ([205.188.159.13]) by abc.gryphongardens.com with esmtp (Exim 3.36 #1 (Debian)) id 193ep8-0006yg-00 for <abc-bounces@gryphongardens.com>; Thu, 10 Apr 2003 11:22:50 -0500 Received: from air-xb01.mail.aol.com (air-xb01.mail.aol.com [172.20.105.97])by omr-d07.mx.aol.com (v90_r2.6) with ESMTP id RELAYIN9-0410122200; Thu, 10 Apr 2003 12:22:00 -0500 from: Mail Delivery Subsystem <MAILER-DAEMON@aol.com> Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2003 12:17:56 EDT To: <abc-bounces@gryphongardens.com> Subject: Mail Delivery Problem Mailer: AIRmail [v92.17] Message-ID: <200304101222.09MwPKKa18178@omr-d07.mx.aol.com>
Your mail to the following recipients could not be delivered because they are not accepting mail from jkl@gryphongardens.com: Aoluser123

On Thursday, April 10, 2003, at 10:26 AM, Jeff Hahn wrote:
I use verped delivery (with sendmail) and my mailman sees them as bounces.
I tell my AOL users that when they subscribe to a list, they agree to accept mail from the list. If they start generating bounces, they're going to get unsubscribed.
I see this as a feature. AOL is basically broken. I don't see any reason to work around AOL's bugs in mailman.

On a philosophical level, I agree with you completely. On a technical list, I agree with you. On a non-technical list, it's very difficult to enforce.
AOL is basically broken. However, AOL is one of the two 600 pound guerillas in this market/arena. If we decide that we're not going to make adjustments to make Mailman work with AOL (no matter who's "fault" it is), Mailman won't get the critical mass of users necessary to survive.
AOL IS broken. AOL won't change. Do you want to survive or do you want to be right??
-Jeff

On Thursday, April 10, 2003, at 11:09 AM, Jeff Hahn wrote:
many of my lists are non technical. it's simple. someone complains about being unsubscribed, I send them a copy of the bounce and tell them to stop doing it.
I do the same when I get spam complaints from AOL for messages posted to lists. they get unsubscribed, they complain, I point out what they did. If they do it twice, they get unsubscribed permanently.
you haven't read my blog, have you?
AOL will change, if it has to to survive. I plan on surviving no matter what. AOL long ago convinced me to stop bending over backwards to make up for its screwups, though. I spend enough time as list admin trying to teach AOL users how to use the tools AOL gives them properly as it is, something I really appreciate.
-- Chuq Von Rospach, Architech chuqui@plaidworks.com -- http://www.plaidworks.com/chuqui/blog/
The Cliff's Notes Cliff's Notes on Hamlet: And they all died happily ever after
participants (2)
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Chuq Von Rospach
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Jeff Hahn