[Mailman-Developers] Inactivity deletion of maillist users ?

[Joshua Ginsberg]

Perhaps an interesting compromise might be to add to config.pck a key
"last_post" whose value is a dictionary of email:time 9-tuple pairs.
That way, folks like Erling could write a script to go ahead and do this
fu, and it might be an interesting metric for other purposes as well.

-jag

On Wed, 2006-01-11 at 19:52 -0800, Dan Wilder wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 11, 2006 at 02:56:50PM +0100, Erling Hellenäs wrote:
> > Hi all !
> > 
> > It seems like some kind of automatic unsubscribe would be a nice maillist
> > function. It could relieve much of the burden of keeping the member list up
> > to date from the administrators.
> > 
> > 1.	There could be an inactivity warning after a configurable time of
> > inactivity. If the user doesn't answer, he is automatically unsubsribed.
> > 2.	There could also be a possibility to send an activity check mail to all
> > members. Those who doesn't answer are automatically unsubscribed.
> 
> Personally I'd call that a big nuisance.
> 
> As a long-time lurker on the list, who nonetheless reads it, I'd much
> prefer not to be dropped off just because I have not much to say.  I'd
> expect this is not an uncommon situation.
> 
> Would that fewer people with little to say, would say little, on some
> other lists I have been on.
> 
> Having administered lists of up to 15k subscribers using Mailman, I'll
> also submit that unsubscribing people with legitimate and still-active
> email addresses isn't much of a burden.  Certainly not compared with
> the burdens of 
> 
> - unsubscribing people whose email boxes are no longer there but whose 
>   former ISPs file all identifying marks off the bounce messages, for
>   example, the email address of the intended recipient:
> 
>   From: Postmaster at im.clueless.com
> 
>   Your recent mail to a user at im.clueless.com was not deliverable.
>   Please resend the message.
> 
> - spam, spam, spam, and spam
> 
> - locating and unsubscribing people who can't be troubled to unsubscribe
>   but who instead start submitting anonymous complaints to the likes
>   of SpamCop
> 
> - locating and unsubscribing people who request to be unsubscribed
>   but who are not subscribers, and who are not technically savvy
>   enough to send you all the received headers so you could at least
>   hazard a guess as to the route (forwards, mailing lists subscribed
>   to mailing lists etc) by which the mail reached them
> 
> The check of all members that really helps in my experience is the
> monthly password reminder.  It reminds a lot of people who are not
> interested any longer to unsubcribe, and it elicits bounces from
> inactive mailboxes, most of which are susceptible to diagnosis
> by Mailman's excellent bounce handling.
> 
-- 
Joshua Ginsberg <jag at fsf.org>
Free Software Foundation - Senior Systems Administrator
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