[Mailman-Users] Re: Understanding "nomail"

[Barry A. Warsaw]

>>>>> "CT" == Christian Tismer <tismer at tismer.com> writes:

    CT> Hi Barry,

Hi Chris!

    CT> I have a short question concerning Mailman and "nomail".  12
    CT> out of 145 members of my Stackless list have the "nomail" flag
    CT> set.  I see this flag can be set from the config UI, but I
    CT> also think to remember that mailman sets this flag after being
    CT> unable to deliver emails for a while?

    CT> Now I would like to reach these members and to figure out if
    CT> they are still interested or just don't think of the list
    CT> since they never get any messages. Is it correct to switch
    CT> nomail off for them and send some test message?
    CT> Is it common that people use this flag (so I should
    CT> respect it) or is it more common that Mailman sets it?
    CT> And do these people also get no mailman remainder messages?
    CT> Then it might be likely that they are just nominal members.

    CT> Too much questions to be called "short", but finally it
    CT> is short: How should list admins deal with "nomail"?

Unfortunately, in MM2.0.x, the `nomail' flag has multiple meanings.
It's both the flag users flip to stop receiving mail for a while
(e.g. they're on vacation), and the flag that Mailman's bounce
detector flips if it's seen a lot of bounces from a user.  The admin
can also flip this flag for whatever reason.

In MM2.0.x you can't know why the flag was enabled, so in general I
don't think it's a great idea to just toggle the flag off and start
delivering mail to all your users.  You could write a script that
trolls through the membership, looking for folks with that flag set
and then send them a specific reminder, but that's a fair bit of work.

MM2.1 is, of course, much better.  Not only do you now know exactly
why that flag was flipped, but there's a cron script that you can use
to do the "hey, your subscription is disabled" reminder.  When you
upgrade to MM2.1, anybody who's flag is currently set unfortunately
gets the "unknown" reason for the flag, but you can tell the cron
script to start notifying the unknown-disables and then after X number
of notifications, delete them or whatever you want.

-Barry