[Mailman-Users] Posting problems to all users of our mailing list...

[Mark Sapiro]

Troy Cranford wrote:
> 
>It got to the point where I just switched web hosts (now bluehost.com) to
>see if we could resolve the problem.  Now I seem to get better coverage of
>the 550 users and, in fact, am now sending to some of the users that were
>not getting our posts before but I'm still not hitting everyone.
> 
>Any ideas from ANYONE would be greatly appreciated.  My web host's support
>is next to useless but if someone has something for me to ask I'll send in
>the support request.


I assume you've checked that everyone is a non-digest subscriber and
that all have delivery enabled (fairly easy to check from the list
roster page, at least for non-hidden members).

What I would do, if I can't see logs and might not be able to get
support to look at them for me is on the bounce processing page, make
sure that bounce_processing is on and all the notifications are on
(and make sure I have a valid 'owner' e-mail so I'll get the
notifications). Then set bounce_score_threshold to 0.5. This will make
the first bounce disable the user (or send a probe to disable the
user). The owner will be notified and receive a copy of the bounce.
Then, after a day or two, set the bounce_score_threshold back to a
reasonable value and re-enable the disabled users.

What this accomplishes is it gets you a copy of the bounce notice for
each mail user that bounced, and you may then use that information to
follow up on why.

Some other general thoughts.

How do you know who's not getting the mail? This is generally not easy
to determine reliably. Even when people complain that they didn't get
something, it isn't always true.

ISPs do lots of things with mail besides delivering it or rejecting it.
Some ISPs will just silently discard mail they don't like. Thus in
these cases, you won't see a bounce and the recipient won't see the
mail and the ISP may not admit that this has happened. ISPs tend to
think that it's to their advantage to protect their users from spam
even if it means discarding some desired mail.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <msapiro at value.net>       The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan