[Mailman-Users] ISP policies, specifically AOL

[Max Pyziur]

Greetings,

We've been using mailman for almost ten years (thank you). At our peak we 
have run about ten email lists: some discussion-oriented w/ small 
membership, and very low frequency; others that have had higher frequency 
and membership. In addition, two of them have been used to distribute 
monthly newsletters/announcements to a large membership (5,000 to 10,000 
subscribers).

Recently (in the last six months to a year), some ISPs have begun blocking 
these high volume/low-frequency distributions, in particular AOL. While 
AOL emails make up about 10% of the constituency of these lists, for us 
and our lists it is important that distributions reach these subscribers.

It seems that AOL, among others, has insisted on some sort of 
pre-authentication procedures, so that large distributions from servers 
such as ours are effectively whitelisted.

Have other mailman admins encountered these issues?

Is this a foreshadowing of things to come?

Much thanks.

Max Pyziur
pyz at brama.com