[Mailman-Users] Subscriber Concerns With Not Reciving Messages

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

William Agbor Baiyee writes:

 >  I have recently received messages from a few subscribers of a list
 > that I  manage.   I would appreciate any advice regarding how best
 > to proceed with this issue.

1.  If they are reporting non-delivery of messages they sent, *and*
    they use Gmail, *and* other subscribers and/or the archives are
    receiving the posts, this is a Gmail issue.  Gmail discards all
    incoming messages that have the same message ID as a message in
    the Sent folder.  They will reappear as part of the conversation
    if somebody replies to them.  Nothing can be done about this.

2.  Check the membership list.  Each member has a property called "no
    mail", which if set causes Mailman to ignore them when sending
    messages.  This can be set by the members themselves (useful if
    they go on vacation or want to use the address for posting but not
    receiving), or it can be automatically set in the event of several
    delivery failures.  Definitely do this first because it's easy.

    If no-mail is indeed set, turn it back off.  (Don't forget to
    click the "submit all changes" button!)  If it soon gets turned
    back on again, there are problems at their site.  They need to
    consult with their postmaster.

3.  If in step 2 you couldn't find the member, then they subscribed
    using a different address from the one they used to report.  You
    need to find out what their subscribed address is.  They should
    look at a post received in "whole message" mode or "show all
    headers" mode or something like that.  There's no easy way for you
    to check (addresses are alphabetized by mailbox; you'll have to
    read the whole list if you're looking for their display names).

4.  Check your MTA logs for delivery to those members.  You can search
    for their addresses.  If you know which messages they are
    reporting as missing, you can look for specific timestamps.  Find
    out if those messages were delivered to them (a 250 or OK status
    in the log).  If so, it's not your problem; both Mailman and your
    MTA are functioning properly.  If you found them in step 2 but not
    in this step, that's weird.  Come back and report details.

    If you find records of the message being sent but delivery failed,
    that's a problem on their end.  You should probably ask them to
    talk to their postmaster about it.

5.  Ask the members to check their spam folders.  If the missing posts
    are in there, they need to whitelist your list.

6.  If none of the above reveal a reason why they're not getting the
    mail, perhaps your site has been blacklisted.  The big services
    like Gmail and Yahoo all have ways to find out if you've been
    blacklisted, and you should also check the third party "black
    hole" services.

That should be enough to keep you busy for a while. :-)

Steve