[Mailman-Users] Messages delivered out of order and delayed

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Jim Ziobro writes:

 > Indeed email is not a synchronous messaging channel.  But most
 > email clients will sort incoming messages by header Date thus undo
 > the effects of out-of-order delivery.

That's mostly true.  However, traditionally the first retry was set
for 4 hours after the initial send.  If Dreamhost has such a long
retry delay, that could cause hours of out-of-order and certainly cut
someone out of a hot and heavy discussion.  The problem is that the
first message from a particular sender will be rejected temporarily
and retried after 4 hours, but everything from that sender sent after
15 minutes (typical greylisting delay) will go through the list.  Of
course anybody the sender CC'd will get it immediately, and may reply.
It can be a mess.

Steve

Footnotes: 
[1]  For those who don't know the term: this is an antiabuse device
where the recipient rejects the message with a temporary failure, then
sets a timer for a few minutes, say 15.  If the message is received
again after that, it is accepted.