At 3:06 PM -0400 10/20/2001, Ronald F. Guilmette is rumored to have typed:
> First on the list is the question of the handling
> of non-bounce automatically-generated replies, e.g. from autoresponders.
> In the context of mailing list administration, would it be best to
> consider autoresponder messages as being functionally equivalent to
> non-deliverable bounce messages, or as functionally equivalent to
> ordinary non-bounce messages, or as neither of the above (i.e. a
> third and separate category, all by themselves).
Any of my subscribers who are daft enough to send an autoresponder
(vacation or otherwise) to a mailing of bulk or list precedence are
immediately unsubscribed with a canned note explaining the reason with
suggestions on how to fix the damaged autoresponder and a welcome to
resubscribe AFTER the autoresponder is fixed (yeah, I wrote a script to do
it, I'm not that in love with manual labor); so I don't even give them the
2/4/6/8/whatever-strikes-your-done that 500-level errors receive. Of
course, most folks here aren't so draconian, but I'm more interested in s/n
ratios than raw subscriber numbers, so I can afford to dump idiots with
brain-dead autoresponders.
Charlie
