[PW] bounce messages

[John Franklin]

Yes, unfortunately, the old server is still sending out unsubscribe  
warnings.

Our gracious hosts at Project Gutenberg (who do our mail distribution  
for free) have moved us off of that server, readingroo.ms, but that  
doesn't mean they have stopped all list distribution from it. They  
have a number of other lists which run there. Unfortunately, thanks  
to our custom setup, removing the lists from the server is not quite  
straightforward. (If you go to "lists.project-wombat.org", you see  
only our lists. But if you go via whatever other URL is used, you see  
only the other lists. Something about the way that was done breaks  
Mailman's ability to deal with list deletion, apparently.) It's  
hardly fair to ask for something which might jeopardize the other  
lists there, so until our list administrator has a "eureka" moment,  
the old lists are still there.

Since the old server's lists are basically twiddling their thumbs,  
the various counters which Mailman maintains are gradually counting  
upwards to the values which set off errors. That includes the counter  
telling the server how many times it has failed to contact an  
individual address. Once it reaches the critical value, it fires off  
a message telling the addressee that they have been unsubscribed. For  
some reason, even though it can't contact most people normally, these  
error messages have no problem getting through.

As mentioned before, if you can see the message's headers, any  
reference to "readingroo.ms" means the message is from the old server  
and you can ignore it. (In fact, if you ignore it, your address will,  
after three weeks, be removed from the old server, so you shouldn't  
see another of these fake messages.)

If you can't see the headers, just wait and see if you keep getting  
messages from the list. Obviously, if you're still getting messages,  
you haven't really been unsubscribed.

Sooner or later, the problem will be completely resolved, one way or  
another; our administrator may figure out how to remove the lists  
from the old server entirely, or the old server may just finally  
unsubscribe us all.

-John Franklin

On Jan 31, 2007, at 11:29 AM, cvj at hcvco.com wrote:

> Again, those of you still receiving bounce messages, if you will  
> check the
> header, you will find a line that looks much like this:
>
> Received: from mail.readingroo.ms (localhost [127.0.0.1])
>      by mail.readingroo.ms (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8F20E56C08B;
>
> THAT IS THE --OLD-- HOST
>
> _______________________________________________
> Project Wombat
> list at project-wombat.org
> http://www.project-wombat.org/