Re: More ideas on a master address database

[Jason L Tibbitts III <tibbs @ hpc . uh . edu>]

>>>>> "BR" == Brock Rozen <brozen@torah.org> writes:

MH> Also it can happen in the pure email side of things that someone looses
MH> an email address with warning. Nice souls that they are they may unsub
MH> (?suspend?) all their accounts and then when their new email address
MH> comes in they will resub (unsuspend?) things.

Dead addresses where confirmation doesn't work will probably require owner
intervention at some point.  (Well, of course it's configurable but if you
want it to make it 'secure', you're going to have to involve the owner in
some cases where confirmation doesn't work.)

BR> Right, 'nomail' essentially makes the account immune to being removed
BR> from bad bounces -- unless that idea of a tracer goes into effect.

The idea of a probe done by periodic posting is one I've investigated.
The infrastructure is already in there, though it could be snazzed up by
keeping a 'last activity date' field somewhere (per-list would be nice for
the owner, and global would be nice for some other things, and both require
one database update for every post).  Then you only send the periodic
message to those who you haven't heard from in a while.

BR> And what's the purpose of uniqueness? What do they possibly need a
BR> userid for that an e-mail address couldn't supplement? Are we looking
BR> at password-protected archives for people who aren't on the list
BR> itself?

I think some are thinking of the latter.  But there's nothing that you
can't with a pseudo-address like 'user@archive', and as such it shouldn't
be an issue now.

 - J<