Page 37 - Mercury Manual.book

Mailing lists 32
Mailing list settings and options

ferences between these methods). The option you select will enable or disable certain other
options in the dialog.

Errors go to (only in Conventional and Hybrid mode) Enter here the e-mail address to which
any errors arising during delivery of mail to the list should be referred. In Hybrid mode, errors
in normal mail distribution will use this address, but the periodic VERP probe will not.

Errors allowed before error handling occurs (only in VERP mode) Enter here the number of
errors Mercury's VERP handler should allow on any individual address before taking action
against it. By default, Mercury accumulates errors over the life of a subscription, but you can
also tell it that it should zero its error count for a subscription on a weekly or monthly basis.
It is up to you to decide how tolerant of errors you wish to be: if you set this field to zero, any
errors at all will result in action being taken against the subscriber. When errors are accumu-
lated on a weekly basis, each subscriber's error counter is reset on Sunday; similarly, when
monthly accumulation is in force, each subscriber will have his or her error counter reset on
the first day of the month.

When a subscription reaches the error limit... (only in VERP and Hybrid modes) Tells Mer-
cury's VERP handler what action it should take against an address that generates too many
errors. You can either suspend the subscription (which is the same as setting it to NOMAIL -
the subscription is still there and can be reactivated, but will receive no postings from the list
until specific action is taken) or delete the subscription. Note that if you choose to delete the
subscription, no "Farewell" message will be sent to the subscriber, even if you have one de-
fined for the list. In Hybrid mode, there is an assumed error limit of "1" - so, if your periodic
VERP probe message results in an error, the action you define here is taken immediately.
Note: if a subscription is suspended by this action it will remain suspended even if you tell
Mercury to reset its error count periodically: once a subscription is suspended, reinstating it
must be done manually, either by the subscriber or by a list moderator.

Mail a summary of VERP changes to moderators... (only in VERP and Hybrid modes) If you
check this control, Mercury's VERP processor will keep a log of the changes it makes and
will periodically send that log to the list's moderators. All moderators will receive the log, not
just the list's primary moderator. Weekly summaries are sent each Sunday, while monthly
summaries are sent on the first day of each month.

Enable sending VERP subscription probes (only in VERP and Hybrid modes) Checking this
control tells Mercury to generate a periodic message to the list in VERP mode automatically.
In Hybrid mode, any errors resulting from this probe message will be processed immediately;
in VERP mode, this option is useful for lists that do not generate much traffic. By default,
Mercury uses a fairly nondescript template file to generate the probe message, but you can
specify your own template file if you wish - doing this allows you to send out a periodic re-
minder about the list, its subscription and unsubscription processes, etiquette rules or what-
ever and have that reminder do double duty as a VERP probe. If you wish to use your own
template for the VERP probe, type a full path to the template file in the using this template
file field. Weekly VERP probes are send on Wednesdays, while monthly VERP probes are
sent on the fifteenth day of the month.

The Membership Page
This page displays a list of all users currently subscibed to the mailing list. The Status column
contains three letters that indicate a variety of information about the subscriber.

The first character in the status string is one of the following status indicators: