Babylon3k

I'd really love to see some automated method to handle email bounce backs. It's a problem which everyone comes across, and the larger a community becomes the bigger the problem. While we can manually update every single user when their email address becomes invalid, sorting through every Delivery Failed message can eventually become a timely process. I believe having a standard, automated method would encourage usage, and go a small way to helping reduce the amount of wasted mail traffic out there.

If such a feature was implement, I think the implimentation would need to be carefully chosen by the general level of customisation would roughly follow:

1) Ability to set threshold at which point a user's email is marked is invalid. Perhaps 3 bounced emails by default

2) Different actions possible to apply to a user when their address becomes invalid. Examples:
a) Account marked to receive no further emails
b) Account usergroup changed to email verification

2a seems a friendlier way to handle the process, as it doesn't completely remove their posting rights which may be frustrating, but it would cause any email designated/generated for that user to stay in some kind of IPB mail queue. Or for the email to not be generated at all. The user would be notified of the need to update their email address by, for example, a strip along the top of each page.

I think this offers a fair choice for communities who want to completely enforce someone having a valid email address at all time, and communities who would simply prefer not to continue sending emails to addresses which have become defunct.

I know processing bounce backs for validity would be complicated (perhaps certain tracking headers, and hope they're actually bounced back entirely), but it's a feature I've wanted to see for a long, long time in all community software solutions out there.

I'd really love to see some automated method to handle email bounce backs. It's a problem which everyone comes across, and the larger a community becomes the bigger the problem. While we can manually update every single user when their email address becomes invalid, sorting through every Delivery Failed message can eventually become a timely process. I believe having a standard, automated method would encourage usage, and go a small way to helping reduce the amount of wasted mail traffic out there.

If such a feature was implement, I think the implimentation would need to be carefully chosen by the general level of customisation would roughly follow:

1) Ability to set threshold at which point a user's email is marked is invalid. Perhaps 3 bounced emails by default

2) Different actions possible to apply to a user when their address becomes invalid. Examples:
a) Account marked to receive no further emails
b) Account usergroup changed to email verification

2a seems a friendlier way to handle the process, as it doesn't completely remove their posting rights which may be frustrating, but it would cause any email designated/generated for that user to stay in some kind of IPB mail queue. Or for the email to not be generated at all. The user would be notified of the need to update their email address by, for example, a strip along the top of each page.

I think this offers a fair choice for communities who want to completely enforce someone having a valid email address at all time, and communities who would simply prefer not to continue sending emails to addresses which have become defunct.

I know processing bounce backs for validity would be complicated (perhaps certain tracking headers, and hope they're actually bounced back entirely), but it's a feature I've wanted to see for a long, long time in all community software solutions out there.