Procedural Note: Deleting Addresses from the List

[Koontz John E]

Recently certain subscribers' addresses have begun to generate messages
in response to postings on the list indicating that they are no longer
valid.  In such cases I have deleted the offending email address from the
list of recipients of the list.

This is something of a new development.  In the good old days addresses
mostly disappeared fairly soundlessly.  For example, the late Ken Hale is
still subscribing to this list, and MIT has never even complained that his
mailbox is getting full.  As a result, in deference to his unexpressed
wishes and with the implicit concent of MIT I have continued his
membership.  Perhaps MIT has found a way to forward mail into the
hereafter.

I suspect this new development of closing accounts audibly is a result of
greater care being paid to email management in these days of rampant spam
and malware.

In any event, I thought I ought warn the remaining members that if their
mail service assures me several times that their address is invalid, I
will delete them from the list.  The problem is that in these cases I
can't very well inform them that I have done this.  So I don't.  If they
happen to still be there and notice that the list is awfully quiet, I
recommend they look at the list archive at http://www.linguistlist.org to
see if there have been recent posts.  They can also email me asking if
things hae been quiet.  If the silence turns out to be only local and they
wish to rejoin the list, I will be happy to add any address, old or new,
that the subscription program believes to be valid.

Note that I do not delete addresses that are merely reported by the CU
mail service to be non-functioning.  Ths generally only means that there
is some temporary problem with the member's mail service.  These temporary
problems have been known to go on for a very long time, but I try to wait
them out.  I seem to recall a time (long) before the Siouan list when
email in much of Poland was out for a month or more, and I keep that
example in mind.

I do delete functioning addresses if they go on for some time informing me
that the mailbox is full.  I try to wait this out, too, but, especially
with free mail services like hotmail.com, I don't wait forever.
Apparently MSN is now less tolerant with untended hotmail addreses, too.
Several of the defunct addresses recently have been hotmail addresses.

Note also that I now employ a sort of Turing Test on prospective new
members of the list.  Any email address that can convince me that it has a
linguistic bent and is of sound mind is admitted.  A surprising number of
applications come from invalid addresses or fail to respond.  Some of
these may be very timid or private Siouanists who are not sure of their
email addresses, but I think most of them have been spam or attempts to
connect the list to a spam source.  One or two have really just wanted
lessons in Lakota and were referred elsewhere.

JEK