Cave-Surveying Digest, Vol 49, Issue 1

[Olly Betts]

On Thu, Sep 28, 2023 at 01:12:54PM +0000, Graham Mullan wrote:
> How many subscribers are there?

There are 197 addresses, but a significant proportion are set to
"nomail", which is typically because they are no longer valid and
bounce mail which the list software handles by marking them as
"nomail".  Users can also set "nomail" though, e.g. if they
want to be able to post from different addresses without getting
the list mail to each one, or if maybe if they want to pause
the list while away or busy.  The list software now tracks why
"nomail" was set but for older cases it doesn't know, and the
list has existed for a long time so that's the case for many "nomail"
settings.

I can't see how to exactly count the nomail addresses, but from
a quick scan through it looks to be maybe 1/4 to 1/3.  There are
probably more dead addresses though as until today the list hasn't had
enough traffic for ages to trigger enough bounces to detect them -
I suspect we'll have a flurry of that in the next few days.

There may also be a few cases of one person subscribed from multiple
addresses, and some addresses may be no longer valid but configured
to just swallow mail instead of bouncing it.

So I'd guess 100-140 people who will actually see messages is probably a
realistic figure.

> Is it likely that new subscribers can be found?

Maybe people not knowing about the list is the issue, but Wookey has
tried to promote it.  That caused little bursts of new subscribers
but hasn't translated into the list being used more.

If the list is actually useful and being used (and for discussion
for which there isn't a better existing other list) then I'm OK with
doing the admin, but the list probably sees fewer real messages in one
*year* than spam messages in the admin queue in one *week*.

Cheers,
    Olly