[evie]

Originally Posted by Wittesea

...I was thinking maybe the system there is sending out the mass emails in "packets" (200 people at a time or something) but if it is doing 'packets' it is doing it in a strange order (not by alphabet if Wings got one and Wittesea didn't, not by post count because mine was high, not by last visit because I was at OBT the day before it broke).... and I can't think of another way that a system would sort the packets... (If it is even set up to do it that way)....

The way mass mailings like these (assuming a mail was sent out to all members of BT and not just to a few addresses that survived the crash) are normally sent out is in packages of several hundred/thousand addresses. If the software is clever (which I will assume for this), it or the sending mail server bundles the addresses by server, eg. all addresses @aol.com are being bundled together and 1 single mail is then sent to that server. So, say 2000 thousand addresses at 20 different places are being sent a mail, the mail server (or even the board software) will create 20 mails with 100 receipients each.

As many of the providers have a maximum no. of receipients per mail (after all, spam is sent out the same way), these, say, 20 mails with 100 receipients are then broken down into chunks the receiving mail server accept, eg. max 50 receipients per mail.

So, in the end, in the example given, 40 mails are sent out with 50 receipients per mail.

For the assumed 50000 members of BT, this would mean quite a few mails.

If there is an error on any of these mails and the receiving mail server rejects a mail, none of the intended receipients in that mail will receive that mail and JL or whoever does the mail admin will receive an error/rejection msg (a bounce msg) instead.
If one of the intended receiving mail servers is down for...hmm...say 3 days...the mail will be rejected and none of the intended receipients in that mail will receive the mail either.

There are a few other problems that can happen which will result in a number of people not receiving the mail or receiving it delayed by several days.

In the case where single mails to everybody are generated, it can take a long time until all mails are sent; I calculate high at maybe 1/2 sec per mail which comes to 25'000 seconds which is several days...ok, I did say I calculated high, in reality a lot more mails could be generated but as I don't know the board software, I chose a high value as sending time.

I don't think that with 50'000 receipients, anybody would take the time and trouble to single anybody out for special treatment...a simple technical explanation is the much more likely reason why some people will or won't receive a mail.

cheers
eve