A few weeks ago I mentioned a group email that was being sent out to all members of the old WikiStudent. I thought everyone (even non-subscribers to the newsletter) should know why the site was down and what’s happening.
Well, today I finally sent out the last batch of mails. What a relief! (I have to stagger the mails. I wish I could send out thousands of emails with just one click, but I can’t). Every day I’ve been running this mailer and watching the bounces and out-of-office replies stream in. (By the way, it’s amazing how many people use their work email to register, and then leave the company).
It is important for me to know which email addresses bounce and then never email them again. If I do repeatedly massmail stacks of invalid addresses I become flagged as a spammer and my IP gets blacklisted, so this is a vital cleanup task!
7% of members’ email addresses bounced. This might not sound like much, but it is several hundred email addresses! My original idea was to delete these members from the database. (If a user never logged in, never contributed, and their email doesn’t work anymore, I think I’m justified in removing them from the site).
Things have changed though, and I no longer need this ‘database cleanup’ anymore because the new site will be using a new database. Yes, I’m starting afresh with a new CMS (MediaWiki) and no member profiles will be carried across. You’ll have to register again - with a vaild address please 
I made people re-register every year in the past when I re-did the site, and I’m going to do it one more time!
Tags: Statistics