Bounce Handler Decay Rate

[JohnA]

For "Decay Rate" in Bounce Handler, it says: -

All addresses that currently have a score on the Bounce Scorecard will be lessened by the Decay Rate, each time a mass mailing is sent to the mailing list. This helps make sure temporary problems do not inadvertantly remove addresses from your list permanently.

Which is fine. However, as my mailings are personalised with template / profile variables, instead of sending a test to myself I actually send a message, but use the "partial mailing list sending" to send it to only myself as a subscriber of the list (so that I can see the profile fields are working OK).

So, my question is when I send these "test" mailings (which are actual messages to the list, but filtered to only me) does this trigger the decay rate on the Bounce Scorecard? Or is the score per email only decayed if that address is included in a mailing?

Obviously if it's the first that's a problem for me as my "test" messages will pretty much wipeout any scores, but if it's the latter that's great news :)

[justin]

Not sure what may be the problem, but the decay rate is only going to affect email addresses that already have a bounce score, if you're sending to an address that you know is good, it shouldn't create a score to begin with, correct?

Or, are you asking, if test messages, make that decay rate trigger, for everyone on your bounce scorecard, when you send out a test message?That's a good question, what do you observe?

[JohnA]

Or, are you asking, if test messages, make that decay rate trigger, for everyone on your bounce scorecard, when you send out a test message?That's a good question, what do you observe?

Yes, this is what I mean. When I send a "test" message to myself (by filtering to only me and actually sending a list message, so that profile fields are processed correctly) I don't want the decay to trigger for any addresses in the scorecard, as I might send out 2, 3 or more "tests" and if each one decayed all scores by 1 each time then it would quickly wipe them out undoing all the bounce handler's good work.

I haven't observed anything (yet), as I just sent a message out and have a few hundred bounces, and don't really want to "test" another if it's going to decay them. I have another mailing to go out next week and I guess there'd be no great loss if I "test" that and see what happens. Most of my bounces are "soft" anyway so they're only scoring 1 each.

Ideally addresses in the scorecard would only decay if they were included in a mailing (i.e. not affected by my tests). Or, have a "test value" for profile fields so that they would be seen in genuine test mailings (or is this what the fallback value is?).

[justin]

Ideally addresses in the scorecard would only decay if they were included in a mailing (i.e. not affected by my tests). Or, have a "test value" for profile fields so that they would be seen in genuine test mailings (or is this what the fallback value is?).

Ideally, yes, I think currently, everyone gets a decay.

[JohnA]

Back to my initial problem....I don't know if it's because I recently did a minor upgrade or maybe it was always like that, but if the test email is actually a subscriber then Dada does reference and use any profile fields found for it.

So not so much an issue any more :)

[justin]

Back to my initial problem....I don't know if it's because I recently did a minor upgrade or maybe it was always like that, but if the test email is actually a subscriber then Dada does reference and use any profile fields found for it.

Good question - it should magically, because that seems to be expected - and how cool would that be? but I'm not sure it actually does - I'll put that on my TODO list.

[JohnA]

Back to my initial problem....I don't know if it's because I recently did a minor upgrade or maybe it was always like that, but if the test email is actually a subscriber then Dada does reference and use any profile fields found for it.

Good question - it should magically, because that seems to be expected - and how cool would that be? but I'm not sure it actually does - I'll put that on my TODO list.

That's what I'm saying - I think it DOES already do that. Must be magic :)

[JohnA]

Back to this as I've just done a few more tests, and it seems the decay rate is triggered when any test email is sent.

1) When the "Send a Test Message" button is used and

2) When "Send Mass Mailing" list is used, but the list is filtered using partial mailing list sending. The decay is triggered for all addresses, even if they're not included in the mailing.

(2) isn't so much a big deal as I rarely do that, but (1) is quite a bug as I always send at least 2 test messages before each mailing, and so the bounce list is decayed twice (which usually removes everything in it - I have soft bounces as scoring 2 and a decay rate of 1).

This is using Dada 5.1.1 Stable, looking at release notes it doesn't seem to be listed in the bugfixes to the current version.

[justin]

Looks like this is true . It's easy to fix the problem with Test Message decaying the score. In dada/DADA/Mail/Send.pm file, find this sub -

Code: Select all

sub _adjust_bounce_score {
   
   my $self = shift;
   
   if($self->list_type eq 'list') {
      # If we need to, let's decay the bounce scorecard:
      if($self->{ls}->param('bounce_handler_decay_score') >= 1){
         #if(the bounce handler is enabled for this){ (which currently, there is no "off" for the bounce handler...
            require DADA::App::BounceHandler::ScoreKeeper;
            my $bhsk = DADA::App::BounceHandler::ScoreKeeper->new({-list => $self->{list}});
               $bhsk->decay_scorecard;
            undef $bhsk;
            return 1;
         #}
      }
   }

}



You can just add another test to see if this is a live mass mailing, or a test mass mailing:

Code: Select all

sub _adjust_bounce_score {
   
   my $self = shift;
   
   if(
      $self->list_type eq 'list'
    && $self->mass_test != 1
   ) {
      # If we need to, let's decay the bounce scorecard:
      if($self->{ls}->param('bounce_handler_decay_score') >= 1){
         #if(the bounce handler is enabled for this){ (which currently, there is no "off" for the bounce handler...
            require DADA::App::BounceHandler::ScoreKeeper;
            my $bhsk = DADA::App::BounceHandler::ScoreKeeper->new({-list => $self->{list}});
               $bhsk->decay_scorecard;
            undef $bhsk;
            return 1;
         #}
      }
   }

}


I'm not sure of the best way to solve, #2, as there's no efficient way to query what addresses are filtered, and which addresses have bounce scores.

[JohnA]

Excellent, thanks Justin :)

#2 is not such a big deal...I can live with that!