On Mon, May 05, 2003 at 08:51:21AM -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote: > On Mon, 5 May 2003, Steven W. Orr wrote: > > Why am I telling you this? Because the mail that I get from Red Hat lists > > routinely contains this stuff. I really have to question the quality of > > the guy (again) who admins the mail at Red Hat. I'm sure he/she is a quality person, just very busy. > > there are some trivial changes regarding RH mailing lists that would > solve one of the more annoying problems -- people trying to > unsubscribe and driving the rest of us freaking bonkers. > > first, any posting with a simple variation on the word "unsubscribe" > should be returned to the sender with detailed instructions on how > to do that. (actually, i thought that had already been done, but > as i still see such messages, apparently, it hasn't. at least, not > thoroughly reliably.) Hi Robert, Actually, yes- this is being done. I set this up (with permission) on the RedHat install list quite a long time ago, expanded it to the RedHat general list, made sure its only sent out once to each person, (discovered that only once doesn't work for lots of "people"), set it back to go out every time. Then added the RH8 and RH9 lists as well as OS:N and k12OSN. By and large it is pretty successful, but there are a few people who still can't follow the instructions. Also it only responds to "unsubscribe" being in the subject line. (and misspellings of unsubscribe). I discovered that there are many legitimate reasons to use the word unsubscribe in an email body posted to the lists and that most of those emails are not coming from people who want to unsubscribe so I removed the filter which looked at the body of the email. The RH install list get the largest number of these requests, many times more than RH general which comes in second. All the other lists get almost none on a comparative basis. Also - you are absolutely right about the changes you are suggesting. They (or things similar to them) have been suggested to the admins in the past and only small changes were made. I'd say keep suggesting it to them, eventually they may be swayed. Send the suggestions in to the "admin" email address for the lists you are targeting. > > also, the trailer on postings should not just say "email list management > information". it should also include the phrase "INCLUDING HOW TO > UNSUBSCRIBE" or some such thing. > > and the actual web page for membership management should make it > *way* clearer how to unsubscribe, not leave the entry buried at > the bottom. > > while, technically, all the info you need to unsubscribe is at the > bottom of every posting, the fact that so many people still have > trouble with it makes it abundantly clear that it could be presented > in a much better way. > > rday > > > > -- > Shrike-list mailing list > Shrike-list@xxxxxxxxxx > https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/shrike-list > -- Jeff Kinz, Open-PC, Emergent Research, Hudson, MA. jkinz@xxxxxxxx copyright 2003. Use is restricted. Any use is an acceptance of the offer at http://www.kinz.org/policy.html. Don't forget to change your password often.
