On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 07:55:51 AM +0000, Mike Scott wrote:
> There is another possibility to deal with the situation. I suggested
> on 'users' a while ago (meeting with an unexpected lack of
> enthusiasm) that an auto-responder might be constructed
You were lucky. As far as I know, I was the first to suggest that, and
I suggested the same thing several times from 5+ years ago to 1+ years
ago, spending a LOT of time on it. Some times, I met lack of
enthusiasm. Other times I met some variation of (the following is a
summary, not an actual quote):
> "since *I* have no clue of how email actually works and I'm proud of
> it, it is obvious that what you suggest cannot work. Besides, I have
> lots of empty spare time, so providing support in a way that take
> much more of my time than it would be necessary gives a purpose to
> *my* day. So I won't care if the side effect is to fill the
> mailboxes of all other subscribers with duplicates of each message
> "re-sent to the unsubscribed poster" or endless discussions about
> why this is a sensible way to work"
One year ago I become disgusted enough to unsubscribe. About two
months ago I subscribed again. The very first message I got from
ooo-users was a rant (from one of the very people who in the past had
answered as above my proposals for autoresponders) about "how to deal
with unsubscribed users". I laughed hard for some minutes, then
remained subscribed with this strategy which I highly recommend to
everybody for that specific mailing list:
1) Always cancel without even opening them all new messages with a
subject which doesn't give a CLEAR idea of what the problem is
2) never waste one second to set up (or discuss) client side header
filters or anything like that to figure out who's subscribed and
who isn't. Whenever you answer at ooo-users, ALWAYS send the reply
to both the OP and the list. Period. Given the context, there's
nothing else sensible you may do. Overall, it would also be much
less traffic for everybody than what comes in today.
Note: please don't ask me about the autoresponder. Nothing personal
about you, but for the reasons above, I have *no* intention to spend
one more minute on that. All I had to say is in the archives, just
look for "procmail". The only reason I stepped in is to suggest you
and everybody else not to stress your liver and go for the 2-step
method above instead.
Marco Fioretti
--
OOo4Kids, the OpenOffice for all children... and their parents:
http://stop.zona-m.net/node/42
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