On Monday May 30 2005 15:55, Shachar Shemesh wrote: > Hi all, > > Many many years ago, I subscribed to this fine flame pool, sorry, > mailing list. I was still young at the time, and did not have the habit > of running my own email servers etc. As such, I used my work email > address to subscribe to this list. > > Some years have passed, and I left my work place. I used my own email > server to subscribe to the list from, and am happily (and sometimes less > happily) a member of this community.
What happened to the good old practice of cleaning up the mess when you leave? Not my job (TM) ? > Today, by a sequence of coincidences which I would rather not go into, I > found out a disturbing piece of news. For over four and a half years > now, the IGLU mailing list has been faithfully sending each and every > email to my old work place address. That's right, a copy of each and > every question, hate mail, flame and smart alec piece of advice has been > sent to an email address that dutifully bounced it right back. In over > four and a half years, that is over three thousands bits of useless > email, each followed by a useless bounce. It is dutifully done it's job. Blaming the mistake on the system that never violated any rule it was based on will get you nowhere. Computers don't do what you want them to do, they do what you _tell_ them to do. > Because despite having each and every email bounce, the mailing list > software for Linux-IL did NOTHING. Not unsubscribe the old address, Want me to prove that I could unsubscribe just about anyone with a handful of bounces if that feature was in place? > not notify the admin. Nothing. If i would get a nickel for every false bounce I get nowadays.... > Well, this email address now belongs to someone, and I'm trying to get this > someone unsubscribed. I am wondering, however, how many other dead email > addresses of this kind are there. Our community might be smaller than we > think. I doubt that what really matters for us is the head count value. It's the quality that matters, not the quantity, right? Which reminds me that in ancient Greek myths, there were creatures called Centimani, with 50 heads and 100 hands, but only two legs. Very convenient if you feel lonely or need a partner for a game of chess, but the necessity to vote every time you want to take a walk kills all the fun. > A while back I suggested we upgrade the mailing list software the runs > Linux-il. Then it was due to the annoying "request confirmation" header > that the current software couldn't be told to remove. I'm now wondering > whether I should re-offer this service. I am not by any means abusing the right of the list admin to respond to this later, but in the meanwhile consider the following hearsay: 1) The server hosting linux-il isn't linux-il dedicated, last time I checked it ran at least 36 other mailing lists, some of them academic, with RNG knows how many subscribers. Not to mention that in its free time it serves also as a mail server for a respectable academic institution, which generously agreed to host us, and believe me or not, we generate quite a bit of garbage traffic. 2) The not-so-fresh listar version is heavily patched with some homebrewed code. Enough said. Now for the flame and bitter speculations: The free usage of the word "we" would trigger some alarms in my mind, if I were the list admin, that is. Who are "we"? And what exactly is the aforementioned (free, right?) upgrade service? Are "we" going to rewrite the patches to fit the new version, upgrade the list software, test the new setup for a couple of days (somewhere?), merge it into the system, and then sit near Eli's desk answering phones and emails for the next few weeks until the "unsatisfied user feedback" dies out? ;-) I am sorry, but in that case I personally have a natural trouble to believe that you are serious when offering this service for free. No offense, but it is too generous an offer, to say the least. Or is it my terrible misunderstanding of what inevitably happens when one upgrades a system serving at least a few hundred users, each and every one with a different setup? Murphy's laws are still in place. > In the mean while, please unsubscribe sun kruchit gtek dot co nekuda il > from this list. Can't, sorry. Don't have direct access to the user database. Not to mention that the fact you're posting the request here (for the archive?), obfuscating the address so harvesters (hopefully) can't read it and not mailing the list owner directly puzzles me. I will, however, relay your request if you wish. -- Sincerely Yours, Michael Vasiliev The following statement is not true. The previous statement is true. ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
