On Friday, November 8, 2002, at 02:35 PM, J C Lawrence wrote:
Writing as an admin: Yes, I like and want the monthly reminders and II rank the usefulness of these things this way:
don't want them any less frequent. Why? I'm fairly convinced that they
save me from, "unsubscribe me!" messages.
1) unsubscribe/help information in the footer of every message.
2) regular postings.
3) the List-* headers (because they're new, people don't expect them, and MUA's don't make them easily available yet. Long term, they're the answer, once everyone buys into them)
I'd argue it's more likely the footer for discussion lists. I did some experimenting with regular postings a few years ago (way pre-mailman), and found that there wasn't much difference between posting bi-weekly, monthly, and not at all, at least in terms of helping the casual user. They don't keep a copy of it, so it's never there when they want it (so they simply blat at the list). And the more often you post it, the more likely people simply tune it out as noise. That's one reason why I started experimenting with footer language instead, and pre-mailman, simply stopped sending regular postings. It just seemed like they were mostly bit-bucketed.Certainly my rate of such messages has collapsed since I moved to mailman, and I've a burst of unsubscribes every month immediately after the reminders go out.
Where they come in handy, I think, are digest users and lists with infrequent postings. the busier a list, the less the monthly posting probably matters. The less frequently a list is used, the more it's useful just as a "hi, rmember us?" thing, since people can get out of the habit of using a mail list. But it also is a reminder to them they'd meant to unsubscribe...
Personally, I think monthly is "about right". I'm not ready to do away with them, especially since 2.1 can hook the bounce systme into them. but I'm still unsure just what good they do, either.
--
Chuq Von Rospach, Architech
[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- http://www.plaidworks.com/chuqui/blog/
Yes, I am an agent of Satan, but my duties
are largely ceremonial.
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