mike scott wrote:
On 9 Oct 2008 at 8:54, Barbara Duprey wrote:
<snip>
How about the unsubscribed user case -- did you see any problem there?
I don't understand - if there's no subscription at all, the issue
does not arise.
This is the case where there is a subscription, but it belongs to a
different account that is redirecting traffic (probably maliciously), as
in Chuck Evans' case. To the list, the user who is requesting to *be*
unsubscribed *is* unsubscribed. It's probably a bit clearer in the
original post here. This particular instance may or may not be valid (I
think it is), but the situation is clearly possible. And that's why I'd
like to be able to advise them of a possible course of action for them
to take.
If there's /any/ actual subscription, anyone else attempting to help
undo that could as I see it have potential problems. And especially
with scenarios like Chuck, where yet another party is involved (we
had only Chuck's word that there was ever any problem with a
forwarding address; not that I disbelieve him, but you can picture a
possible scenario.)
By "attempting to help" are you referring only to actually submitting
the indirect unsubscribe ourselves? I only showed that as happening when
the request came from a list subscriber, not in Chuck's kind of case.
For him, the second response would have applied, and although it refers
to the indirect unsubscribe it doesn't submit one. With his later posts,
where he included the gmail account as the one to be unsubscribed, I'd
have referenced that instead of [EMAIL PROTECTED], and the
information about identifying the subscriber would be omitted. So is
there any problem with the amended wording, which does not actually
submit any unsubscribe request in either case?
OTOH it would be perfectly possibly to have a periodic (weekly?
daily?) email on the list with subject "How to unsubscribe from the
openoffice list", containing firstly a 1-line ultra-clear executive
summary ("to get out of here, mail that, and then do this") plus
following more detailed help in case that's not enough for any
reason. Regular readers could just filter it out; others would see it
as a regular reminder of exactly how to leave should they wish.
Here you're apparently saying that providing the same information, but
without its being personalized in any way, is perfectly OK There's
already a general-purpose message at the bottom of most posts with
instructions about unsubscribing (or getting a more detailed help
message, which includes the indirect unsubscribe info). The only reason
this kind of repeated message could be more effective than the message
trailer is that it basically demands attention. And I'm not sure that is
a good thing, because I think to have any chance it would have to be
frequent (at least daily), so somebody sees it nearly as soon as they
recognize they want to unsubscribe (maybe because they're tired of
seeing it? :-) ). So the rest of us -- thousands, tens of thousands? --
would probably set up filters to get rid of it, which seems like a lot
of effort for what may be almost no return, and is an after-the-fact
action; the traffic has already occurred. Sounds pretty irritating for
people just checking out the list, too, who may not know or care about
filters. They may interpret it as "Wow, there sure must be a lot of
people who want to unsubscribe and can't!" -- not really the message we
want to send.
(By the way, "1-line" and "ultra-clear" are not especially compatible --
I tried to be concise, though! If you have better wording, please
provide it here so we'll all see it. I just put up a "straw man" to help
clarify what we can/should do with these requests, I'd be very happy to
see.something better.)
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