On 05/05/11 16:37, McLauchlan, Kevin wrote:
....
Here, I'll trot out my own overused story:
I've been a list member on many technical lists, for
many years. A few years ago, my employer implemented
a change in the e-mail system, from initial-plus-family-name
to first-name-dot-last-name as the first part of our
e-mail addresses. There was an overlap of a year,
during which mail to the old address was accepted,
but all outgoing mail switched over to showing the
new version address as sender. Now, try to answer a
confirmation message when the list server doesn't
recognize your current address as the one that
signed up.
Indeed. And sympa claims to cope with that (unlike, I suspect, some list
servers). If you email the 'help' address, also listed at the bottom,
you get back amongst other stuff
UNSubscribe <list> <EMAIL>
* To quit <list>. <EMAIL> is an optional email address, useful if
different from your "From:" address.
as a way to unsubscribe any old address. I assume that the confirmation
request contains a magic number that will be recognised in a
confirmation sent from any address. (I might just try that.)
I'm sure there are other complications that I
haven't thought of. I, too, used to think that
people harranging the list to be released were
just maliciously stupid (trolls), but then I
had my little difficulty and was persuaded to be
more forgiving... at least as a first response.
Maybe. I /still/ think a little AI-like attention to the list could
reduce messages like the 'please unsubscribe' ones by sending an
automated help message. There seems so little point in posting the same
reply to the same query over and over.
--
Mike Scott
Harlow, Essex, England
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