On Sun, Mar 12, 2006 at 08:46:38AM -0800, Steve Lamb wrote: > Michael Marsh wrote: > >Because not every user who has a question wants to agree to receive > >hundreds of email messages a day as the price. > > Vacation. Pof, no emails. Imagine that.
I run a few mailing lists for local organizations that I belong to. I frequently get email or in-person requests for help from people who are having trouble with the instructions to either send a message with "subscribe" as the subject[1] or fill out a web form and then, when they receive a subscription confirmation, send it back. Given the frequency of people who have difficulty subscribing[2], do you seriously expect the average person - or even the average Debian user - to be aware that most list management software has a vacation/nomail option present? Unless that knowledge is universal[3], then expecting a significant class of subscribers to turn is on immediately after subscribing is unrealistic and, yes, unfriendly. [1] I'm using Mailman to run these lists, which is smart enough to not care whether the quotes are there or not, so that detail is not the cause of any issues. [2] You said in another of your messages that you've run lists too. If you haven't run into people with difficulty subscribing, then those lists must have only been of interest to significantly-technical people, not the general public or those who wish to become more technical. [3] ...and learning how to turn it on is truly trivial for non-technical subcribers, which, I submit, it is generally not -- The freedoms that we enjoy presently are the most important victories of the White Hats over the past several millennia, and it is vitally important that we don't give them up now, only because we are frightened. - Eolake Stobblehouse (http://stobblehouse.com/text/battle.html) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
