Mike Scott wrote:
Paul wrote:
....
Obviously this (moderator forced unsub) will only be done under extreme
circumstances since I'm sure everyone will agree that getting users to
understand what they have done and to unsub themselves is still the
preference.
One issue (at least on 'users') is that some subscribed users claim
never to have subscribed. A seeming impossibility, and presumably
they're either /very/ forgetful, or they've shared their email address
with someone.
I've been asking those folks for information about what happened, so far
no result. But I'm afraid there's a real hole there on the OOo side.
Consider the guy who was certain he couldn't unsubscribe because when he
tried to reply to the confirmation message, his mail program would not
accept the "To" address due to the equals sign in it. He'd have had the
same problem with subscribing, but he's one of the ones who apparently
never went through the normal subscription process. My best guess to
date is that there is either another place on the site to subscribe that
skips the confirmation (because the address belongs to somebody who's
registered to the site?), or a way for a third party to intercept and
respond to the confirmation. I suppose a shared address is possible, but
that would imply extremely poor communication between the parties involved.
There is another possibility to deal with the situation. I suggested
on 'users' a while ago (meeting with an unexpected lack of enthusiasm)
that an auto-responder might be constructed (maybe even independently
of the actual lists) that (a) would pick out messages from
unsubscribed users and respond with a likely simple help message plus
further info on using the list, and (b) could pick out any obvious
'please unsubscribe me' messages and send the necessary list unsub
email (obviously the user would still need to confirm this though).
Quite a bit of up-front effort to get going in a responsible way, but
might be beneficial in the longer term. Or am I missing something?
I'm guessing your auto-responder to unsubs would advise them to
subscribe, and to filter list traffic into a separate mailbox so it
doesn't overwhelm their normal mail -- but they often just want an
answer to their specific problem and not any kind of real relationship
with the list. I don't think they'd be likely to follow such advice,
even if they knew how, and many would not. Also, trying to identify
unsub-me messages is pretty easy for people but not nearly so easy for
an automated process, and there are other things that interfere with the
unsubscribe process besides simply not sending the correct unsub
request. (The worst of these is when the subscribed account is unknown
or inaccessible.) I think you'd still have plenty of both problems
(getting messages to unsubbed posters, and failed unsubs), even after
all the work. I'm working up some documentation to discuss here, almost
done.
I will continue to monitor both lists, but no action will be taken until
plenty of discussion has been had.
Let me know if there are any queries.
/paul
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