John Levine wrote,
| ... but if they just asked before student-bombing
| us, I expect nobody would have any objection.
Well, I would, but it would be far milder than if they'd gone ahead without
asking.
Having never found a mailing list management package that did things the way
I like, I've always run my lists (of which one and its sublist survive) with
my own routines, and being no programmer I never had enough faith in my
ability to automate a way to tell for sure who was sending a message.
Therefore anything that would edit the membership rolls, such as joining,
quitting, or changing an address, I choose to handle personally.
But that's the only reason. I wouldn't mind either if I had the processes
automated.
So on the one occasion when someone did ask me as a student who had to join a
list for a class, I answered, "If you're actually interested in the topic of
this list and you're willing to commit to remain subscribed for a full month,
all right. But if you're just looking to fulfill your assignment, please
find a list where joining and quitting are automated and do not require
someone else to do the work. In fact, even if you are interested in this
list's topic and you want to read our mail, I would suggest that you also
find a list where joining and quitting are automated, because I suspect that
one goal of the assignment is to show that you can send proper commands to a
bot to get it to do what you want." The student agreed and reamined on the
list until the end of the school year.
