At 6:05 AM -0500 2/15/2000, Tom Neff wrote:
> * A day after I asked about Escribe.com taking visitors to the Naughton
>Family Picnic, it was back to normal. Someone write me that Escribe had an
>outage. How that takes you to the family picnic I don't know - could there
>still be a rogue nameserver out there?
The site is probably vhosted on a server, and when the server went
spla, the vhosting got confused, and you were seeing someone else's
site on the server for a while.
> * I, too, get occasional messages (sent to the list address, natch) of the
>form "HELP! I have been trying for MONTHS to leave this list" and I have
>zero sympathy for them. How do you spend MONTHS trying to leave a list,
>exactly.
I get them, too. I generally try to cut people some slack for
hyperbole, because at the time they write, they're usually irritated
and/or frustrated. On the other hand, I have been known to ask for
copies of their attempts, since obviously something is wrong and I
need to debug the problem -- but even then, you can ask them to back
up their claim without being overtly confrontative. Either they get
contrite or they get really nasty, and either way, you know how to
deal with them...
> Send the same wrong-address unsub command every day, blink dumbly
>at the "Not a member" response,
No, but give them a break. it's not unusual for them to try it a few
times over a period of time -- not blindly, not every day, but 2-3
times "when they think of it", and then when they talk to you, they
were probably thinking of unsubscribing before they actually tried,
and that tends to get into the mix.
Also don't forget that many of these users are really unclear about
when they're to the list server and when they're talking to a person.
And exactly what a list server is -- when I've backtracked, I've seen
people tryig to have long, enthusiastic conversations with majordomo,
and by the time they get to the postmaster address, are completely
flustered, and don't KNOW that I haven't been watching all their
email all along. Even with all the signposts I try to put up along
the way.
If they're jerks, they still get treated like jerks, but mostly, I
find they're people having a problem, who are frustrated because
something isn't working, have been trying to convince a machine to
give them a lucid answer, and are rattling a cage to try to get a
response other than "command not understood". So I try to be
sympathetic.
> * On the "modem tax" and other hoax/legend/virus letters thing, will all
>list managers reading this PLEASE bookmark the Internet Hoax resources:
>
> http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html
> http://kumite.com/myths/myths/
> http://www.ih2000.net/ira/hoaxes.htm
heck, they're published in the FAQs for my lists. Does it do any
good? I dunno. it's not 100% working, but who knows how many would
ahve been sent that weren't? I do find the occasional public
execution of a perp does wonders, however, to remind others not to
pull the stunt later....
--
Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar
and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'"
