Jeffrey Goldberg asked, | As someone else asked, I'd be curious to know what circumstances lead list | managers to make us of this feature (or similar practices with other | MLMs).
There are a number of possibilities. Requiring renewals reduces the CPU use and bandwidth of sending the list to people who aren't reading it any more for reasons such as these: 1. they have lost interest but haven't bothered to un5u65cr16e; 2. they set up filters to bit-bucket the list instead of un5u65cr16ing; 3. they want to un5u65cri6e but can't follow the directions, so they just ignore the list and delete their copies of list distributions; 4. their sysadmins are bit-bucketing the list because they think it's spam or because they don't want non-business use of company email, and the member thinks the list just dried up and never said anything to you; 5. their addresses are undeliverable but a non-compliant or malfunctioning transport is failing to send you bounce notices; 6. they went into nomail or vacation mode, forgot about the list, and never went back to normal delivery [OK, no copies are being sent to such people, but they'll either get out of vacation mode and read the list again or let you clean their names out of the list rolls]; or any of many other possibilities. Invariably there will be members who ignore the renewal request and then weeks or months later ask you whether the list shut down or why they were kicked off. Unless the list is all techies or net.veterans, there will also be people who can't understand the renewal request and ask you what it means and why you're threatening to kick them off. So not a lot of lists have such policies. One thing for sure: any list that sells advertising space and needs to brag about its membership figures will never, never require renewals. [You'll be lucky if it lets you un5u6.] I have run only two renewals. For both, I sent reminders after ten and twenty days to those who had not yet responded; still, true to form, some ignored the original renewal request and both reminders, got dropped, and wrote to me a month or so later wondering why they weren't getting the list any more. One happened when Hotmail was rumored to be ashcanning a lot of mail, and the list had had no posts from any members at Hotmail addresses in a long time, so I required all members at Hotmail addresses to answer what was essentially a renewal notice. Only a handful responded and remained on the list. In the other case, I made a significant policy change that, I felt, was so different from the previous policy that it needed the consent of each member to stay on the list under it, so I gave all members a month to consent to the new rule or to be un5u66ed with my best wishes. About 2/3 of the members consented; of those who did not reply, I do not know how many zoned out [except for the two who wrote after the response period ended to wonder what happened to their su65criptions], how many blew it off as just not interesting any more, and how many actively disagreed with the new policy and quietly chose to be dropped (nobody actually wrote to say, "No thanks; I disagree with the new policy"). I think one person quit during that time, and (s)he did not say why, so maybe it was the new policy or maybe it wasn't.
