Is it just me or does this list seem to receive a surprising amount of
messages requesting to be unsubscribed? I belong to over 20 other lists
from a range of (computing-related) fields and this is easily the list
with the highest unsubscription-related traffic from this albeit limited
sample, as exemplified by Mr Considine's repeated plea below.
At the risk of coming across as elitist or starting some kind of
flame-war, I wonder if this is because with the exception of a couple of
multi-platform lists, my other subscriptions exclude MS Windows and MS
Office users by the nature of the OS used (GNU/Linux and *BSD). The
multi-platform lists (with the exception of this one) concern
programming, so are platform generic, but are likely to attract a higher
percentage of "computer-aware" users. OOo users is the one
cross-platform list I belong to that is for the user rather than a
programmer demographic and is also the one most plagued as described.
Is this merely a coincidence? It would be interesting to see whether
that is an experience others can challenge or confirm. I'm not
interested in scoring points, so my concern is really about the
widespread use of computers by so many people who are both novices (by
choice, circumstance, or obliviousness) when it comes to the actual use
of the machine which is also a very powerful - and potentially very
vulnerable - device. For users to be unable to read footers on emails
and then to follow directions ... ?
What I am wondering then is whether or not others can confirm or
undermine my observation that the extent of "unsub me pls" type emails
on the OOo user list is higher than one might expect on a user list. In
my experience on GNU/Linux and *BSD OS related lists, the standard of
community expectations was not only clear, it was also enforced in terms
of (a) how to ask smart questions and (b) basic netiquette. Hence the
archetypal insistence of RTFM (kudos to Mr Meyer's polite suggestion to
RTFF !) and this has generated a culture that tends to self-filter out
the "noise" of users who want to leave a list, but cannot be bothered to
read the footer of each and every email and to follow the direction,
such as a certain percentage of OOo users who appear to be MS based.
The relationship between MS user and computing awareness is the topic of
another discussion perhaps, but not here.
Personally I would suggest that the standard footer be augmented with
the additional notice that all posts with the subject line "unsubscribe
me" is sent post haste to /dev/null . Harsh but fair, cuts down
bandwidth, list noise and solves a request that no-one on this list is
capable of resolving anyway, besides by pointing out what is already
blindingly obvious.
Thoughts?
AG
----- Forwarded Message ----
From: michael considine <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Mon, 5 October, 2009 6:43:29 PM
Subject: unsubscribe
To whom it may concern,
I would like to unsubscribe from this Website. I do not want to receive anymore
Emails thanks.
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