Hi Dave
It does not work well ... 8<-- snip -->8
By your own admission (quote from your post to this thread 19 Jan 2006 -
see above "I've only been here a couple of days") you are a newcomer to
this list and welcome. In which case, unless you have trawled the
archives, you would not know that this issue has been discussed, debated
and argued about innumerable times. For reasons I can't remember and am
too lazy to go back and research, it was not deemed to be possible to
adopt any of the many proposed alternatives.
Even without having gone to look for relevant discussions, it was quite
obvious to me that the present kind of deficient situation will have
generated much discussion in the past. I also realised that it would not
make sense for me to spend much time looking to see if my proposals may
have been among those made and perhaps rejected. To save list members
and unsubscribed questioners a lot of time, and not just in this matter,
it would be helpful to make an FAQ specifically for this list so that
the same things do not have to be proposed/asked and answered many times.
I agree that what we have is far from the ideal, but Chris is right, it
does work quite well. Not in any small part due to the efforts of GRS,
CPH and others, who regularly pick up answers not cc'd to the
non-subscribed poster and forward them on, plus responding those that
have gone unanswered for whatever reason.
As i explained, it can be quite disconcerting, especially for newbies,
to receive multiple forwarded copies of the same answer. Senders are
often expecting an answer from a an OOo address, not from complete
strangers with the strange spam-like subject "moderated". I would hope
that not all list members clog up the list with copies to the list of
copies resent to the senders, so we don't even know how many additional
copies and new answers the senders receive that only go directly to them.
Also, it is evident that at least some of the unsubscribed senders are
unaware that they are not subscribed and even unaware that they are
sending mail to a mailing list. This means that the layout and content
of the webpage they use to discover this list is badly designed.
I also pointed out that it would be easy to automatically add more than
just the (incomprehensible) subject header "moderated" to make it clear
to both the sender and the list members that the sender is not
subscribed and that s/he only gets answers if copies of these are sent
by (preferably only the original!) answerer.
I put forward a proposal earlier in this thread for a web based email
form, which is not difficult to implement (I have created them for sites
I have built), requires no special list software and would go some way
(not completely) resolving this issue.
Do you have a better proposal (not a just complaint about the existing
situation)? If so, put the specific details forward to the webmaster for
consideration.
In addition to the above, concrete proposals - 1) FAQ, 2) better
introductory text on relevant webpages, and 3) automatic explanatory
line about non-subscribed status at beginning of relevant posts - i made
other, concrete improvement suggestions. I was not just complaining.
I also mentioned the need for
4) an automatic question number instead of the senseless "moderated" as
the subject, e.g. "question 12345"
5) a webpage submission system for questions by unsubscribed senders, as
also suggested by you
6) an automatic, separate *short* email in *plain English* without all
the list command and other complicated information explaining to
unsubscribed senders that they will not receive any answers unless list
members know they should and remember to send them copies. This will
encourage many to subscribe and will make things easier for everybody.
I will forward this message to the webmaster for consideration after
having rearranged the order of its contents such that the proposals are
followed by the reasons in case the webmaster wants to and has time to
read these too.
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