Thread: Unsubscribe
Please unsubscribe me! Thank you! Also, it would be better to have a message foot saying how to unsubscribe.
On Wed, Oct 04, 2006 at 10:03:00 +0200, Luc Delgado <luc.delgado@aveyron.chambagri.fr> wrote: > > Please unsubscribe me! Thank you! If you really can't figure out how to unsubscribe from a list, you should contact the list owner, not the list. The list members can't unsubscribe you (and it isn't their job to) and the owner may not be subscribed to the list. The convention for lists is that adding '-owner' to the local part of the list email address will be an address for the owner. A good place to search to find out how to unsubscribe to a list is to search for the mailing lists using google. Usually the information on how to subscribe and unsubscribe are in the same place and you were able to find out how to subscribe in the first place, so you should be able to figure out how to unsubscribe by yourself as well. > > > Also, it would be better to have a message foot saying how to unsubscribe. No, the standard is that the list information is kept in the headers so that it can be extracted by mail clients that care to. There is an RFC describing these headers. They are supplied by the mailing list software used for the Postgres mailing lists. Have your mail client display full headers for one of the list messages to get the instructions from there.
Bruno Wolff III wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 04, 2006 at 10:03:00 +0200,
> Luc Delgado <luc.delgado@aveyron.chambagri.fr> wrote:
>> Please unsubscribe me! Thank you!
>
> If you really can't figure out how to unsubscribe from a list, you should
> contact the list owner, not the list. The list members can't unsubscribe you
> (and it isn't their job to) and the owner may not be subscribed to the
> list.
Although I 100% agree with you Bruno, it should be noted that our lists
are a closed box for most people. They don't follow what is largely
considered standard amongst lists which is to have list information at
the bottom of each e-mail.
It is ridiculous that this community expects people to read email
headers to figure out how to unsubscribe from our lists.
> The convention for lists is that adding '-owner' to the local part
> of the list email address will be an address for the owner.
> A good place to search to find out how to unsubscribe to a list is to search
> for the mailing lists using google. Usually the information on how to subscribe
> and unsubscribe are in the same place and you were able to find out how
> to subscribe in the first place, so you should be able to figure out how
> to unsubscribe by yourself as well.
Nobody should have to work that hard to unsubscribe.
>
>>
>> Also, it would be better to have a message foot saying how to unsubscribe.
Yes, it definitely would.
>
> No, the standard is that the list information is kept in the headers so that
> it can be extracted by mail clients that care to. There is an RFC describing
> these headers. They are supplied by the mailing list software used for the
> Postgres mailing lists. Have your mail client display full headers for one
> of the list messages to get the instructions from there.
Who the heck cares what the RFC says. The RFC is irrelevant if the mail
clients don't support it. The clients that are most widely in use, do
not support unsubscribing from lists via the email headers.
Joshua D. Drake
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
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> match
>
--
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To be a bit constructive, could it be an idea to add unsubscribe information as one of the standard tailer tips? Then unsubscribe info wouldn't appear in every mail, but often enough for people considering to unsubscribe. To be totally non-constructive, let me add a bit to the noise below: [Bruno] > > If you really can't figure out how to unsubscribe from a list, you should > > contact the list owner, not the list. The list members can't unsubscribe you > > (and it isn't their job to) and the owner may not be subscribed to the > > list. If he can't find out how to unsubscribe from the list, how can he be expected to figure out the owner address? [Joshua] > It is ridiculous that this community expects people to read email > headers to figure out how to unsubscribe from our lists. I always check the headers when I want to unsubscribe from any mailing list, and I think most people on this list have above average knowledge of such technical details. Of course, on a list with this many recepients there will always be some exceptions ...
This seems to be the nearly unanimous response to people posting an unsubscribe request to the postgres mailing lists. I emphatically agree with the argument - people should know better than that, and the information included in the e-mail headers should be more than sufficient. Every conceivable avenue of discovering how to unsubscribe, other than the list software attaching a footer on each e-mail, is available to pursue.
I also don't care about that argument in this situation. People ignorantly posting an unsubscribe to the list get this kind of response because it's an annoyance to the list users, not necessarily because we care about educating that particular person. The posts obviously don't help future unsubscribers who aren't willing to track the information down anyway. We should be addressing this from the standpoint of what benefits long-term list users the most. The real question is: which is more annoying to list users, the occasional unsubscribe posted to the list (with accompanying responses), or a one-line footer on each post providing a link to unsubscribe instructions?
Bruno Wolff III wrote:
I also don't care about that argument in this situation. People ignorantly posting an unsubscribe to the list get this kind of response because it's an annoyance to the list users, not necessarily because we care about educating that particular person. The posts obviously don't help future unsubscribers who aren't willing to track the information down anyway. We should be addressing this from the standpoint of what benefits long-term list users the most. The real question is: which is more annoying to list users, the occasional unsubscribe posted to the list (with accompanying responses), or a one-line footer on each post providing a link to unsubscribe instructions?
Bruno Wolff III wrote:
On Wed, Oct 04, 2006 at 10:03:00 +0200, Luc Delgado <luc.delgado@aveyron.chambagri.fr> wrote:Please unsubscribe me! Thank you!If you really can't figure out how to unsubscribe from a list, you should contact the list owner, not the list. The list members can't unsubscribe you (and it isn't their job to) and the owner may not be subscribed to the list. The convention for lists is that adding '-owner' to the local part of the list email address will be an address for the owner. A good place to search to find out how to unsubscribe to a list is to search for the mailing lists using google. Usually the information on how to subscribe and unsubscribe are in the same place and you were able to find out how to subscribe in the first place, so you should be able to figure out how to unsubscribe by yourself as well.Also, it would be better to have a message foot saying how to unsubscribe.No, the standard is that the list information is kept in the headers so that it can be extracted by mail clients that care to. There is an RFC describing these headers. They are supplied by the mailing list software used for the Postgres mailing lists. Have your mail client display full headers for one of the list messages to get the instructions from there.
-- Nolan Cafferky Software Developer IT Department RBS Interactive nolan.cafferky@rbsinteractive.com
> [Joshua] >> It is ridiculous that this community expects people to read email >> headers to figure out how to unsubscribe from our lists. > > I always check the headers when I want to unsubscribe from any mailing > list, and I think most people on this list have above average knowledge > of such technical details. Of course, on a list with this many > recepients there will always be some exceptions ... I would consider myself above average knowledge of such technical details and I didn't know the list information was in the headers until recently (the last time all of this came up). Now, I of course did know that there were headers, and I can use them to diagnose problems but I was unaware of an RFC that explicitly stated how the headers were supposed to be sent for mailing lists. However, that is besides the point. It is still ridiculous to expect anyone to read the headers just to unsubscribe from a list. If we didn't want to add it for each list we could just add a link here: http://www.postgresql.org/community/lists/subscribe Sincerely, Joshua D. Drake -- === The PostgreSQL Company: Command Prompt, Inc. === Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564 || 24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240 Providing the most comprehensive PostgreSQL solutions since 1997 http://www.commandprompt.com/
> I also don't care about that argument in this situation. People
> ignorantly posting an unsubscribe to the list get this kind of response
> because it's an annoyance to the list users,
Over time especially now, we will see many more "users" versus
"developers". Most "users" will never know how (nor should they have to)
read email headers.
> benefits long-term list users the most. The real question is: which is
> more annoying to list users, the occasional unsubscribe posted to the
> list (with accompanying responses), or a one-line footer on each post
> providing a link to unsubscribe instructions?
Good point, because I guarantee you every time someone pulls this
elitist dung about email headers, I am going to step in and say something.
So if you want to shut me up, lets get the footer added.
Joshua D. Drake
--
=== The PostgreSQL Company: Command Prompt, Inc. ===
Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564 || 24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240
Providing the most comprehensive PostgreSQL solutions since 1997
http://www.commandprompt.com/
> If we didn't want to add it for each list we could just add a link here: > > http://www.postgresql.org/community/lists/subscribe +1 When I want to unsubscribe from a list (very rare in my case, I don't subscribe in the first place if I'm not sure I want to get it), I start by looking where I subscribed... so the above suggestion might work quite well even for lazy subscribers, they'll have their unsubscription info right where they started the subscription process, no more searching needed. Cheers, Csaba
On Wed, Oct 04, 2006 at 08:30:03 -0700, "Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote: > > Although I 100% agree with you Bruno, it should be noted that our lists > are a closed box for most people. They don't follow what is largely > considered standard amongst lists which is to have list information at > the bottom of each e-mail. There are reasons you don't want to do that. Footers work OK for single part email messages. They don't make so much sense in multipart messages. You can probably take a crap shoot and add the footer to the first text/plain part and not break things. This won't work so well for multipart alternative messages that have text/plain and text/html parts. You could also try to insert a footer in to the html part, but thats a bit trickier since you can't just put it at the end. However, since the postgres lists are mostly just using text/plain parts for message bodies and there are already footers being used to distribute tips, it wouldn't make things significantly worse to add unsubscribe information as well. I would prefer just making the unsubscribe instructions easy to find on the web.
On Wed, 04 Oct 2006 09:00:45 -0700 "Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote: > So if you want to shut me up, lets get the footer added. Of course, that doesn't fix the problem 100%. I am on lists that do show that info in the footer and people still send unsubscribe messages to the list. By the way, mailman has a nice feature that sends messages that look like admin requests (such as unsubscribe) to the admin. That cuts down on the noise quite a bit. -- D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy@druid.net> | Democracy is three wolves http://www.druid.net/darcy/ | and a sheep voting on +1 416 425 1212 (DoD#0082) (eNTP) | what's for dinner.
D'Arcy J.M. Cain wrote:
> On Wed, 04 Oct 2006 09:00:45 -0700
> "Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote:
>> So if you want to shut me up, lets get the footer added.
>
> Of course, that doesn't fix the problem 100%. I am on lists that do
> show that info in the footer and people still send unsubscribe messages
> to the list.
Sure, but what is more helpful? A reply that snips everything but the
footer that has those instructions or a replay that shows email headers
that look basically like some weird code to users?
>
> By the way, mailman has a nice feature that sends messages that look
> like admin requests (such as unsubscribe) to the admin. That cuts down
> on the noise quite a bit.
Well you don't have to convince me to use mailman ;)... but the *ahem*
list administrators of this project would rather have their toenails
removed with a dull spoon.
Sincerely,
Joshua D. Drake
>
--
=== The PostgreSQL Company: Command Prompt, Inc. ===
Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564 || 24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240
Providing the most comprehensive PostgreSQL solutions since 1997
http://www.commandprompt.com/
> I would prefer just making the unsubscribe instructions easy to find on
> the web.
They actually reasonably are. If you go to www->community/support->lists
Sincerely,
Joshua D. Drake
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
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>
--
=== The PostgreSQL Company: Command Prompt, Inc. ===
Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564 || 24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240
Providing the most comprehensive PostgreSQL solutions since 1997
http://www.commandprompt.com/
I'd prefer to have a short footer link called something like "Mailing List Page" which would take you to a page where you could subscribe, unsubscribe, or view the archives. I think that making the link short and also making it a quick shortcut away from the archives tips the scales in terms of utility vs. annoyance. One of the tips that shows up in the footers today is just a link to the archives anyway. -- Mark Lewis On Wed, 2006-10-04 at 11:28 -0500, Bruno Wolff III wrote: > On Wed, Oct 04, 2006 at 08:30:03 -0700, > "Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote: > > > > Although I 100% agree with you Bruno, it should be noted that our lists > > are a closed box for most people. They don't follow what is largely > > considered standard amongst lists which is to have list information at > > the bottom of each e-mail. > > There are reasons you don't want to do that. Footers work OK for single > part email messages. They don't make so much sense in multipart messages. > You can probably take a crap shoot and add the footer to the first > text/plain part and not break things. This won't work so well for multipart > alternative messages that have text/plain and text/html parts. You could > also try to insert a footer in to the html part, but thats a bit trickier > since you can't just put it at the end. > > However, since the postgres lists are mostly just using text/plain parts > for message bodies and there are already footers being used to distribute > tips, it wouldn't make things significantly worse to add unsubscribe > information as well. > > I would prefer just making the unsubscribe instructions easy to find on > the web. > > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- > TIP 5: don't forget to increase your free space map settings
On Wed, 2006-10-04 at 18:02, Csaba Nagy wrote: > > If we didn't want to add it for each list we could just add a link here: > > > > http://www.postgresql.org/community/lists/subscribe OK, now that I had a second look on that page, it does contain unsubscription info... but it's well hidden for the fugitive look... the caption is a big "Subscribe to Lists", you wouldn't think at a first glance think that the form is actually used to unsubscribe too, would you ? So maybe it's just that the text should be more explicit about what it actually does... Cheers, Csaba.
On Oct 4, 2006, at 9:00 AM, Joshua D. Drake wrote: > >> I also don't care about that argument in this situation. People >> ignorantly posting an unsubscribe to the list get this kind of >> response >> because it's an annoyance to the list users, > > Over time especially now, we will see many more "users" versus > "developers". Most "users" will never know how (nor should they > have to) > read email headers. They should know how to participate in mailing lists. That's unrelated to whether you're a developer or a user. The same webpage where you subscribe to a mailing list, you can also unsubscribe. This is not some weird technical voodoo, just that some people prefer to waste a thousand other peoples time than spend a minute or two of their own. Fortunately, they're a tiny minority. > >> benefits long-term list users the most. The real question is: >> which is >> more annoying to list users, the occasional unsubscribe posted to the >> list (with accompanying responses), or a one-line footer on each post >> providing a link to unsubscribe instructions? > > Good point, because I guarantee you every time someone pulls this > elitist dung about email headers, I am going to step in and say > something. > > So if you want to shut me up, lets get the footer added. Judging from experience on other lists, it won't help. The tiny minority of people who are unable to unsubscribe will continue to be unable to unsubscribe. It won't hurt, though. Cheers, Steve
Steve Atkins wrote: > > On Oct 4, 2006, at 9:00 AM, Joshua D. Drake wrote: > >> >>> I also don't care about that argument in this situation. People >>> ignorantly posting an unsubscribe to the list get this kind of response >>> because it's an annoyance to the list users, >> >> Over time especially now, we will see many more "users" versus >> "developers". Most "users" will never know how (nor should they have to) >> read email headers. > > They should know how to participate in mailing lists. That's > unrelated to whether you're a developer or a user. > > The same webpage where you subscribe to a mailing list, > you can also unsubscribe. This is not some weird technical > voodoo, just that some people prefer to waste a thousand > other peoples time than spend a minute or two of their own. > Fortunately, they're a tiny minority. I believe that if you could get an honest response, you'd find a lot of these folks are just plain lazy. They don't want to recall how to unsubscribe and figure sending mail to the list will get the required result. -- Until later, Geoffrey Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. - Benjamin Franklin
On Wed, Oct 04, 2006 at 08:30:03AM -0700, Joshua D. Drake wrote: >They don't follow what is largely >considered standard amongst lists which is to have list information at >the bottom of each e-mail. In my experience such a footer doesn't do much to prevent people sending unsubscribe messages to the list. Mike Stone
On Oct 4, 2006, at 11:35 AM, Csaba Nagy wrote: > On Wed, 2006-10-04 at 18:02, Csaba Nagy wrote: >>> If we didn't want to add it for each list we could just add a >>> link here: >>> >>> http://www.postgresql.org/community/lists/subscribe > > OK, now that I had a second look on that page, it does contain > unsubscription info... but it's well hidden for the fugitive > look... the > caption is a big "Subscribe to Lists", you wouldn't think at a first > glance think that the form is actually used to unsubscribe too, would > you ? > > So maybe it's just that the text should be more explicit about what it > actually does... Better yet, have an unsubscribe page... Personally, I'm tempted to get creative with procmail, and post a recipe that others can use to help enlighten those that post unsubscribe messages to the list... :> -- Jim C. Nasby, Database Architect jim@nasby.net 512.569.9461 (cell) http://jim.nasby.net
On Oct 4, 2006, at 10:54 AM, Joshua D. Drake wrote: >> [Joshua] >>> It is ridiculous that this community expects people to read email >>> headers to figure out how to unsubscribe from our lists. >> >> I always check the headers when I want to unsubscribe from any >> mailing >> list, and I think most people on this list have above average >> knowledge >> of such technical details. Of course, on a list with this many >> recepients there will always be some exceptions ... > > I would consider myself above average knowledge of such technical > details and I didn't know the list information was in the headers > until > recently (the last time all of this came up). > > Now, I of course did know that there were headers, and I can use > them to > diagnose problems but I was unaware of an RFC that explicitly > stated how > the headers were supposed to be sent for mailing lists. > > However, that is besides the point. It is still ridiculous to expect > anyone to read the headers just to unsubscribe from a list. > > If we didn't want to add it for each list we could just add a link > here: > > http://www.postgresql.org/community/lists/subscribe An even better option would be to switch to a list manager that actively traps these emails, such as mailman. -- Jim Nasby jim@nasby.net EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com 512.569.9461 (cell)
On Oct 4, 2006, at 10:47 AM, Nolan Cafferky wrote: > People ignorantly posting an unsubscribe to the list get this kind > of response because it's an annoyance to the list users, Back in the day, a friend of mine setup an unsubscribe mailing list, with open membership. The idea was if you saw someone post an unsubscribe message, you'd subscribe him to this list. He'd eventually get email from it (which had unsub directions at the end of every message) and then flail around trying to unsubscribe. It made for very entertaining reading until his ISP got tired of the complaints and made him shut it down. -- Jim C. Nasby, Database Architect jim@nasby.net 512.569.9461 (cell) http://jim.nasby.net