Please cancel my subscription

[Erik Hemdal]

> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 4
> Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2007 16:37:53 -0500
> From: Gene Heskett <gene.heskett at verizon.net>
> Subject: Re: Please cancel my subscription
> To: fedora-list at redhat.com
> Message-ID: <200701261637.53516.gene.heskett at verizon.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> 
> On Friday 26 January 2007 16:29, Nigel Henry wrote:
> [...]
> >It would just be a nice thing if there was some way of helping folks who
> > are having problems with unsubscribing , rather than this pathetic
> > thread which makes us look like a load of Linux idiots.
> >
> >Can we please end this thread.
> >
> >Nigel.
> 
> Nigel, the problem in most cases is the placement of the unsubscribe 
> links.  Many email agents clip off anything after the "newline dash dash 
> space" signature delimiter, so they never, ever see the unsubscribe 
> instructions.
> 
> Maybe they should be prepended to the message so that they appear above 
> the 'so and so wrote' line?  I don't have any alternate suggestions that 
> would make a reader read it everytime unless it could be made to flash or 
> something.
> 

I was curious about this thread, because I think that if you're
illiterate or stupid you aren't here.  I discovered some interesting
things.

On Evolution, since I receive the digest, the unsubscribe links and all
the quoted text, are greyed out.  They might be hard to find even if
they are left in by the mail client.  Sometimes the mail client disables
links so the user can't just "click".  I can see several reasons why it
might be difficult for someone to find the unsubscribe link.

I went to the unsubscribe page.  The place to start the unsubscription
process is at the very bottom of the page, after the heading that says
"this part is for list administrators".

If you find the instructions to unsubscribe, you enter your email
address, if you remember which one you used, and get another page which
asks for a password.  If you scroll down some more, you discover that
you really don't need it, but you might give up before you find that.  I
had to poke around for a bit -- and I knew what I was looking for and
what to expect.  I can imagine that a novice user, who perhaps is
flustered by the volume of messages or some other issue, might just give
up.  Perhaps there's some other issue, that the OP is unwilling to post
about.  Maybe the OP is embarrassed already because he can't get it
done.  All we know is that there's a request to unsubscribe.

I've seen posts about "14 messages".  I've seen this happen on other
lists when a mail server is misconfigured and sends repeatedly,
embarrassing a user who has no control over it.  At times I've had to
unsubscribe from lists because getting 100 duplicate posts a day is just
too much.  Maybe this is the same situation here?