[G4] Re: unsubscribe

Doug McNutt douglist at macnauchtan.com
Fri Feb 20 08:05:27 PST 2009


At 10:18 -0500 2/20/09, Technophobic_Tom at comcast.net wrote:
>It doesn't help that the digest header contains inconsistent advice:
>
>>List-Unsubscribe: 
>>	<mailto:g4-request at listserver.themacintoshguy.com?subject=unsubscribe>
>>
>>To subscribe or unsubscribe...send a message with subject or body 
>>'help' to g4-request at listserver.themacintoshguy.com
>

There are two more problems that I have recently come across on another list:

1) People are getting wise to spam filters and they can, and should, look for :

List-Id: "A place to discuss Apple's G4 computers." 
<g4.listserver.themacintoshguy.com>

to filter list messages. When they use the mailto: request they get a 
reply from someone named g4_request at listserver. . . which doesn't get 
passed through the filter. Because they don't reply to the 
confirmation, the list server assumes the request for removal was an 
error or deliberate malware.


2) HTML text is far too ubiquitous these days and many mail clients, 
Apple's OS neXt mail for instance, default to HTML and make sending 
in plain test difficult.

Older listservers, when they come across UTF-8 "=?" features in the 
Subject: header can get confused. Actually, I send all such things to 
the trash can and miss very little.

The poor souls trying to unsubscribe have no idea what's happening. 
It just "doesn't work" and they don't provide nearly enough 
information to help improve the process.

--
I drive a 1982 rag-top Jeep and I can't lock myself out. I send email 
in plain ASCII text.  I can't understand why things get worse each 
year, but I did like the arrival of lower case in ARPANET. But then 
my grandfather probably thought the same about horses and wet ink 
pens. Mom was allowed to go anywhere she wanted so long as she took 
the horse. He wouldn't get lost.




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