- On 2003.02.01, in <5.1.0.14.2.20030201145755.064badb0@lennier.cc.vt.edu>,
- "Ron Jarrell" <jarrell@vt.edu> wrote:
Just venting. I'm in my monthly "God, I *hate* the password reminder scheme" phase. I get over it in a few days. But for the next 48 hours or so I'm dealing with a stream of people who reply to mailman-owner with a "please take me off the list" note, leaving me to send back endless streams of form letters along the lines of "Look, Jane, you ignorant slut, read the damn note and unsubscribe your own damn self, I don't even know which *list* you're on!"
I used to hate the first of the month. We used to get several thousand bounces and several dozen "take me off" messages each month around the 1-3. Then I wrote an autoresponder and attached it to mailman-ignore@listhost.uchicago.edu, and rewrote the monthly reminder to send reminders from that address. (It also no longer send passwords, just list names and contact addresses/URLs.)
Mailman-ignore@ does mail loop protection, and returns boilerplate to the effect that we told you we'd ignore replies, and we are. It reiterates directions for common problems, with a little more detail than the instructions in the password reminder, and describes some things such as unsub/resub for changing your address. At the bottom, it tells people to contact mailman-owner@listhost... directly if they're still unsatisfied.
We get perhaps 5-10 responses each month now, and by and large they're reasonable requests, not people who simply failed to read the directions.
It's saved me $thousands in medical charges not covered by my plan, not to mention legal fees.
-- -D. "Jobs are created when... Americans have more money... dgc@uchicago.edu and the best way to make sure Americans have that money is not to tax it.... More jobs mean more taxpayers and higher revenues to our government." - G.W. Bush