[Mailman-Developers] Re: I hate the 1st of the month.

[David Champion]

* On 2003.02.01, in <5.1.0.14.2.20030201145755.064badb0 at lennier.cc.vt.edu>,
*	"Ron Jarrell" <jarrell at 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 at 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 at 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 at 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