Re: [BALUG-Admin] successful BALUG boiler plates (unsubscribe, job posting inquiry)
Thanks. :-) And ... passing it to on-list here, as it pro'lly is (slightly) overdue for at least a trace of mention here (I probably last mentioned it on this list some year(s) ago or so). It basically came about from typical general practice of sysadmin / listadmin, of being "lazy" ... a.k.a. efficient. :-) Basically, automate (or semi-automate) that which can be (semi-)automated (so one can move onto the more "interesting" tasks, and let the comptuers do what they're good at and is boring/tedious for humans). Not surprisingly, I'd gotten rather tied of the various "unsubscribe me" requests that were typically sent to me, or sending or Reply-To address I'd used, or to the list, or to one of the BALUG contact addresses, etc. Most specifically the bone-headed, naive, ignorant, lazy, and/or "demanding" emails of that nature. And, I also got rather tired and annoyed with having to actually think about it, assemble the information, reply, include relevant links and information, etc. Really thought handling it ought be a script, or ... quite close to it. And certainly didn't want to mistrain users to ask listadmins to do for them what they ought be doing for themselves and should be fully capable of ... and to reasonably explain the situation, information, etc. And also cover the "what if" - in case they were actually trying and somehow failing to unsubscribe - so they'd be pre-armed to potentially at least come back with useful information, should that ever happen to occur. So ... thinking over the script possibility - in different context, I'd probably do that, but with various BALUG folks, at least potentially responding, etc, and trying to also share the information where it might be a bit handier to reference and use - and also thinking of how I was typically doing it when I replied (often not at mere bare CLI, but some GUI email client thingy/interface) ... so there'd likely be at least some trace of copy/paste anyway. So ... decided I'd set up simple wiki page with boilerplate text that could be copied and pasted, and would pretty much cover the matter. I'd also done, I think fair bit earlier, similar to handle responses to the fairly common "can I post a job to the BALUG list?" type questions - or rather to highly similar - which also works pretty darn well. And likewise, any BALUG folk can leverage it - no need to track down a script - just copy/paste, and it's handled. For reference also, the one regarding "jobs", is located here: https://www.wiki.balug.org/wiki/doku.php?id=balug:can_i_post_a_job_-_and_boi...
From: "Rick Moen" <rick@linuxmafia.com> To: Michael Paoli <Michael.Paoli@cal.berkeley.edu> Cc: balug-contact@balug.org Subject: Re: Our "boiler plate" seems to work pretty well [Re: BALUG list(s) unsubscribe (Re: About email subscription)] Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2016 11:05:29 -0700
Quoting Michael Paoli (Michael.Paoli@cal.berkeley.edu):
Well, our "boiler plate": https://www.wiki.balug.org/wiki/doku.php?id=balug:unsubscribe seems to work fairly well.
*Sometimes* (though rarely) folks even say "thanks" - though once I email 'em the boiler plate, I typically never hear from 'em again. I don't think I've yet had anyone I've sent the boiler plate to that ever came back with a response indicating that they weren't able to unsubscribe after they were sent the boiler plate information / instructions.
That's a remarkable achievemnet, seriously. Well done.
Quoting Michael Paoli (Michael.Paoli@cal.berkeley.edu):
Not surprisingly, I'd gotten rather tied of the various "unsubscribe me" requests that were typically sent to me, or sending or Reply-To address I'd used, or to the list, or to one of the BALUG contact addresses, etc. Most specifically the bone-headed, naive, ignorant, lazy, and/or "demanding" emails of that nature. And, I also got rather tired and annoyed with having to actually think about it, assemble the information, reply, include relevant links and information, etc.
Yes. Most if not all of my own FAQ items have arisen from the 'Hmm, I've now answered this question three times; I need to have a canned response for the future' experience. Part of what I find surprising is that this part sufficed: o FULL EMAIL HEADERS of an example message that you're getting or still getting that you're trying to unsubscribe from. I would have guesstimated that users having this problem are unaware of their MUAs' truncation of headers, so the phrase 'full e-mail headers' wouldn't mean much to them. In fact, I distinctly recall users sending back truncated headers in the belief of those being the full headers. Not wanting to interfere with success, but if I'd written the boilerplate, *I* might have elaborated about probable need to hunt for a 'show full headers' or 'show source', etc. command. But then, OTOH: Moen's Law of Documentation "The more you write, the less they read." [...] http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/lexicon.html#moenslaw-documentation Full headers are sometimes key, e.g., in cases where they reveal that the user subscribed using a different address that is aliased to the user's current address, and forgot about having done so. The latter syndrome often is also at the bottom of subscribers' postings ending up in admin queues. Recently, I helped a guy posting to the main SVLUG list from a redhat.com work address by approving his post and sending a Mailman 'invitation' with a suggestion to subscribe this _additional_ address and set it to have the 'no mail' attribute so the user continues to get just one copy. He did so, and wrote back his thanks with the explanation that he'd forgotten having originally subscribed from his fedoraproject.com address, which is aliased to his work address.
participants (2)
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Michael Paoli
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Rick Moen