[BALUG-Admin] successful BALUG boiler plates (unsubscribe, job posting inquiry)

[Michael Paoli]

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_boilerplate_response_template

> 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.