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[Fairlight]

Y'all catch dis heeyah?  Bill Vermillion been jivin' 'bout like:
> On Sat, Feb 28, 2004 at 11:29:51AM -0800, Bill Campbell thus
> spoke:
> > I'm about ready to take these bounce messages as an indication
> > that the person doesn't want to receive mail from the Filepro
> > list at all, and remove their subscription.
> 
> To me that seems like a reasonable move, and then they can

More than reasonable, IMHO.

> re-subscribe from a system that won't have that problem  I had one

OTOH, the odds that they'll switch systems just to be on a mailing list
without being booted is minimal, given how many people put up with AOL at
all (and Hotmail, and others...).  So they'll just resubscribe and become a
problem again.

At that point, I think that a rough mental "coupla strikes" rule would be
a good thing, and if they persist in re-becoming a problem by resubbing
without rectifying the reasons for their administrative unsub, they should
just be banned from resubbing.  And MailMan has that capability where I
don't think MajorDomo did.  Nothing so formal as an actual, "Three strikes,
and I marked them in a file and actually checked," sort of thing.  More a
case of, "You know, I remember handling this person one more time than I
feel I should have already--that's enough already."

Then again, that's just my opinion, and I am admittedly far less tolerant
than Bill is.  :)

> The other solution might be to configure your digestifier so that
> replies go to the list by default when you make a reply, instead of
> going to the user who sent it.   

Ooooh...bad idea.  :)  You think we go OT -now-...  That really tends to
attract more replies and non-relevant traffic than if someone has to
manually make sure it goes back to the list.  I've done it both ways in the
past, and I find it works better overall if you have it set the way Bill
has it.  The exceptions would be -really- technical lists where you're
dealing with administrators themselves, who know better and actually care
how their mail is directed, because they've been in that situation
themselves in all likelihood.  I'm betting that nobody abuses something
like NANOG or they're toast.  But that's an entirely different kind of
audience.

> I recall that you had a reaon for replies to be sent to the
> originator by default and not back to the list, but I don't recall
> what it was.   Many of the lists I subscribe to default to repling
> to the list.

Yeah, I've been on some.  It's fine when people know and care what they're
doing, but that's increasingly rare.  How many times do we still get mail
from people that -insist- on sending duplicates to the OP -and- the list?
The only tenable excuse for that is if it's something of a timely nature
that someone needs a rush on where you might not want to make them wait on
list propogation, yet the answer could be helpful to all.  But that's such
a minority of the dual-posted ones we see here that I'd believe inverting
the setting would do more harm than good.

Tellya what--when we stop getting people posting in HTML, maybe -then- we
could ask Bill think about inverting the rule?  :)  If they can't follow
that simple decorum, I really don't think they'll bother un-directing
things to the list.  You'd have a pretty hard time convincing me that they
would.

It's obviously Bill's decision(s).  I personally see no problem with his
desire to take a more...direct approach towards this kind of issue.  And I
actually think he should save himeself the headache and go ahead if he
wants to--not to imply that he needs anyone's blessings first.

You know though, even having brought it up, I don't think it will affect
what he's deaiing with there by more than a tiny percentage.  It never
does until people find themselves cut off.  It's amazing how warning after
warning will go unheeded until someone finds themselves with a shell of
/bin/false and then suddenly they sit up and take notice (and usually
cry foul, no less, which is ever so much more amusing).  Same thing with
any administration over users, whether it's mailing lists or whatever.
Sometimes they need a little "incentive".  :)

mark->
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