blu.org mailing list memberships reminder

[rac at gabrielmass.com (Richard Chonak)]

David writes:

> I despise this feature of mailman,  Anybody can get their password sent to 
> them from the web page.  Why send a monthly reminder with your password in 
> cleartext?  I asked the admin to either change it or remove me.  He chose 
> to remove me.


I can't blame him.

Alas, David.   The good old days are gone. The Mailman
interfaces were designed for a class of users much less
'net-capable than you.  

<div class="rant">
Many users of mailing lists today are clueless newbies who do
not even know how to control their accursed MS-Outlook programs.
Everything they send is multipart/alternative
HTML-*and*-plaintext mail with an attached "background image", to
boot.    Just try to get a list-server to process commands sent
that way.  

These people don't know the difference between the list address,
the list-server address, and the list-owner address.   They
don't read the instructions; they don't understand the
instructions they have read; and they don't remember the little
they understood.  They don't print out and save the instructions
they get when they subscribe; they don't print and save the 
passwords they get (or pick) when they sign up.  

Even with a footer on every single message pointing them to a
web page where they can unsubscribe, they still ask me to do it
for them.  No wonder they need all the reminding they can get:
you could even write the instructions on the backs of their
hands and they would still claim not to have received them.

Mailman's web interface is IMO the easiest mailing-list
interface yet invented.   It's a good thing that the users can
copy-and-paste their passwords into Mailman's CGI form, because
they are somehow not able to type the darn things correctly.   
</div>

So you find the inconveniences of mailing-list servers annoying?
I do too.  Oh, well.  You can always filter out the messages
that have the header "Subject: <servername> mailing list
memberships reminder".   

--RC


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