On Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:05:32 -0500 Winship <[log in to unmask]> said:
 
>Compared with the multifarious city,  county, state and federal forms in
>the U.S. it is a model of clarity,
 
But it's a  completely different situation. Some people  don't think they
should have to use their brains unless (1) you're paying them by the hour
for that or (2) they want something  very badly and using their brains is
the only way to get it. Most  people want a tax break for their mortgage,
for instance, so they put up with  20 pages of fine print (or pay someone
to figure it out  for them). People will get mail from  the list just the
same if  they type "Firstname  Lastname" instead  of their real  name, so
they don't care.
 
>This is what I dislike about extracting the "name" from the From: field:
>there is no  telling what you will  get. Not infrequently it  is not the
>form of  the person's  name desired (the  comp. center set  it up  and I
>don't know how to change it but I don't like it),
 
If that's  the case, what  LISTSERV has on file  in the REVIEW  list that
very few people ever see is going to be the least of your worries.
 
>or the  person knows  how to change  it and the  "name" has  work place,
>address, phone number, fax number, etc.  All this sort of stuff can make
>total hash of the subscription list if one does a rev sorted by name.
 
You seem to care about this, but  I'm afraid the subscriber doesn't. As a
matter of fact we had to add an option to let subscribers on even if they
don't supply  a name  in order to  avoid losing major  sales. One  of the
customers  in  question made  a  survey  of 3  days'  worth  of logs  and
determined that 30% of people were  unable to figure out the instructions
for adding their name to the  SUBSCRIBE command! The customer agreed that
it wasn't because the instructions were unclear, and that the most likely
cause  was that  the customer's  attention span  was on  the order  of 30
seconds, but the bottom line is that spending $$$ on LISTSERV meant a net
loss of subscribers for no valid business reason. When the most important
metric for your service is the  number of subscribers, it makes any other
solution preferable.
 
  Eric