On Monday, February 08, 1999, Johan Ingles wrote:

>      tell me how to get off this list

ROFLMAO!! Not to a list owner's list! Tell me this is not a list owner.

I initially tried the "teaching" approach when I took over list duties
with the same thought that it would be for the greater good of the
mailing lists community. I gave that up, though, when more often than
not, I would get a nasty reply that they _had_ tried to unsubscribe
themselves and _had_ followed the instructions _exactly_. Uh huh.

We do better than the twice weekly bottom banner. Every message to the
list has the unsubscribe instructions across the bottom or at the bottom
of the digest. This was done before I took over and the person from whom
I took over says that it helped alot to reduce the number of "remove me"
messages going to the list. But, still we get them - although quite a
few subscribers have caught on enough to email me directly.

As for the Welcome message, we send ours out with a:

SAVE THIS MESSAGE    SAVE THIS MESSAGE    SAVE THIS MESSAGE

YOU WILL DEFINITELY NEED TO REFER TO THIS MESSAGE IN THE FUTURE.

splashed accross the top. Wish I had a quarter for every message I've
gotten that starts with "I can't find the instructions..." - meaning "I
didn't keep the instructions."

Whatcha' gonna do? I just unsubscribe them myself.

---
Paula Ford