Hi everyone!

I have a weird problem with my list. The list itself is working fine, but
it's a very large list (a little under 1000 people), and there's a good deal
of traffic over it. So I guess the list is going really really well.
However...

As we're getting into the summer, lots of people on the list are going away
on summer trips (this is a list for high school students), and they want to
get off the list. However, even though it says on the bottom of every
message (in the footer) how to unsubscribe, many of them don't know how to
and just e-mail the list saying "Please take me off the list" even though
I've explained at least a couple times in the past that they shouldn't
e-mail the list because it fills up peoples' mailboxes.

The list is unmoderated, as I feel that it's a hinderance to good
discussion, and while I was away from the computer for a little while
yesterday, about 40 people sent out messages saying "Please take me off the
list" (or something to that extent) and others who know how to do it
e-mailed back about it explaining how, and still others wrote saying to be
taken off the list, even after that.

It got very much out of hand, and the only way I could figure out to deal
with it would be to change the list to an "edited" list so that I could
easily let through the messages that were discussion and the "take me off
the list" messages would be dealt with but wouldn't get through to the list.
I couldn't do what I normally do when discussion gets out of hand, which is
threaten to kick people off the list or put them on "moderated" status,
because that's what they want -- to be taken off the list. I really don't
like having the list be moderated because if I'm ever away from the computer
for an extended period of time it can kill any discussion thats going on.

Do you guys have any other suggestions on how to deal with this problem?
It's mostly ignorance of how to do things, I guess. From my experience, if
someone is getting ready to leave a list, they don't read the e-mail -- they
just delete it, and after a while, they get fed up with deleting it and
decide that since they're not reading it anymore they might as well just get
off the list. So how do I deal with this problem?

Thanks in advance.

--Jason