On Fri, 1 Oct 1993 15:12:54 GMT Una Smith <[log in to unmask]>
said:
>The "you have subscribed" notice is the one piece of mail to the user
>that is both most likely to reach the user *and* most likely to be paid
>attention to.
And most likely to be thrown away after being read.
>It is not enough to reply to a failed unsubscribe request with the
>comment "[log in to unmask] is not subscribed". So I recommend
>addressing the issue at the outset, at the time of subscription *and*
>adding comments to the failure reply.
The failure reply does have a lot of comments. More comments, in fact,
that ordinary users care to read. Users don't want to have to read
complicated explanations or learn mail system options to make their
signoff request work. They just want it to work in the first place.
Unfortunately LISTSERV doesn't include a magic wand facility and it can't
do that.
Eric
(...)
1. You could be subscribed under a different, but equivalent address. For
instance, if your e-mail address as it appears in the 'From:' line of
messages coming from you has the misfortune of depending on the distance
between your workstation and the terminal room door, you were probably
subscribed from a different address and, while your mail system knows
that the two addresses are equivalent, LISTSERV has no way to know that.
In this case the only thing you can do, beyond contacting the list owner,
is to send a "REVIEW &LISTNAME" command to find out under what address
you are subscribed, and try to duplicate it with the help of your user
support people.
2. If you are a BITNET user, you might be subscribed under your Internet
address and sending this command via BITNET, or vice versa. Most BITNET
sites have registered their Internet addresses in the BITNET nodes
database, BITEARN NODES (the "tag" containing this information is called
':internet' - if you do not understand any of this, just bring a copy
of this message to your user support people). Unfortunately, some sites
have still not done that, and in such cases LISTSERV has no way to
determine that, for instance, BITNET node XYZCOL1 is the same as
Internet host VM3.XYZ.EDU. If you suspect this might be your problem,
try resending your request via both interactive message (SEND under VMS,
TELL under VM) and e-mail.
3. You might be subscribed under an equivalent yet different address -
for instance, one with explicit gatewaying, or an X.400 address with
different ordering of the various components, etc. You could send a
"REVIEW &LISTNAME"
command and inspect the list membership to find out whether this
is the case, and ask the list owners to remove that address from
the list.
4. You could be subscribed to the list under another account, from which
mail
is being automatically forwarded to your &WHOM account. In that case you
should be able to leave the list by resending the signoff request from
the account in question.
5. You could be subscribed to the list indirectly, via a "redistribution"
list. That is, one of the subscribers to the LISTSERV list is in fact a
mailing list, to which you are yourself subscribed (note that this
"sub-list" is not necessarily managed by LISTSERV and, in fact, such
lists are often manually maintained, in which case the only way to leave
the list is to contact the person who maintains it). Since you are not
directly subscribed to &LISTNAME, the only way for you to stop getting
the postings is to contact the administrator of this sub-list and ask
him to sign you off.
You should be able to contact the list owners by simply replying to this
message (if you do not know how to reply to a message in your mailbox,
you can send a new message to '&LISTNAME-request@&MYHOST' instead).
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