Wirt argues:
> This one person's demonstrated inability to read is no indication of the
> success or failure of anything.

There is some set of users (the majority one hopes) who, when they need to
get off of the list, will be able to figure out how to do it in a way that
does not involve a demand to be removed that is sent to the list membership
at large.

Some (hopefully smaller) set will be unwilling or unable to perform the
above task.  The question is, of these users who have already demonstrated
an unwillingness to figure it out on their own, how many will actually read
the trailer at the end of every posting rather than just go ahead and post
their "please remove me" message?

It is my contention that the group of people who will fall into this last
category is insufficiently large to justify cluttering up every message I
have to read with at least three extra lines of useless text.

> Personally, I've already found the notice useful. Before its appearance, I
> could never remember how to read the archives or change my settings. Now
> it's easy.

Then it would be just as useful if printed out and glued to the top of your
monitor where the rest of us don't have to look at it all the time.

And tattooing remains an option as well.

> And as someone else mentioned, there are no standards for list
> memberships.

But it might be reasonable to have minimal standards for *community*
memberships, such that one should not join if one is not prepared to un-join
quietly when the time comes.

I always keep bookmarks for the web pages associated with the lists I am a
member of.

I also have an email folder named "Subscriptions" which contains the
response to the signon message from each mailing list I've ever subscribed
to, so when the time comes I can just go look there to find out what the
instructions are, or at least what the "request" email address is.

It's just not that hard to avoid being a slob, and I dislike the "training
wheels" type of trailer which is only of value to people who can't be
bothered to save the information at the time they subscribed.

G.

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