Ted writes:

> Thus it was written in the epistle of Gavin Scott,
>  > >
>  > > I guess some folks can't read:-)
>  >
>  > Told ya so!  I move that we remove the trailer because it is an ugly
waste
>  > of space and clearly doesn't work.
>
>  In support of Gavin's repeated advice, it's worth noticing that the
problem
> is
>  obviously that folks don't read.  In specific, someone who is wanting to
get
>  off the list by definition does not want to read the messages on the list.

> So
>  attempting to communicate with such a person through the list messages
seems
>  unlikely to be successful.
>
>  On the other hand (and the reason I didn't jump on Gavin's bandwagon
before),
>
>  the message talks also about looking up archives and changing options--
> things
>  which the list subscribers may wish to do ('course I still don't expect
that
>  they'll read it--we tend to ignore something which is just always there).

I not only disagree (and not merely because I originally recommended putting
the notice at the bottom of the page), I disagree in part because I am by
nature disagreeable :-), but also in part because the evidence at hand is
being misrepresented.

This one person's demonstrated inability to read is no indication of the
success or failure of anything. There is absolutely no data offered in
contradiction to demonstrate how successful the notice has been (that is, how
many usenet users who have changed over to a list subscription because of its
presence, or of how many users have signed off quietly and successfully,
without invoking the "Wrath of Jeff"). Unfortunately, as often happens in the
real world, there is no easy way to get this contraindictive data -- other
than performing a relatively elaborate statistical analysis of the number of
signoffs and signons to the list before and after the appearance of the
notices.

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.

And as someone else mentioned, there are no standards for list memberships. I
subscribe to eleven different lists, and virtually no two of them operate
under the same protocols. Having these notices at the bottom of the pages
actually makes things very easy for me to remember, and as a consequence,
HP3000-L has, in one swell foop, moved from being one of the most difficult
to remember how to manage its settings to being one of the easiest.

Wirt Atmar

* To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, etc *
*     please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html       *