Fun_People Archive
24 Mar
A Good Idea...

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 97 23:52:09 -0800
To: Fun_People
Subject: A Good Idea...

[This is a cute idea, even though it isn't needed for Fun_People since I  
"moderate" everything.  On the other hand, I'd sure like to set up a list  
like this for the people who send me clueless requests for things like copies  
of the AOHell program.  This could have been it, but unfortunately the  
address mentioned below, ml-bozo-request@ml.gol.com, isn't legit, but there  
has been some talk about setting up a CLUELESS-L mailing list.  I'll let you  
know if it materializes... -psl]

Forwarded-by: Leon Marr <marr@pantheon.yale.edu>
Forwarded-by: Eric Scheirer <eds@media.mit.edu>
From: Mark-Jason Dominus <mjd@pobox.com>

If you belong to any internet mailing list, you'll know that there are
plenty of people who forgot how to unsubscribe.  When they want to leave
the list, they send a message *to everyone else on the list* asking to
unsubscribe.  You might get as many as one or two messages a day from these
people asking to unsubscribe.  Of course, they should have sent these
messages to just the list maintainer, but for some reason they forgot that
address.

(There is a simple rule for figuring out the administrative address for a
mailing list:  If the list is mangel-wurzels@vegetable.com, then the
administrative address is mangel-wurzels-request@vegetable.com.)

If people like that annoy you, you can subscribe them to the ml-bozos
mailing list.  To unsubscribe from the ml-bozos list, all they have to do
is send a request to the correct address.  Periodically a helpful message
is sent to the list, suggesting FAQs and URLs that might be of assistance
if they need to figure out what his address is.

Until they figure this out, they spam the list (and each other!) each other
with complaints, `unsubscribe' requests, demands to shut up, etc.  They
can't harrass the list owner, because they don't know how to reach him.

There is also an ml-bozos-digest mailing list, in case you're interested in
the antics of the people on the ml-bozos mailing list.

To subscribe smoeone else to the ml-bozos mailing list, send a message to
ml-bozo-request@ml.gol.com containing a line like

        subscribe ml-bozos <address goes here>

Remember to only do this if they have sent an administrative request to the
entire membership of a mailing list you are on, instead of to the
administrative address as they should have.  You can also send a helpful
exhortation to the members of this list by mailing to `ml-bozos@ml.gol.com'.
(I recommend that you send such exhortations anonymously, since its better
not to give the ml-bozos a secondary target.)

To subscribe yourself to the ml-bozos-digest, send mail to, well, you know.

(This idea is due to long-time talk.bizarre regular mathew.  It was revived
by a member of the Qmail discussion list at my suggestion.  Feel free to
pass this note along.)

© 1997 Peter Langston