[712] in Pthreads mailing list archive
How To Use E-Mail Without Shooting Yourself In The Foot [was: none]
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jered J Floyd)
Mon Aug 25 21:40:32 1997
To: sanand@davinci.glsscfo.att.com
From: Jered J Floyd <jered@MIT.EDU>
Date: 25 Aug 1997 21:33:25 -0400
In-Reply-To: sanand@davinci.glsscfo.att.com's message of Mon, 25 Aug 1997 17:17:04 -0500
Ok, fine....we're going to try this again.
If you want to subscribe or unsubscribe to a mailing list, you should
NEVER EVER send a message to the list asking to be added or removed.
If the thought even crosses your mind, slap yourself about the head
with a large fish. Repeatedly.
If you want to request some change in your list status, DO send
mail to <listname>-request. For instance, to unsubscribe from
'maillist@server.dom.ain', send mail to 'maillist-request@server.dom.ain'.
FYI #4, RFC 1594, goes into great detail on this, and the relevant
portion is included below. I heartily recommend this document to
everyone.
When you send mail to a list asking to be added or removed, you
generally fail in getting what you want done and succeed in making
hundreds, if not thousands, of people briefly wish all manner of
ill fortune upon you and your immediate family. This is likely not
your goal. (If it is, there are more effective ways of doing so.)
Please keep these points in mind whenever you want to interact with
mailing lists, and thus help make the Internet a better place.
Remember, only YOU can prevent forest fires. So, go off and
send mail to the request address, and if you're the last one off
the 'net, please turn off the lights.
Thanks.
Sincerely,
Jered Floyd '98
jered@mit.edu
And now, an excerpt from:
Network Working Group A. Marine
Request for Comments: 1594 NASA NAIC
FYI: 4 J. Reynolds
Obsoletes: 1325 ISI
Category: Informational G. Malkin
Xylogics
March 1994
FYI on Questions and Answers
Answers to Commonly asked "New Internet User" Questions
[The entire document may be found at ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1594.txt ]
[...]
9.2 How do I contact the administrator of a mailing list rather
than posting to the entire list?
Today there are two main methods used by mailing list
adminstrators to handle requests to subscribe or unsubscribe from
their lists. The administrative address for many lists has the
same name as the list itself, but with "-request" appended to the
list name. So, to join the ietf-announce@cnri.reston.va.us list,
you would send a message to ietf-announce-
request@cnri.reston.va.us. Most often, requests to a "-request"
mailbox are handled by a human and you can phrase your request as
a normal message.
More often today, especially for lists with many readers,
administrators prefer to have a program handle routine list
administration. Many lists are accessible via LISTSERVE programs
or other mailing list manager programs. If this is the case, the
administrative address will usually be something like
"listserv@host.domain", where the address for the mailing list
itself will be "list@host.domain". The same listserve address can
handle requests for all mailing lists at that host. When talking
with a program, your subscription request will often be in the
form, "subscribe ListName YourFirstName YourLastName" where you
substitute the name of the list for ListName and add your real
name at the end.
The important thing to remember is that all administrative
messages regarding using, joining, or quitting a list should be
sent to the administrative mailbox instead of to the whole
list so that the readers of the list don't have to read them.
[...]
