[2732] in WWW Security List Archive
Re[2]: How to get OFF this list
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (kevin lipscomb)
Wed Aug 21 11:23:23 1996
Date: Wed, 21 Aug 96 09:23:12 EST
From: "kevin lipscomb" <kevin_lipscomb@ccmail.nctamslant.navy.mil>
To: www-security@ns2.rutgers.edu, Paul Phillips <psp@well.com>,
majordomo-users@GreatCircle.com
Errors-To: owner-www-security@ns2.rutgers.edu
[Originally from www-security@ns2.rutgers.edu. I am now shifting this
discussion to majordomo-users@GreatCircle.com, and I encourage others following
this thread to so the same.]
> > Insults from others notwithstanding, some of us have competently followed
> > all correct procedures for unsubscribing from this list, and have even
> > received acknowledgements indicating that we have been unsubscribed. We
> > continue, however, to receive postings.
> If you are referring to this address --
> <kevin_lipscomb@ccmail.nctamslant.navy.mil>
> you are not subscribed at rutgers.[...]
Correct. As stated, I received an acknowledgement from majordomo indicating
that I had been unsubscribed. I continued to receive postings anyway.
After contacting Rutgers staff directly, it was evident that the flushing of the
"queue of postings", if you will, lags behind the unsubscription
acknowledgement. After about eight days, the queue was flushed to the point
where I had unsubscribed, and I stopped receiving posts from this list.
There's a design problem here. Majordomo's unsubscription acknowledgement got
to me far ahead of the last message posted during my subscription period, but it
didn't warn me that the final batch of postings would follow.
> 2700 subscribers, too many nontechnical.
Perhaps so, but the behavior described above is equally annoying to those of us
who *are* "technical" -- I am a systems analyst engaged in the development of a
message processing and routing system for use by the United States Navy. When
the captain of a Navy ship says he doesn't want to receive certain kinds of
messages anymore, and the message processing system system replies, "OK, You
won't", the captain expects the stream of messages to end right then, not eight
days later. We should each be afforded the privilege of being the captains of
our personal computers.
Majordomo should provide a warning with its unsubscription acknowledgement that
no NEW postings will be sent, although a final trickle of OLD postings may
continue to arrive. Rutgers said they would consider including this warning in
the www-security "info" file.
