Re: [DEB-USER] Holiday arrangements
Paul M Foster <paulf@quillandmouse.com> writes:
> On Wed, Jul 31, 2002 at 12:50:38PM +0100, Richard Kimber wrote:
>
> > I should appreciate some advice, especially in the light of reported
> > difficulties in unsubscribing.
>
> With all due respect to those who have difficulty unsubscribing....
>
> I don't believe a word of it.
I do. I've attempted to unsubscribe from d-u before, when I've been on
extended vacations and such. I've been on the 'net since '93, and I'm a
professional programmer, so I kinda know my way around. Following the
instructions in the signature does not, in my experience, reliably generate
an autoconfirm message or any other response, like an error message.
Others have already mentioned that listmaster@lists.debian.org is often not
very responsive, either.
I'm just glad that the next time I unsubscribe from d-u will be because I'm
changing email addresses in about 3 weeks. If the unsubscribe attempt
fails, any further posts will simply bounce. (If my ISP has their
mailserver misconfigured to send bounces to the post's original author, I
apologize in advance; I'll have done everything I can. The ISP seems
pretty clueful, though.)
> I've given users explicit instructions and had them execute them. No
> go. I show up, query them on exactly what they did, and it sounds
> right. Then I sit down at their terminal and do what I told them to do,
> and it _works_.
Ya know, I get this sort of stuff a lot at work, because I'm the resident
expert on a lot of the tools we use, like CVS (though not including any
sort of listserv system). While I often suspect user error in situations
like this, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that
the software package may, in fact, be buggy. Only when I can see exactly
what they did, in a command history or something, do I conclusively
attribute the problem to user error. (Especially because the command
history makes it much easier to explain to them the right way: ``No, that
won't work, because....'')
Not all users are stupid.
Richard
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