Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 11:40:17 -0700 From: David Schultz <dschultz@uclink.Berkeley.EDU> To: Gerhard Sittig <Gerhard.Sittig@gmx.net> Cc: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: subscribe freebsd-stable Message-ID: <20020717184017.GA488@HAL9000.homeunix.com> In-Reply-To: <20020716195624.X1494@shell.gsinet.sittig.org> References: <200207152133.g6FLXQb72508@osvald.void.ru> <20020716053638.A21324@grybel.mayn.de> <20020716195624.X1494@shell.gsinet.sittig.org>
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Thus spake Gerhard Sittig <Gerhard.Sittig@gmx.net>: > How can one misunderstand the instructions? It even has an > example. Although new users might not be too familiar with > mail(1) they could get the idea. But then again they could > simply click on the mailto: URL with the majordomo address -- > clicking cannot be this difficult, can it? There is even an > explicite statement of what "posting to the list by sending > mail to <listname@FreeBSD.org>" does. And the very next > paragraph (the second in the section) tells how to subscribe. I used to work at a library. At the circulation desk, there was one sign. Just one. It was bright yellow. It said, in big bold letters, ``Please turn your books over and have your card ready.'' Roughly half of the patrons turned their books over (presumably this can be attributed to random chance) and about one tenth had their cards ready. Reflect on the fact that this is a library. Most of the visitors either can read or are just trying to pick up women and don't know where to look, and the people in the latter category aren't checking out *books*. The point is that it's hard to get people to pay attention, even when there are no attractive women around, and moreover, the more words you have the less likely it is that people will notice the important part. Unless you can work MOTOS into the discussion, that is. Part of the problem in this case, I think, is that the first thing under the heading ``How to Subscribe'' actually said how to send mail to the list. People saw the heading, scanned for an address, and sent subscribe requests to the wrong place. I believe Giorgos has committed a fix for this. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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