[Tfug] Technical harassment, or "Computer knowledge is more important than anything else in the world."

[Brian Murphy]

If you're suggesting that we start auto-unsubscribing all mac users... I
can support that. :)

B

Quoting Chris Niswander <cn.tfug.account at bitboost.com>:
> At 06:54 PM 2/27/2006 -0800, you wrote:
>>
>> --- Christopher Robbins <robbinsc at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Technically, they had to navigate the site to
>>> subscribe to the list....In
>>> theory, shouldn't one be able to navigate to the
>>> same place they subscribed
>>> to the list to UNsubscribe from the list?
>>
>> Agreed.  Put a filter on the list to reject messages
>> with "unsubscribe" in the sbject/body.  When a person
>> keeps getting mail from the list and his/her
>> unsubscribe pleas are unanswered, he/she will
>> *eventually* get motivated to solve his/her own
>> problem!
>
> I always love it when some computer-illiterate person
> has no idea how to resolve some problem, and they
> get constructive reactions like this.
>
> Wouldn't we do better to design systems that help people
> who don't know much about computers to solve their problems
> anyway?
>
> For example, if someone sends 'please take me off your mailing list'
> type emails, a rudimentary heuristic scoring system should recognize
> them and send the person emails saying that to stay on the mailing list,
> the person will have to do something (send back a specific type of reply?
> check a web form? something like that) or the person will be removed.
>
> There are millions of people with better things to do than to
> learn to really understand computers.
>
> The ideal would presumably be something like the OS X Mac but *more* so:
> a top layer friendly to novices, with progressively more sophistication
> underneath, until somewhere under BSD you finally reach a layer that includes
> microscopic soldering irons, logic probes, and nanomanipulators
> so you can modify your chips if you want to. :-)
>
> Or alternatively, 95% of the population could just keep using Windows
> forever. :-)
>
> I do almost admire the resourcefulness some users show in
> getting themselves into problems that they don't understand.
> Not that any of *us* have ever been there. ;-)
>
> Hm...now I will have to decide if *I* always have something better to do
> than to write up a patch for Mailman to address this problem...
>
> Or I can just sit back and imagine a *Linux/BSD version* of the Apple
> "Think different" ads, with Gandhi, Einstein, Earhart, etc. being harangued
> about how instead of wasting their time on politics, theoretical physics,
> airplanes, etc., they should be learning more about computers!
>
> Chris
> ---
> "It's not a flame, I'm just being honest." :-)
>
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Arizona.