Mailing List Frustrimigation

In various forums at my University and outside it, I end up doing some kind of user support (much as I try to avoid it). And in prior years, I’ve done more of it. This is user support of College-level students at the U.S. News and World Report 39th Public University in the country and PhD faculty. Some of the theoretically brightest minds in the country.

And for the life of them, they cannot figure out how to unsubscribe and send email to mailing lists. Even after my snarky note + 4 other “real” sets of instructions on how to remove themselves, folks still were sending mail to the list to get off the list. For the life of me I can’t convince folks on closed lists to match their email From: address to the address subscribed to the list — resulting in moderation requests galore for emails sent to the list.

Obviously the whole process is broken. If the brightest minds we have can’t figure out email lists, then there’s a big, big, problem with email lists (or the American Educational system, of which I won’t digress to).