At 03:17 PM 1/24/98 -0500, you wrote:
>        Why is it so difficult for people to keep the instructions they get
>when they join the list? Why is it necessary to repeat this info on the
>average of once a week?
>
 
The pigritude factor, I guess. This happens on virtually every list I'm on
where a moderator does not vet posts before forwarding them to the list (and
the latter process slows down discussion, of course). On some lists, the
listserv even sends the relevant instructions to everyone via the list every
month, on the first of the month. But even with that help, come the fifth or
tenth of the month people will be posting unsub requests to the list again,
or contacting listmembers privately asking to be unsubbed, as if any list
could be run where people could unsub other people than themselves. (Imagine
*that* possibility when a harsh debate breaks out....) Even after onlist
discussions of the futility of sending unsub messages to the list, people
still continue to ask the list to unsub them....
 
Maybe it's just a selfishness issue: i.e., if I can't be bothered to do it
properly myself, what I need to do is make myself a big pain, and then the
easiest thing for other people will simply be to do as I ask somehow. It
couldn't be *that* simple... could it??
 
Greg Downing/NYU, at [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask]