From: wcs@anchor.ho.att.com (bill.stewart@pleasantonca.ncr.com +1-510-484-6204)
Date: Sun, 23 Jan 94 21:06:33 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Making unsubscribes easier
Message-ID: <9401240456.AA19059@anchor.ho.att.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


As with many mailing lists, we get a lot of mail about
subscribes and unsubscribes.  Perhaps we should make it
easier for people to get off the list, or at least find out
where the list maintainer really is.  Some possible approaches:

1) Add a header line to all the postings saying something like
	X-Send-Subscription-Requests-To: cypherpunks-request@toad.com

2) Add a dummy subscriber to the list that greps for "subscribe"
	in Subject lines and uses the vacation-mailer to reply.

	Some untested code that should work:
	
	#!/bin/sh
	# Subscription-Request-Bouncer
	# Set your .forward file to read
	#	| subscription-bouncer
	# and activate by running vacation -I
	# and putting a useful message in $HOME/.vacation.msg
	#
	cat $* > /tmp/msg.$$
	if egrep -i 'Subject:.*subscri' /tmp/msg.$$
	then /usr/ucb/vacation -t1d cypherpunks-info < /tmp/msg.$$
	fi
	rm /tmp/msg.$$

	# You may be able to make this work with the username
	# in the vacation command set to cypherpunks-request

3) One problem with standard listserv and majordomo software is that
	it tends to believe addresses as given, without munging
	anXXXXX into naXXXXX or other subtleties for subscription
	(though it can at least forward requests from different 
	addresses to a moderator, etc.)
	- can they handle this, or at least be given the job of 
	unsubscribing people?
	- do they have any forgery-detection capability?  Otherwise
	some rude person could try unsubscribing lots of people.
	The austin-cypherpunks listserv sent me a password for use
	with the listserv; is this code available?
	
			Thanks;  Bill
			
# Bill Stewart  NCR Corp, 6870 Koll Center Parkway, Pleasanton CA, 94566
# Voice/Beeper 510-224-7043, Phone 510-484-6204
# email bill.stewart@pleasantonca.ncr.com billstewart@attmail.com
# ViaCrypt PGP Key IDs 384/C2AFCD 1024/9D6465