Comments on: Reply to All: Unsubscribe!

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Wed, 20 May 2009 02:57:32 +0000

I have nothing to say but BIG FAT WORD about organizations that presume they are the center of your universe, particularly for services you use perhaps twice a year. I have this problem with my own ISP. Granted, I do call them oftener than I would like given how often their service fails on me, but that probably isn’t what they were envisioning when they set up their phone system to require me to dig up many pieces of otherwise-unused account information. Actually, what they were probably envisioning is that some people will give up, saving them the trouble of having to provide customer service. The websites you’re describing, however, don’t even have that motivation as a reason.

By: gabrielrossman

gabrielrossman — Mon, 18 May 2009 13:51:03 +0000

The way the administration is set up is that they conceived of the listserv as one benefit of membership in the society and you handled all of your preferences for the society from a single membership options page. So there was no footer at the bottom of the email saying “to unsubscribe send a message to the domo” but rather you had to go to the society’s website, remember your login information, go to member settings, and turn off the listserv. Overall, the administration basically assumed that their site would be as important to you as it is to them. So the real flaw isn’t technical, but a lack of verstehen and humility to see that for the vast majority of users the service you provide is very marginal and probably was only signed up for absent-mindedly as part of conference registration or something.
The designed-in presumption of salience seems to be a common design flaw with websites. I have the same issue with my cable company, which assumes that I’ll remember the Comcast account information even though I treat their service as a pure pipe and have never ever used the email account, portal, or other services they provide me.

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Sun, 17 May 2009 14:29:40 +0000

It’s amazing that even academics are so wholly incompetent with listservs. (I was thinking of those sending the reply-all comments, but actually, those setting up a listserv with an elaborate unsubscribe process are displaying similarly poor judgment.)

By: sunday morning links – academic experiences edition « orgtheory.net

sunday morning links – academic experiences edition « orgtheory.net — Sun, 17 May 2009 02:35:14 +0000

[...] R vs. Stata and how to make R behave. Meanwhile, the Rossman does a hazard analysis of how people unsubrsribe to email lists. As usual, Code and Culture is the place to beat if you like your cultural sociology mixed in with [...]