Getting Update Notifications for the Alertbox
You can subscribe to an email service that will notify you when a new Alertbox column becomes available. The messages will be very brief (a few paragraphs) and will be sent approximately twice per month: this is a password-protected no-spam list.
Most notification messages will simply contain a short summary of the new column with a pointer to its URL. I will not send out the full column for two reasons:
- I don't want to overload subscribers' mailboxes: "push" should be minimized to letting people know when something they want is available (if they want to spend additional time beyond reading the abstract, they have to make an explicit effort to do so)
- I want to retain the linked hypertext nature of the Web, meaning that columns will often not be a single file but will consist of multiple components that need to be read while browsing and not in an email tool.
How to Subscribe
Send an email message to alertbox-request@lists.best.com with a single line in the body:
subscribe userid@machine.domain
where you replace userid@machine.domain with the email address where you want the notices sent. The subject field in the message will be ignored and can be left empty.
Your email message should look like this:
To: alertbox-request@lists.best.com
From: donald@duck.com
Subject:
subscribe donald@duck.com |
As a result of your subscription message, one of two things may happen:
- You may get an acknowledgment message (confusingly having "alertbox-errors" as the sender) that says that you have been successfully subscribed. This happens if the mailing list system is satisfied that the request was sent from you and not somebody else. You need not do anything else in this case.
- Alternatively, the mailing list system may think that the request was sent by somebody else (typically because of variations in the
From: field inserted into the message by your own email software). If so, the system requires a confirmation that you indeed want to subscribe. The confirmation prevents innocent people from being subscribed to a mailing list by mistake.
The Confirmation Step
If the system decides that you need to confirm your subscription, you will receive a message with a subject line somewhat like this:
Subject: List Auth Request ID=<x32d84a55.178.WwbG27mz> REJECT
The actual ID code will be different for each user. To confirm that you really do want to subscribe, simply use the "Reply" command in your email system to send a reply to the message. Before sending the reply, edit the subject line to replace the word REJECT with the word ACCEPT. Thus, your message will have a subject line that looks something like this:
Subject: Re: List Auth Request ID=<x32d84a55.178.WwbG27mz> ACCEPT
Then simply send off the reply with the edited subject line. You need not edit the body of the message.
How to Unsubscribe
Send an email message to alertbox-request@lists.best.com with a single line in the body:
unsubscribe userid@machine.domain
where you replace userid@machine.domain with the email address you used when you subscribed to the list. The subject field in the message will be ignored and can be left empty.
Your email message should look like this:
To: alertbox-request@lists.best.com
From: donald@duck.com
Subject:
unsubscribe donald@duck.com |
Just as with subscription requests, you may receive an additional message asking you to confirm that you really do want to unsubscribe. If so, follow the above instructions for the confirmation step (reply to the message and edit the subject field to replace the word REJECT with the word ACCEPT).
If all else fails, send a message to alertbox-owner@lists.best.com, and a human will read your message and remove you from the distribution list. If you need to take this drastic action, then please include a list of the various email addresses you are using so that we can hunt down which one the system is using to reach you.
Disclaimer
I am aware that this procedure for subscribing and unsubscribing does not have optimal usability characteristics. However, this is the system that is installed (and more important, maintained) by the system administrators at my ISP.
Alertbox