Re: [Wikiversity-l] amygdala hijack and Harry Leitner

Well, "unintentional trolling" is an oxymoron. Harry, I'm cc'ing this mail directly to you. You are creating a huge amount of useless traffic, causing harm to people who have no power to handle your unsubscription request. If you actually want help, ask for it, and be responsive to what people write, instead of just "yelling" STOP. A full description of how to unsubscribe has already been given you today, and you apparently did not read it. You would have received one or two unsubscription confirmation mails, and if you had read them and followed instructions, you'd have been unsubscribed, almost certainly. The rest of this mail is to the list, in response to Joe Cornell's mail. It is possible that Harry's actions are designed to cause enough upset that *somebody* will do something, but the obvious goal is to resolve the unsubscription problem. If there were an active list moderator, this would not be happening. An international list should have enough moderators with enough commitment that anything gets handled within 24 hours. Faster is better. These breakdowns irritate people and some then unsubscribe for that reason. I have deleted some of my mail from the list, but of what is still on my yahoomail system, I saw an all-caps unsubscription message from Harry back in July. Last Monday, six days ago, he wrote: I HAVE UNSUBSCRIBED A MILLION TIMES! FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, PLEASE STOP EMAILING ME! STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Being in full-out hysteria mode, he's not able to accurately describe his experience, such that people could actually help him. He also, my guess, sees any mail from the listserv as an offense. That probably includes the unsubscription confirmation mails that have been sent to him. There would have been two of them today, at least. (Since anyone can initiate that process, at least two of us have done it.) I'd guess that he's not reading any of this list mail describing his problem and giving advice how to unsubscribe, nor is he reading and following instructions in the unsubscription confirmation mail. He doesn't seem to understand that he is dealing with a robot, that can only follow its programming. So he sends an unsubscription command by email, or uses the unsubscribe button on-line, but isn't careful to read the instructions, and doesn't respond as directed to the unsubscription confirmation mail. He has not actually unsubscribed once, it's highly likely. Certainly not a million times.... Being focused only on his own survival needs -- that's what the amygdala is for -- he hasn't considered that list servers must confirm, in some way, that an unsubscription command actually comes from the subscribed mail. It does this in two ways: either the command is entered while logged-in with the password, or a mail is sent to the involved mailing address, containing a confirmation code. There are then two ways to complete the unsubscription, and simply replying to the mail with the subject header unchanged and no response text will do it. It's simple, but it must be done in a way that the listserv robot can recognize. Yelling is like yelling at a tree, or, more to the point, your computer or someone else's computer. Some day we will have computers that respond to yelling. Not yet, or, at least, not this listserv.   Abd ul-Rahman Lomax (413) 584-3151 business (413) 695-7114 cell I'm so excited I can't wait for Now.