On Tue, Nov 21, 2017 at 11:59 AM, Andrew Sullivan <ajs@crankycanuck.ca> wrote:
All I, at least, was trying to say was that there were some of us who were entirely surprised, and I'm kind of amazed that a bunch of database people didn't announce a planned migration weeks in advance.
My read on all this is that lots of people stopped reading these lists a long time ago and simply filtered us into oblivion. With the change those filters are not working and since they don't really care about figuring out the right way to deal with something they haven't interacted with in ages just do the thing most convenient for them and hope it works. No amount of pre-warning would help those people - its not like our decision to change our mailing list technology made them suddenly decide the content of our lists or our product was no longer worth their attention. And those that want to be kept informed will likely just react to whatever the new reality is when it comes to be. The email saying why it happened simply mollifies them when they ask why such a reaction was necessary.
What would help the majority of readers is if a rule could be added that keys off of the word "unsubscribe" (and maybe some other key phrases) and dumps it into a non-public moderation queue where requests can be handled manually and prevented from reaching the list members.