13

I'd like to have all new questions tagged sent to the mailing list for this R package ([email protected]). I'm one of the authors and the maintainer of the mailing list. I like SO and answer here. Subscribing the mailing list to the tag makes it easier for data.table users to be notified of new questions and easily answer (by clicking the link to the new question and answering on SO). This reduces the burden on me to answer. Otherwise they have to subscribe to two places (the mailing list and the SO RSS tag). We are very much pro-SO and want to encourage users to use SO rather than the mailing list, where appropriate.

However, I've tried several ways over the last few weeks and SO seems to keep clearing the filter subscription. It works for a day or so, and then stops. Almost as if SO has a filter running daily to remove mailing list subscriptions? Since I'm the mailing list maintainer I added stackexchange.com to the white list, and I'm not notified of any rejects.

I tried with my own SO account, choosing the mailing list email address as the target in the subscription (works for a day then stops). I also tried creating a SO account for the datatable-help list, but this also only seems to work for a day.

Am I doing something wrong?

Improve this question
4
  • 2
    Are you certain that all of your users want this on the mailing list? I know that I wouldn't want any mailing list to forward SO questions to me. Your subscribers could be reporting these posts as spam, which might have repercussions on the subscription.
    – Kevin Vermeer
    Oct 25, 2011 at 11:41
  • Are you sure that your mailing list allows the mails to come in? You should get a "click to confirm" mail when you subscribe, If you don't confirm, it won't send you anything.
    – balpha StaffMod
    Oct 25, 2011 at 12:32
  • @balpha Yes, got the 'click to confirm' every time, clicked it, and saw the 'confirmed ok' message. Yes, stackexchange is on the white list and new messages do get through to the list for the first day.
    – Matt Dowle
    Oct 25, 2011 at 15:21
  • 2
    @Kevin Vermeer The mailing list is for questions about data.table (plus discussion, polls and notices of upgrades). Why wouldn't subscribers want to see the new questions? It's the content that matters, not the mechanism the asker prefers to ask on. Edit: data.table is quite low volume: every post is likely to be of interest to every subscriber since it's a special interest list for just one single package. If it were R or another high volume list, I would agree with you.
    – Matt Dowle
    Oct 25, 2011 at 15:28

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
11

It looks like people on your mailing list are clicking "unsubscribe" :(

Since we always expose a one-click, no-login-required "Unsubscribe from this filter" link, I don't see any easy around this.

Improve this answer
7
  • Thanks. Have you looked at my account and can see the unsub requests being made, or is it a (good) guess?
    – Matt Dowle
    Oct 25, 2011 at 22:07
  • 1
    Yes. All 5 subscriptions have been unsubscribed from.
    – Emmett
    Oct 25, 2011 at 22:35
  • 2
    I am on the mailing list - I agree that I want to receive these questions, but it was definitely confusing the first time I received them. It's not clear that I got those messages because I was subscribed to datatable-help.
    – user1006026
    Oct 25, 2011 at 22:41
  • @user1006026 I looked at the SO questions that did get through. The subject line has the usual prefix "[datatable-help]" and the footer says 'datatable-help mailing list'?
    – Matt Dowle
    Oct 25, 2011 at 23:10
  • @Emmett Is there a way to turn this question into a feature request before accepting your answer e.g. a new user option to turn off the one-click, no-login-required unsub link? Just the 'visit subscriptions' link would be fine.
    – Matt Dowle
    Oct 25, 2011 at 23:33
  • @Matthew I'd just create a new question (tagged [feature-request]) for that
    – Emmett
    Oct 25, 2011 at 23:34
  • @Emmett Thanks. Done here.
    – Matt Dowle
    Oct 25, 2011 at 23:48

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .