After launching its upgraded website this summer, the DCB started emailing a weekly note drawing attention to new biographies and other features of the site.
Today one recipient, Richard Mackie, appealed: "Hi, any chance you can take me off your list? I get too much email. Thanks." Soon scores of others began adding their "me-too's."
And every message went not only to the DCB -- but to everyone else on the list of recipients.
Now all those recipients are getting demands from Christie Blatchford (Who knew?): "Will you all stop hitting reply all? Have your names removed as you like but I sure don't need to know." Her message, of course, went to all on the distribution list, and at least twice. They probably didn't need to know your advice either, Christie.
Recipients also got to read help for the DCB from Stephanie Conn: "I also wish to be removed but there seems to be no way for us to do this.Usually there is an 'Unsubscribe" link, but not on your emails. I see we also have accounts, but I do not know my website log-on, and there is no way to retrieve a lost password or username, so I cannot go in to check my account and adjust the option to receive the mailings. This would be a great thing to fix."
The DCB now apologizes.It promises to do all this. It begs for messages to be sent to dbc@dbc.ulaval.ca and not to the list address, which (as we oughta know by now) automatically goes to all the world. So far requests to be unsubscribed continue to pour in to the distribution list.
For inane, useless short messages, it's almost like being on Twitter.
