[sf-lug] Cancellation, Pls.

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Stefano Maffulli (smaffulli at gmail.com):

> I can relate to Rick's feelings but I keep thinking that requests like
> "unsubscribe" are a symptom of something we (the Internet early
> citizens) screwed up.
[...]
> This behaviour is not the newbie's fault: it's our fault. 

See, that's not the way I remember it.

If someone has said to me, in early days, 'You're welcome to participate
on the Internet, but only on condition that you accept responsibility
for the screwups of arbitrary random strangers who may follow you', I'd
have said 'Thanks for the warning.  I'll pass, then.'

The way I remember it working was like this:  As a newcomer, if you
blundered into misbehaviour that pissed off lots of people, if you're
lucky, someone told you 'You were being a twit, and here's why.'  If
unlucky, you would find yourself just quietly killfiled by many.

To my knowledge, we didn't 'screw up', in that we never promised to
break into the houses of MUA editors and stop them from concealing key
headers.  We never promised to break into Google and stop GMail from
hiding footers.  We never promised to prevent future people from acting
like fsckwits on the Internet.

If you can show me where we agreed to do that, I'll set my attorney on
negotiating a better deal.  

However, I'd say the smart money is on 'No, are you kidding?'