4 ms·

Let's make subscription timeouts a reality. When you subscribe to an email newsletter, have it default to a 1-year subscription, which the user can modify. Thi

Let's make subscription timeouts a reality. When you subscribe to an email newsletter, have it default to a 1-year subscription, which the user can modify. This solves this problem, and auto-unsubscribes people who are not active users. You could have a login or other action renew the subscription.

kuschku 9y ago
No. If I subscribe to something, I want it to just continue working. I don’t want to have to continuously spend time maintaining such bullshit. This is another user-hostile action.
- taeric 9y ago
  Meh, I'd take this one. There is literally nothing that is maintenance free. Closest you can get is areas where the cost of maintaining it is outsourced to someone else. That is, I don't disagree that this is user hostile. I contend it is still the better option by offloading of the cost to you. Instead of by selling you.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
    So, it's technically not possible to not automatically delete addresses from a subscriber list?
    - taeric 9y ago
      Its not possible to know which subscribers aren't reading without tracking information. I grant that you wouldn't need to sell said information once you are tracking it. The extra infrastructure to support all of that isn't free, though. So the incentives are high.
      - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
        But it simply shouldn't be your business whether I read it. If I request that you subscribe me to some mailing list, then I expect to receive the emails from that mailing list exactly up to the day that I request to be unsubscribed. Whether I subscribe to read the emails or just to archive them for later reference or for feeding them into a robot that distills out the most important information for me ... that's simply none of your business and you shouldn't try second-guessing me if I have explicitly declared my intentions.
        taeric 9y ago
        I don't necessarily disagree. However, there is a cost to blindly sending emails forever. To that end, I'm ok offloading the effort of keeping the subscription going to me. Would I rather there was a reliable way to do this that did not result in spam detectors getting triggered? Well, yeah. If you have thoughts on how to make that happen, they are welcome.
        zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
        Well, that cost is almost certainly lower than building a solution to figure out who is reading stuff or anything like that. Sending emails just isn't expensive resource-wise. As for spam detectors: Just forget about spam detectors. If people employ someone to throw away their emails for idiotic reasons, that is not my problem. If they want to be subscribed to my mailing list, they should not employ people who throw away my emails.
- ekianjo 9y ago
  > If I subscribe to something, I want it to just continue working. I don’t want to have to continuously spend time maintaining such bullshit. Every certificate you own for security purposes should have an expiry date, and this is not "user-hostile", this is just good practice. A link to click on once a year is not a big deal.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    For certificates, we have a fully standardized automated system to renew them. I literally don’t have to do anything, and my certificates will continue to work as long as Let’s Encrypt exists. If I have to manually to any maintenance, the system is broken. Which, in this case, it is. The problem isn’t "one link to click per year", but if everyone does this, suddenly I have to click dozens of links per day.

kuschku 9y ago

No. If I subscribe to something, I want it to just continue working. I don’t want to have to continuously spend time maintaining such bullshit. This is another user-hostile action.

taeric 9y ago
Meh, I'd take this one. There is literally nothing that is maintenance free. Closest you can get is areas where the cost of maintaining it is outsourced to someone else. That is, I don't disagree that this is user hostile. I contend it is still the better option by offloading of the cost to you. Instead of by selling you.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
  So, it's technically not possible to not automatically delete addresses from a subscriber list?
  - taeric 9y ago
    Its not possible to know which subscribers aren't reading without tracking information. I grant that you wouldn't need to sell said information once you are tracking it. The extra infrastructure to support all of that isn't free, though. So the incentives are high.
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
      But it simply shouldn't be your business whether I read it. If I request that you subscribe me to some mailing list, then I expect to receive the emails from that mailing list exactly up to the day that I request to be unsubscribed. Whether I subscribe to read the emails or just to archive them for later reference or for feeding them into a robot that distills out the most important information for me ... that's simply none of your business and you shouldn't try second-guessing me if I have explicitly declared my intentions.
      - taeric 9y ago
        I don't necessarily disagree. However, there is a cost to blindly sending emails forever. To that end, I'm ok offloading the effort of keeping the subscription going to me. Would I rather there was a reliable way to do this that did not result in spam detectors getting triggered? Well, yeah. If you have thoughts on how to make that happen, they are welcome.
        zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
        Well, that cost is almost certainly lower than building a solution to figure out who is reading stuff or anything like that. Sending emails just isn't expensive resource-wise. As for spam detectors: Just forget about spam detectors. If people employ someone to throw away their emails for idiotic reasons, that is not my problem. If they want to be subscribed to my mailing list, they should not employ people who throw away my emails.
ekianjo 9y ago
> If I subscribe to something, I want it to just continue working. I don’t want to have to continuously spend time maintaining such bullshit. Every certificate you own for security purposes should have an expiry date, and this is not "user-hostile", this is just good practice. A link to click on once a year is not a big deal.
- kuschku 9y ago
  For certificates, we have a fully standardized automated system to renew them. I literally don’t have to do anything, and my certificates will continue to work as long as Let’s Encrypt exists. If I have to manually to any maintenance, the system is broken. Which, in this case, it is. The problem isn’t "one link to click per year", but if everyone does this, suddenly I have to click dozens of links per day.