RE: unsubscribe

Joe Barrera (joebar@MICROSOFT.com)
Wed, 12 Nov 1997 21:27:46 -0800


Yes, I jest... it just happened that a cascading "me too" unsubscribe chain
is what really caused havoc. It was positive feedback -- the more stupid "me
too" messages, the more people wanted off the list. The other problem is
that the initial flood of messages slowed the delivery of messages down so
much that no one received the "me too" messages that had already been
received.

Of the thousands of people on the bedlam list, I only saw about 30 or 40
such messages (as they trickled in eventually). So the idiot percentage was
in the 1% range. (Actually, a lot of these folks were not necessarily idiots
but rather just folks new to Microsoft -- new employees, vendors, etc.) The
problem was that adding 40 messages to everyone's mailbox probably doubled
the overall mail traffic, and the mail servers no longer were able to keep
up.

- Shirley (aka joebar)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: CobraBoy! [SMTP:tbyars@earthlink.net]
> Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 1997 9:04 PM
> To: Joe Barrera
> Subject: RE: unsubscribe
>
> Joe Barrera about 5:56 PM -0800 on 11/12/97, stepped up to the plate and
> let this one fly:
>
> > me too
> >
> > - Joe
> >
> > PS. And take me off that bedlam-3 list as well
>
> Shirley you jest!
>
> Don't go Joe...
>
> Tim
>
> --
>
> You only get pronounced two things in life,
> man and wife, and dead on arrival. Dennis Miller
>
> <> tbyars@earthlink.net <>
>