I don't get why is this on the homepage. They clearly have a button to unsubscribe from all the emails. And it works. I found it in maybe two days after registering for an account and realizing that they send an email about everything. Never received an email from them since then.
Even so, that's a crappy reason to hate a company that could be solved in so many simple ways.
It's on the homepage because it is a somewhat humorous comment on the bad UX of putting the unsubscribe all at the end of pages of unsubscribe checkboxes.
I'm surprised you're clever enough to have found the button but are unable to figure out why this made it to HN's front page ...
Isn't it obvious to check how much of the checkmarks there is before you start unchecking them?
In order to do so, you have to scroll to the bottom of the page. If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you'll notice that there's a "save settings" button, and without clicking on the bottom, you'll be unchecking them for nothing. And if you notice that button, you're going to notice "unsubscribe from all emails" link right below it.
I don't see that as being more crappy UX than the rest of the Goodreads design.
If there are about 50 possible actions to take on the page, and one of them is literally the last action, even after the 'save your settings' button, then that action is about as non-obvious as it can get while still being present in legible text. Flip it around - if you wanted an action to be obvious, would you put it there?
As a comparison, look at meetup.com, a similar endeavour in a lot of ways: their email notification screen[0] has a 'turn off' button before any of the individual checkboxes, which turns them all off (except password resets and the like).
"I don't see that as being more crappy UX than the rest of the Goodreads design."
I've seen this mentioned a lot of times on various forums. GoodReads by design doesn't look as good as any other social service we use now. But I am curious, whether that can be something an incumbent service can work on.
Providing great design and with GoodReads functionality, would that work for the new service?
Even so, that's a crappy reason to hate a company that could be solved in so many simple ways.