Re: The Best Kept Secret to Meeting Women!

[Hope Ehn Dennis Ehn <ehn...>]

There is no point in wasting bandwidth and time discussing such irrelevant
postings in a newsgroup and on a mailing list intended for other purposes.
So it is not a good idea to reply to such messages in the newsgroup or on
the mailing list to which they were posted. There are, however, two things
you can do if such postings annoy you. In fact, it's a good idea to do
them. 

First, forward the message to the postmaster at the site, typing before
the forwarded message just why (i.e., irrelevant to the group, blatant
advertising, or whatever) the message should not have been posted there. 
Good addresses to try are postmaster (at) (dot)(dot)(dot) and admin (at) 
(dot)(dot)(dot)(dot) It is often useful
to put only the last two terms after the "@" on the person's return
address (i.e., rather than <postmaster (at) 
machine(dot)department(dot)university(dot)edu>,
try <postmaster (at) university(dot)edu>). Point out that the continued 
"spamming"
of the net with such irrelevant messages may bring down unwanted
regulation on everyone. 

Second, reply to the poster, quoting the person's entire message and
complaining about it. If enough people do that, the person's site may be
inconvenienced enough to cut off the person's Net access. As long as you
send the poster *only* a single copy of his own message back, along with a
complaint of reasonable length, this is *not* "mail-bombing," which can be
almost as problematic as "spamming," and can get the "bomber" in trouble.
If each of us sends only a single copy back, then if the poster gets so
many messages of complaint that his site develops a problem, it is his
fault, not the fault of anyone who sent him only one message. 

"Spamming" can be a serious problem, and the perpetrator deserves to get
stomped. But if people respond to the group, the perp has succeeded in
making his message a topic of discussion. In a sense, he has won. Let's
not give him that satisfaction. 

Hope Ehn                          <ehn (at) world(dot)std(dot)com>

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Dennis and Hope Ehn are 2 different people sharing one account.
Hope is the author of "On-Line Resources for Classical & Academic Musicians."
Dennis does programming (mostly C++).
PLEASE don't get us confused!                                 :-)
<ehn (at) world(dot)std(dot)com>
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