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Sproaticus wrote:
> I just got spammed from Helge Viker; he's trying to pawn Lego sets onto me. I
> have never had business with him before.
I have spoken with Helge in several e-mails since this happened, and he seems
very contrite about the whole ordeal. With that, I'd like to remove my
complaint against him and apologize for what I said about him and his business
practices.
Essentially, what happened is this: Helge was one target of the February 16th
spam from Paul Koelewijn. (1) Helge, not aware of the social and technical
ramifications of spam, saved all addresses from this message fur future
reference. It was from this list that he extracted addresses for his recent
mailing advertising his Lego sets for sale. In other words, the addresses
indeed "sneaked into into [Helge's] e-mail account, through mails from
others".
Having travelled away from home after sending his spam, Helge came back to a
barrage of angry messages discussing him on LUGNET, with very little negative
response in private e-mail. (2) Only then was it apparent to Helge, the
extent of his faux pas.
This situation is unfortunate, in that Helge never intended to offend anyone
-- yet his actions demanded an unforgiving and impersonal reaction. One bit
of ignorance has generated much discontent.
Similarly, I was entirely inappropriate and irresponsible when I got personal
in my announcement; in doing so, I fear I may have caused significant damage
to Helge's reputation, as well as to my own. One bit of arrogance has greatly
magnified the discontent.
There is a silver lining in this cloud, however. Helge and I have both
learned much about the consequences of being impolite, and I hope I speak for
both of us when I say that we'll both strive to do better in the future. On a
different level, follow-up discussion on LUGNET has raised the possibility of
an opt-in marketing announcement system for use by prospective buyers and
sellers of Lego merchandise; such a system may help reduce many issues
surrounding marketing within the LUGNET society.
Cheers,
- jsproat
1. see http://www.lugnet.com/general/?n=15004 . Those who received that spam
are probably aware that Paul made no effort to blind-carbon anyone, and
everyone's e-mail addresses were visible.
2. In handling spam, one should never respond directly to the sender. A
spammer would be thrilled to discover that any mail sent to your e-mail
address is read by a live person. In many cases, the sender has forged the
return address anyway.
--
Jeremy H. Sproat <jsproat@io.com> ~~~ http://www.io.com/~jsproat/
Never leave a ferret to do a bunny's job.
- Bun Bun
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