On Mon, Oct 04, 1999 at 01:02:55AM +0200, Marcus Brinkmann wrote: > On Mon, Oct 04, 1999 at 08:13:02AM +1000, Craig Sanders wrote: > > even opt-out lists are the wrong solution...because they don't work very > > well (especially when usage of them is optional). telephone pests should > > be limited to calling ONLY an opt-in list, people who are willing to > > receive unsolicited calls. > > opt-in lists will not lead to usable results, because the statistics > will be skewed, and you know that.
yep. there's an inherent conflict between those who want to run surveys and those who don't want to be pestered. i happen to believe that an individual's right to privacy, right to not be pestered supercedes a researcher's desire to survey. so, it's a shame that stats might be skewed but that doesn't justify bothering people who don't want to be pestered. btw, if the opt-in list were large enough then there wouldn't be any skewing of results. most telesales, telemarketing, and tele-survey people don't want to use opt-in lists because they KNOW that most people don't want to be pestered by them...opt-in highlights the fact that what they are doing IS rude, and most people resent it. OTOH, many people don't mind being surveyed or called by salesdroids. i find that bizarre, but i guess it's horses for courses. > Nevertheless, I agree that calling random people is rude. that's it precisely. craig PS: all this is getting even further from relevance to debian-devel, so i guess we better stop here. -- craig sanders
