In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>On 28 Apr 98 at 11:02, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:
>
>> >What is it about the online community that causes people who are presumably
>> >intelligent and at least somewhat civilized to behave like total louts,
>>
>> I often wonder that exact thing. I especially wonder about it
>> each time some lout of a list admin allows me to be
>> forge-subscribed to a non- confirming mailing list he/she is
>> running.
>
>Hmm. The problem with your strategy is that in response to an
>offence committed by some unknown miscreant, made possible by the
>carelessness/laziness/ignorance of a list admin, you swear at all the
>subscribers to that list. It's like bombing a town flat because a
>cop let a hoodlum escape and go to your place to rob you.
Like it? Yes, I suppose so, with one rather important difference. Nobody
dies or is maimed.
>It's targetting the wromg people, and it doesn't help.
Wrong on both counts.
The list participants (and their opinions) tend to have an effect upon
the behavior of the list admin.
I have tried to get _many_ list admins to add some trivial security to the
subscription process for their lists via personal E-mail messages just be-
tween me and them, and in general I have found that they feel that have
better things to do with their time (e.g. playing golf). I attribute this
to the fact that (a) they don't know me from Adam and (b) they don't really
give a rat's ass about how _I_ think they should configure their lists.
However when several of the list participatants (with whom the admin has a
longstanding and pre-existing relationship) are encouraged to write to the
list admin, asking him/her why he/she is such a bozo to have allowed that
Guilmette crank to have gotten subscribed against his will, _then_ results
are produced and changes in configuration ensue.
The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
>If you want a target for your anger, and you can't find the culprit...
You don't seem to understand. And lits admin who is running a mailing list
that blindly accepts forged subscriptions _is_ `the culprit'.
As far as I'm concerned, they are every bit as guilty as the net-hooligans
who create the forged subscriptions.
It takes _both_ a net-hooligan _and_ an incompentent/careless list admin
to create one of these forged subscriptions. Remove either one from the
equation and these things no longer happen.
-- Ron Guilmette, Roseville, California ---------- E-Scrub Technologies, Inc.
-- Deadbolt(tm) Personal E-Mail Filter demo: http://www.e-scrub.com/deadbolt/
-- Wpoison (web harvester poisoning) - demo: http://www.e-scrub.com/wpoison/
