At 10:00 AM -0400 5/20/01, Bernie Cosell is rumored to have typed:
> Why not just send them a constant stream of "there are still zillions of
> email viruses afoot, don't open attachments"? -- that's both closer to
> the truth, safer, and a better 'email ecology' for them than "HEY, watch
> out for a message that says click here if you want to get-rich-quick".
Um, kids, seems to me there's a much easier solution to this problem
(which has strayed prety far away from the original topic, anyway) from the
listmaster's perspective. There's really only one question you need to ask
yourself:
Is a virus warning on-topic for my mailing list?
If you're running a list dedicated to computers, or a specific brand or
OS, I'd bet it is. If you're running a mailing list dedicated to some movie
actress, I'm guessing it ISN'T...and like _all_ off-topic postings, they
should be discouraged. We've kinda lost sight of the fact that we are NOT
responsible for educating our subscribers on all things computers, we are
only responsible for supplying on-topic discussions, dealing only with what
the subscriber expected to discuss when they joined the mailing list in the
first place.
I don't argue that our subscribers get infected...I probably receive five
or six copies of Homepage or BadTrans a week to my mailing list admin
addresses (yes, the filter to a safe address, and I'm careful to always use a
Macintosh to pull the mail from those safe boxes). I have set up scripted
responses with pointers to Symantec/McAfee web pages, and send them as
immediately as possible to those subscribers who are infected. And yea, the
person probably had a comple other subscribers' email addresses in their
address book.
But a mailing list discussing Old-Time Radio, for example, is NOT the
place to discuss computer viri, real or hoaxed. It's a waste of bandwidth to
allow such far-off-topic discussions, and I don't; any more than I'd allow
someone to discuss foot massagers on the list.
Charlie
