Dear Tony, (and others who have criticised my handling of this thread), Thank you for your notes.
I have most certainly not treated this matter lightly and have been in discussion with others of Prodig listmums/owner. As I have now been the target of public criticism on this list, I feel that I should defend myself: As listmum I only follow the guidelines that are set out for me. This is a strictly voluntary and mostly thankless job, which we have taken on in order to try to make this list an efficient one, when we were invited, as I was. I most certainly do not treat these matters lightly. As many know the listowner is in the very near future going to be changing the guidelines, but until they are, we are asked to send emails to those who infringe the existing ones, for the good of the whole group. All this takes up more or less time out of our work or private time, depending on the week. Most Prodiggers do not offend, or only very occasionally. There are those who offend frequently and these take up much of our time in our duties as listmums. I send brief notes to each, asking that they abide by the guidelines. For this I have been accused variously of being power crazy, too young to remember film (I wish! as I can explain it to my grandchildren should they care to ask!) and worse. I did not put a stop to the discussion until I felt that it had served its useful purpose. It began to be personal, listing someone's name and one poster put an email address only in his posting, and we began to get 'me too!' postings. To me none of those added to the discussion, and should not have been posted. I am also a believer in friendly banter and am a member of many lists to which I contribute, not without such banter from time to time. Once I (I thought courteously) put an end to the discussion, I received a note from a list member which should have been sent offlist. This list is not alone in having the messages listed on Google. My postings to many other groups, including Yahoo ones that allow public archives, are also available for reading and my email address is also visible if someone clicks on reply. Spam happens when you have your email address on a website, too. The list owner, Ed, will do what he can about this situation, when he can, and will keep the list advised of this. As listmum I have no power to do anything about this particular problem. I cannot access the database to remove members from the Annexe, nor can I suspend the annexe. I am sorry if my replies have angered list members, they were not meant to. Best regards, Ellie Tony Riley said: > ....when the listmoms can't learn from recent events that it's tinme for a change of attitude to the way this list is administered. > > A couple of posters have quite reasonably drawn others attention to just how publicly available the archive is through search engines such as Google on the internet at large and also how the ProDIG annexe has been adopted by many 'undesirables' as a place to advertise their websites. The listmoms reaction is to tell us that the thread is closed as being off topic and to criticise inadvertent failure to crop extraneous text etc. ... > It is as if members of the list are to be denied a little freedom of speech and are not permitted a measure of general banter that makes a community worth belonging to. -- -- Ellie Kennard, Prodig List Mum Ellie(at)iiStudio.com (902) 582-3795 (GMT-4 hours) =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
