On Fri, 2010-03-19 at 15:11 -0700, Chris Richman wrote: > Thanks, Michelle, I've added those to our suppression list, too. Oddly > enough, a user had actually confirmed gtk-l...@gnome.org, so I removed > it from his account.
OK, I successfully managed to shut myself up and just move along a few times. Until now. :) Note that this is not meant as a serious rant, but a rant in some parts, and it isn't even about LinkedIn in particular. First of all -- yes, unfortunately the situation with gnome.org isn't all that easy. There *are* real, human addresses *and* mailing lists using the very same right-hand part. I am myself one of those GNOME contributors with such an address. And I am a moderator for GNOME lists, as well as subscribed to a lot of them. What made me chip in? The action taken to add 3 lists to the suppression list. This is insufficient! To say the least. The attitude shown, if one reads carefully. Adding three lists? Oh, yeah, right -- because they have been mentioned. There was noise about it. You want to be serious about this? At the very least, do google. Here, did it for you. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=gnome+mailing+list The list of gnome.org mailing lists is two or one clicks away from that. Depending on you picking the first or second search result. But there's more why I feel like venting, you ask? Yes. People are mindless. People are always in a hurry. And some are even plain stupid. But hey, these social networking sites offer a way to import my address book. How comfy! They will get it right, no? Of course they do, after all I trust them with my entire, years old collection of email addresses from my mailer! Or even my account password! No they don't. No other words to describe this. They just -- don't. This is where I leave LinkedIn, and shift over to Facebook. Just one social networking site for another. Purely, because I do have real life experience with Facebook and the following. Dunno if that's coincidence, or if LinkedIn does a better job here. As most of you /should/ know by now, I am one of the SA list moderator team. If you don't, read the previous sentence again, please. ;) Guess what I regularly got stuck in the moderation queue... Invites to Facebook! Reminders of still pending and (bad, bad me) not yet responded to invites to Facebook. By users of this very list. Some of them definitely regulars, who should know better. Probably do, but that importing was all too easy, and they will get it right for me, won't they? (As an anecdote, I recently was sufficiently annoyed and curious, to try the offered "stop bothering me" link. To my astonishment, I didn't have to create an account for the list. If it worked? Time will tell.) We have lost the battle to educate users properly. Years ago, when the "me too" squadron flooded the net. There's almost no way to make a regular user be aware of the data he hands out. Even less so, if that means he would have to go through *hundreds* of collected addresses in that oh-so-comfy imported address list. It is now up to the social network, or service in general, to vet such lists of mass-invite. They offer the "mass" in that term, they are responsible for it. More responsibility. Less growth at any price. Again, this is not specifically aiming at LinkedIn. Or any other social networking site. > I'm open to suggestions. We face the same pressure for growth that all > social networks do, but most of the folks here really do want to do the > right thing. We recognize that it doesn't benefit us (and, in fact, > hurts us) to send mail to people who don't want to receive it. Chris, I was surprised to see someone from LinkedIn speak up in here. Just like in the past with other services or vendors. Surprised, but definitely not unpleasantly so. I even like the fact you added (and asked for) addresses for your suppression list. However, as you most likely could tell, I don't like the attitude to be quick on the trigger with a very limited subset, where a 30 second search would have got you the entire picture. Just because someone mentioned them, and there was noise. Here's more noise. guenther -- char *t="\10pse\0r\0dtu...@ghno\x4e\xc8\x79\xf4\xab\x51\x8a\x10\xf4\xf4\xc4"; main(){ char h,m=h=*t++,*x=t+2*h,c,i,l=*x,s=0; for (i=0;i<l;i++){ i%8? c<<=1: (c=*++x); c&128 && (s+=h); if (!(h>>=1)||!t[s+h]){ putchar(t[s]);h=m;s=0; }}}
