April 17, 2006, 5:57 a.m. (Message 45062)
Ok, I have been in contact with the people from the CID. Basically, we have everybody's wires crossed. Basically, CID are not spammers, but are rather enthusiastic word spreaders. It is possible to end up on their list because somebody nominated you, or - my suspicion - because you looked to be on the right list. They practice a very relaxed form of opt-in rather than opt-out or even double opt-in process. (Term reference: http://www.ibizbasics.com/online030601.htm) I have requested to let me do a bulk unsubscribe on behalf of the list, but they were not quite comfortable with that. So, it needs to be done by the individuals. To unsubscribe, please email directly to xxxxxxxxx@xxx-xxxxxx.xxx; do not use CC/forward of the RSCDS email, that just causes confusion. They say that they have an exclusion list, so the first completed unsubscribe should be sufficient. Something like the following might do: ---- Hi, I believe I had been accidentally added to one of your mailing lists for this email address (xxx@xxx.xxx). I would appreciate to be removed from all the contact lists you have and to be put on the explicit exclusion list. Please confirm that my email has been removed. Thank you, ZZZZ ------ I have requested RSCDS to be put on their exclusion list (no response to that one yet). I have also pointed at the resources for double opt-in, as well as resources to more modern ways of news distribution (RSS). Both of those items are supposedly were passed on to the technical team. Hopefully, it will make a difference eventually. Hopefully this will be the end of that. If there are still any questions, issues, non-responses, I will be happy to moderate. I understand some people are quite incensed, but let's not "call FBI over it" (Last semi-joking reference is from : http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/24/tuttle_centos/) Regards, Alex. P.s. For those who follow the internet meme, this has become a "Snakes on the plane" situation.
April 17, 2006, 10:45 a.m. (Message 45063, in reply to message 45062)
On behalf of all, I thank you. However, I have tried the nice approach and get Bounce Backs. This just makes me all the more suspicious of them. And of course, I still get the regular messages from them. They will not, for some reason, remove the two addresses that I use and I have set a rule to exclude their email. I am not incensed, just disappointed. Regards Murray
April 17, 2006, 7:08 p.m. (Message 45065, in reply to message 45062)
So much venom directed at the IDC/CID! My impression is that all the related e-mail I received came from the Strathspey server. I doubt that Adamantia Angeli (what a great name!) would have my address - unless I were to contact her asking to remove me from her list! And she has a point - what are the problems? Does the International Dance Council exist legally? Are they having a 20th World Congress on Dance Research? Did previously advertised events take place? Was anyone ripped off? I'd like to know. The only familiar name is Dora Stratou, who seems to have a Dance Theatre in Athens. Regards, David (Toronto) --------------------------------- Make Yahoo! Canada your Homepage Yahoo! Canada Homepage
April 17, 2006, 7:22 p.m. (Message 45066, in reply to message 45065)
On Mon, 17 Apr 2006, David Yee wrote: > So much venom directed at the IDC/CID! > > My impression is that all the related e-mail I received came from the > Strathspey server. > > I doubt that Adamantia Angeli (what a great name!) would have my > address - unless I were to contact her asking to remove me from her > list! > > And she has a point - what are the problems? Does the International > Dance Council exist legally? Are they having a 20th World Congress on > Dance Research? Did previously advertised events take place? Was > anyone ripped off? I agree, the recent flurry of messages seem mostly prompted by the fact that somehow or other, messages from this organization were getting posted on the strathspey server. However, there are a number of us who have been receiving messages from this organization for months or years (not through Strathspey) and have been unable to get our addresses removed from the mailing list. Regardless of what the organization does or doesn't do, it is annoying to receive unwanted e-mail messages. That is the problem. I have attempted to follow the removal instructions posted by Alexandre. It will be impossible to know the results until a few weeks have passed without receiving any spam from them. / Lara ******************************** Lara Friedman~Shedlov "Librarians -- Like Google, but xxxx@xxxxxxx.xxx warm-blooded" ********************************
April 17, 2006, 7:23 p.m. (Message 45067, in reply to message 45065)
On 4/17/06, David Yee <xxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxx.xx> wrote: > > So much venom directed at the IDC/CID! > > My impression is that all the related e-mail I received came from the Strathspey server. Right. So, the people who only got the emails via Strathspey server don't need to do anything. I already requested for the mailing list alias to be dropped from their list. Only those who get direct emails, need to worry. As to the venom, it was just a confusion, hopefully now resolved. Regards, Alex. P.s. We lost two subscribers on the list over it. So, at least some annoyance is justified. Just don't vent it by posting to the list and/or cross-posting the list to 3rd parties. That may just restart the cycle......
April 17, 2006, 10:49 p.m. (Message 45068, in reply to message 45062)
David (Toronto) commented: | So much venom directed at the IDC/CID! | | My impression is that all the related e-mail I received came from | the Strathspey server. | | I doubt that Adamantia Angeli (what a great name!) would have my | address - unless I were to contact her asking to remove me from her | list! | | And she has a point - what are the problems? Does the International | Dance Council exist legally? Are they having a 20th World Congress | on Dance Research? Did previously advertised events take place? Was | anyone ripped off? That may all be true, and the IDC may well be a perfectly legitimate (even worthy) organization. But none of that is relevant to why you see people reacting with "Spam!" comments. There are a million worthy organizations in the world. If each one were to send you just one worthy message each year, you'd get several thousand worthy messages each day. Some of us are reaching that level of worthy messages. Most of us don't like it, no matter how worthy each individual message may be. What you're seeing is the widespread reaction to such messages by the people who have been seriously impacted by such email messages. Lots of people have a strong reaction, even if the organization has sent only one or two messages. It's because of all those other organizations that have sent only one or two messages. Fact is that the IDC's message to the list fits exactly the general definition of "spam": an unsolicited mass mailing. It doesn't matter that the organization is legit. It doesn't matter that the contents were true. It doesn't matter that the advertised events took place. What matters is that it was an unsolicited mass mailing. Such things are bogging down a lot of people's mailboxes and making email soak up far too much of our time. We do see messages here from SCD groups about their events, and nobody objects. Those are on-topic here, and were probably not mass-mailed to a hundred other lists. But the IDC messages aren't about SCD. They are about general dance events, and were probably sent to a lot more people than just this one list. It's not very surprising that people here would get upset and want to stop it from happening again. -- _, O John Chambers <:#/> <xx@xxxxxxxx.xxx.xxx> + <xxxxxx@xxxxx.xxx> /#\ in Waltham, Massachusetts, USA, Earth | |
April 17, 2006, 11:23 p.m. (Message 45070, in reply to message 45068)
John Chambers schrieb: > We do see messages here from SCD groups about their events, and > nobody objects. Those are on-topic here, and were probably not > mass-mailed to a hundred other lists. But the IDC messages aren't > about SCD. They are about general dance events, and were probably > sent to a lot more people than just this one list. It's not very > surprising that people here would get upset and want to stop it from > happening again. »Upset« is not a suitable description of the sentiment one experiences when confronted with such a profound case of delusions of grandeur. »Amazed« is a much better term. At least I do not cease to be amazed at (a) how these people think that what they do is so important that, apparently, everyone on this planet who has both an e-mail address and a pair of dance shoes of whatever description needs to find out about it, and (b) how these people think that, in spite of having advised them to the contrary multiple times, one still must be kept up to date with the latest news about traditional Balinese temple dance conventions held by the Cuban expatriate community in Greenland. It makes one wish for compulsory licensing of Internet access, just so one can get ruffians like these in trouble with the Information Superhighway Patrol for the moral equivalent of tailgating. FYI, here's a message I sent to the folks at IDC last June: From: Anselm Lingnau <xxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx> To: "International Dance Council - CID" <xxxxxxxxx@xxx-xxxxxx.xxx> Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 12:05:57 +0200 Please remove ALL addresses ending in »strathspey.org« from your mailing list IMMEDIATELY. You are basically trying to send your messages not just to me, but to another mailing list comprising more than 400 people who are, on the whole, not in the least interested in your circulars -- and who will not receive them in any case since I'm junking them before they get transmitted. If I were you I should seriously reconsider how you build up your address lists. It is definitely not done to »google« for all web pages that have »dance« somewhere and then methodically »spam« the mail addresses found there. This is absolutely unacceptable and you can take it from me that in general it will NOT help you win friends and influence people. In fact, I think that an apology would be in order. Thank you for your consideration and immediate action. [etc.] Judging from the response I received to this message (zilch, to be precise), I hope Alexandre will forgive me for my lack of faith in his more recent, if welcome, attempts to get this sorted. Believing as always in the essential goodness of human nature, however, I have sent yet another message to IDC asking again to both remove anything ending in »strathspey.org« and to add the domain to their exclusion list. Let's see whether anything comes out of this; I'm not holding my breath. Anyway, if I notice as much as a peep from those clowns on the actual Strathspey list again, I'm going to block them for good. Once is more than enough. Anselm P.S. Again, the clairvoyance of the automatic signature generator never ceases to surprise. -- Anselm Lingnau, Frankfurt, Germany ..................... xxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx Equal opportunity means everyone will have a fair chance at being incompetent. -- Laurence J. Peter
April 18, 2006, 11:14 a.m. (Message 45071, in reply to message 45070)
YOu mean that they are not as important as Scottish Country Dancing in Timbuktoo? :>) Pia one still must be kept up to date with the latest news about traditional Balinese temple dance conventions held by the Cuban expatriate community in Greenland. -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.4.3/316 - Release Date: 17/04/2006