strathspey@strathspey.org:45070

Anselm Lingnau

Re: International Dance Council - Final instructions

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