It is unfortunate that there are no real clear and definitive guidelines
about "commercial" use of this, and other Team.Net lists. But luckily there
are no clear and definitive guidelines about commercial use of the lists.
On the one hand a major benefit to many people is the ability to hear about
products and services of interest. But when does this benefit become a
problem? Is one person complaining enough, or two, or X percent of a list
or what? Those of you who also subscribe to the 6pack list may be smirking
at the moment, thinking of the festivities over there. Sometimes my life
is so much fun.
I wish more vendors would make use of the autojumble list, which was explicitly
set up for both personal and commercial adverts of cars, parts and such for
sale. Too bad I didn't make it an interactive, web based auction site back
then - specializing in Brit car bits, I might have called it B-bay! Actually
maybe I should lead by example, and post monthly parts specials from the
Fat Chance Garage to that list. Or would that cause a stampede of unsubscribe
requests?
So when is too much too much? I don't know. It depends. We'll see.
One thing I can suggest is that folks who may be overwhelmed by the occasional
spurts of FOT mail may wish to change from a regular, real-time subscription
to digest mode. Basically all the FOT messages are gathered up and when the
size of the collection or the age of the oldest message reach a certain
threshold, majordomo batches up the collection into a single message to the
digest folks. That may be easier for folks to pick and choose what they
do and do not want to read. That way you can ignore various people in the
privacy of your own home, rather than having AOL email me a message saying
who it is you don't want to talk to ;-)
mjb.
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