[3161] in APO News
Re: FW: a good cause...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jeff Bigler)
Wed Apr 1 16:49:46 1998
Date: Wed, 1 Apr 1998 16:47:21 -0500
To: stephw@uwmb.org
Cc: apo-news@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <MAPI.Id.0016.00746570687720204145413830303035@MAPI.to.RFC822>
(message from Stephanie Weintraub on Wed, 01 Apr 98 16:20:16 EST)
Reply-To: jcb@MIT.EDU
From: Jeff Bigler <jcb@MIT.EDU>
[Apologies in advance for filling your mailboxes, but this is something
important to me. Flames to me personally, not to apo-news.]
Please don't mailbomb American Airlines for doing a good thing. Note
that this petition doesn't give a year, or an expiration date for the
email. By forwarding it, you will contribute to yet another petition
that will continue to bounce around the internet forever.
Note also the manner in which the email will snowball. Let's suppose
that the 224th person forwards the petition to a mailing list containing
100 people. This means American Airlines will receive 100 copies of the
petition with 224 out of 225 identical names. Now, think for a moment
about how many different paths this petition might have taken since its
inception, and you'll quickly realize how many thousands of email copies
of the petition the poor American Airlines webmasters will have to deal
with every day. That's quite a punishment for doing something good!
For what it's worth, here are the criteria I use for deciding whether or
not to forward a particular message:
1) Does the message provide a way to verify that the information
actually comes from the purported source? If not, don't forward
it. If so, double-check the source before forwarding it.
2) Does the message give the data/original information (or a pointer
to the same) so people can review it and draw their own
conclusions? If not, don't forward it. If so, check the source
and pass on *your own analysis* of the source.
3) Does the message give a deadline for taking action or an expiration
date? If it doesn't, don't forward it. It has probably already
expired. Most messages that don't include an expiration date
continue to float around the internet for years after the deadline
has passed. (I'm sure many of you have seen the message that
floats around the internet about Craig Shergold, the kid in England
who had cancer and wanted to set the record for receiving the most
cards in the mail. If you haven't, the cancer was removed five
years ago and hasn't recurred, and he is still receiving five bags
of mail a day. The Guinness Book of World Records has removed the
entry and will not accept further entris for this category.)
4) Does the message say something like "please forward this to
everyone you know"? If so, you probably shouldn't. Even if none
of the other rules applies, think carefully about the possible
implications. Most people vastly underestimate the size and
connectivity of the internet. You can safely assume 500,000 people
either have already forwarded the message, or will forward it soon,
causing the mail servers that handle the message to grind to a
screeching halt. Remember the Houghton-Mifflin promotion in
December 1996? (They were going to give an amount of money to
charity based on their reaching a goal of receiving a certain
number of email messages.) They reached their maximum number of
messages early in the promotion, but they continued to receive so
much email that their mail servers remained unable to function
until well after the deadline had passed. I wonder how many more
books they could have donated to needy kids if they hadn't had to
spend extra money on more computers and more sysadmins to handle
the extra email... Note especially that chain letters fall into
this category. Most ISPs have policies explicitly prohibiting
chain letters, and many have been known to revoke the accounts of
people who forward them.
Thanks.
YiLFS,
Jeff Bigler '87
--
Jeff Gilman Bigler 8 Little Nahant Rd. find me anywhere: +1 500 445 5522
jcb@mit.edu Nahant, MA 01908-1120 home phone/FAX: +1 781 592 5802
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