[IBC] A plea (read; RANT) from the listowner
 

Folks, 4 times today I have tried to answer and help someone
privately on a question that has hit the list frequently of late
and didn't need to be repeated for 1000 people and our archives.
And, 4 times, I've gotten that message back from some electronic
"postmaster" that tells me my mail is undeliverable because the
person who ASKED FOR HELP has mucked up his or her own e-mail
address. Allegedly, this lowers the amount of SPAM that person
gets every day.

That's fine. Muck up you address, if you want.

BUT . . . IF YOU WANT SOMEONE'S HELP it behooves you to make it
easy for that person to help you.

Some of these mucked-up addresses went beyond adding something
like NOSPAM to their address that I am supposed to take the extra
time to delete because I dearly want to correspond with that
person (who I have NEVER MET!).

In fact, when we send help to them and that help bounces THEY are
sending US the equivalent of MORE SPAM in the form of rejection
messages.

I am dangerously close to putting everyone whose return-mail
address has been diddled to the point of uselessness on NOMAIL,
or to otherwise block their messages from the mailing list --
which constitutes 75% of the IBC. This is a group whose purpose
(one of them) is to help other members of the group. Not all of
that help needs to (or should) go through the list. It seems
logical that those who seek help should they make it easier for
us to help them. (For those -- most of you, I suspect -- who use
this ploy on USENET's rec.arts.bonsai, this will mean that MOST
of the potential readers of your e-mail will not see your
message.)

So, please use REAL addresses on the bonsai list. There are spam
blockers out there (the best of them are free!) that work pretty
well. DELETE works well, too. OE6x has a "block sender" option
that also works.

Jim Lewis - - Tallahassee, FL -- Bonsai List
manager

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