Dear Jim
The sad thing is that this e-mail message, despite being hugely prolific, is
ultimately ineffectual because the account to which it is meant to be sent
once the names have been added, is dead. In fact the account was shut down
by the tertiary institution that Ms Bande belonged to because
the response to her initial message was so phenomenal. A subsequently
created alternative version of the message, suggests the following sites to
help with constructive action (I have also appended a useful article about
e-mail
campaigns & etc).
Sorry to trouble the whole list with this material -- many of you will
know the story already, but it would be really helpful if this
enormously persistent message could be stopped in its tracks!:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you want to do something about the situation in Afganistan start with a
web search and addressess such as.
http://www.feminist.org/afghan/intro.html
other useful sites:
http://athos.rutgers.edu/~watrous/pbs-funding-chain-letter-petition.html
http://www.wish.org/craig.htm
http://www.nbi.dk/~dickow/stop-chain-letter.txt
http://www.cancer.org/chain.html
http://urbanlegends.miningco.com/library/weekly/aa021198.htm
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-run-adverts-00.txt
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-run-spew-07.txt
http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACChainLetters.html
http://snopes.simplenet.com/spoons/faxlore/afghani.htm
http://urbanlegends.miningco.com/library/blafghan.htm
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And just generally here's a good article about e-mail petitions... as a
general rule effective internet-using petitions will be web-based ones
rather than e-mail based.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Designing Effective Action Alerts for the Internet
by Phil Agre
Graduate School of Education and Information Studies
University of California, Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California 90095-1520
USA
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/
Version of 23 December 1998. This is an updated version of an
article from the January 1994 issue of The Network Observer.
Copyright 1994-1998, all rights reserved.
Acknowledgements.
I appreciate the comments and suggestions of Steven Cherry, Nathan
Newman, Steven Snedker, and Larry Yates. Jillaine Smith of the
Benton Foundation did the HTML markup as part of her Best Practices
Toolkit.
Designing Effective Action Alerts for the Internet
An action alert is a message that someone sends out to the net
asking for a specific action to be taken on a current political
issue. Well-designed action alerts are a powerful way to invite
people to participate in the processes of a democracy. Having seen
many action alerts in my years on the Internet, I have tried to
abstract some guidelines for people who wish to use them. Even if
you do not plan to construct any action alerts yourself, I do not
recommend that you forward anybody else's alerts unless they conform
to at least the spirit of these guidelines. If I sometimes seem
stern or didactic in my prescriptions, please forgive me. It's just
that I've seen badly designed action alerts do an awful lot of
damage.
Although an Internet action alert should always be part of an issue
campaign with a coherent strategy and clear goals, I won't discuss
the larger strategic questions here. Instead, I will simply divide
action alerts into two categories, single messages and structured
campaigns. Single alerts are broadcast in the hope that they will
propagate to the maximum possible number of sympathetic Internet
users. Structured campaigns are typically conducted through mailing
lists specially constructed for the purpose, and their intended
audience may include either the whole Internet universe or a narrower
group of already-mobilized partisans.
Both types of action alerts are obviously modeled on things that
have been happening on paper, through telephone trees, and lately via
fax machines, for a long time. What computer networks do is make
them a lot cheaper. A networked alert can travel far from its
origin by being forwarded from friend to friend and list to list,
without any additional cost being imposed on the original sender.
This phenomenon of chain-forwarding is important, and it behooves
the would-be author of an action alert, whether a single message or a
whole campaign, to think through its consequences:
1. Establish authenticity.
Bogus action alerts -- such as the notorious "modem tax" alert --
travel just as fast as real ones. Don't give alerts a bad name.
Include clear information about the sponsoring organization and
provide the reader with several ways of tracing back to you --
e-mail address, postal address, URL, phone number, etc. Including
this contact information makes sense anyway -- you want people to
join your movement, and this means establishing contact with you.
One way to establish authenticity is by appending a digital
signature, presumably using PGP. Few people will check the
signature, though, and many people will remove the signature when
they forward your message to others. So there's no substitute for
clearly explaining who you are and giving people a way to reach you.
2. Put a date on it.
Paper mail and faxes get thrown away quickly, but action alerts can
travel through the Internet forever. Even if an alert seems to have
faded away, it can sleep in someone's mailbox for months or years and
then suddenly get a new life as the mailbox's owner forwards it to a
new set of lists. Do not count on the message header to convey the
date (or anything else); people who forward Internet messages
frequently strip off the header. Even better, give your recommended
action a clearly stated time-out date, e.g., "Take this action until
February 17, 1998". If you think there will be follow-up actions, or
if you want to convey that this is part of an ongoing campaign, say
so. That way, people will contact you or look out for your next
alert.
3. Include clear beginning and ending markers.
You can't prevent people from modifying your alert as they pass it
along. Fortunately, at least in my experience, this only happens
accidentally, as extra commentary accumulates at the top and bottom
of the message as it gets forwarded. So put a bold row of dashes or
something similar at the top and bottom so extra stuff will look
extra. That way it will be very clear what you and your credibility
are standing behind.
4. Beware of second-hand alerts.
Although it is uncommon for someone to modify the text of your
alert, sometimes people will foolishly send out their own paraphrase
of an alert, perhaps based on something they heard verbally. These
second-hand alerts usually contain exaggerations and other factual
inaccuracies, and as a result they can easily be used to discredit
your alert. If you become aware of inaccurate variants of your
alert, you should immediately notify relevant mailing lists of the
existence of these second-hand alerts. Explain clearly what the
facts are and aren't, implore the community not to propagate the
misleading variants, and provide pointers to accurate information
including a copy of your own alert. This action has two virtues:
first, it may help to suppress the mistaken reports; and second, it
positions you (accurately, I hope) as a responsible person who cares
about the truth.
5. Think about whether you want the alert to propagate at all.
If your alerts concern highly sensitive matters, for example the
status of specifically named political prisoners, then you will
probably want to know precisely who is getting your notices, and how,
and in what context. If so, include a prominent notice forbidding
the alert's recipients from forwarding it.
6. Make it self-contained.
Don't presuppose that your readers will have any context beyond what
they'll get on the news. Your alert will probably be read by people
who have never heard of you or your cause. So define your terms,
avoid references to previous messages on your mailing list, and
provide lots of background, or at least some simple instructions for
getting useful background materials. In fact, you might consider
making the e-mailed alert relatively short and include the URL for a
Web page that provides the full details. Your most important
audience consists of people who are sympathetic to your cause and
want to learn more about it before they can take action. Write your
alert with that type of reader in mind, not the complete insider or
the apathetic stranger.
7. Ask your reader to take a simple, clearly defined, rationally
chosen action.
For example, you might ask people to call their representatives and
express a certain view on an issue. In this case, you should provide
a way to find that representative's name and number, and explain how
to conduct the conversation: what to say, how to answer certain
likely questions, and so on. The purpose of such a script is not to
impose your thinking but to help people to learn a skill that might
otherwise be intimidating. Decide whether to ask for e-mail
messages (which can be huge in number but near-zero in effect),
written letters (which will be fewer but more effective), or phone
calls (which fall in between).
Consider other options as well: perhaps the sole purpose of your
alert is to solicit contacts from a small number of committed
activists, or to gather information, or to start a mailing list to
organize further actions.
8. Make it easy to understand.
It is crucial to begin with a good, clear headline that summarizes
the issue and the recommended action. Use plain language, not
jargon. Check your spelling. Use short sentences and simple
grammar. Choose words that will be understood worldwide, not just
in your own country or culture. Solicit comments on a draft before
sending it out.
9. Get your facts straight!
Your message will circle the earth, so double-check. Errors can be
disastrous. Even a small mistake can make it easy for your opponents
to dismiss your alerts -- and Internet alerts in general -- as
"rumors". Once you do discover a mistake, it will be impossible to
issue a correction -- the correction will probably not get forwarded
everyplace that the original message did.
10. Start a movement, not a panic.
Do not say "forward this to everyone you know". Do not overstate.
Do not plead. Do not say "Please Act NOW!!!". Do not rant about the
urgency of telling everyone in the universe about your issue. You're
not trying to address "everyone"; you're trying to address a
targeted group of people who are inclined to care about the issue.
And if the issue really is time-critical then just explain why, in
sober language. Do not get obsessed with the immediate situation at
hand. Your message may help avoid some short-term calamity, but it
should also contribute to a much longer-term process of building a
social movement. Maintaining a sense of that larger context will
help you and your readers from becoming dispirited in the event that
you lose the immediate battle.
11. Tell the whole story.
Most people have never heard of your issue, and they need facts to
evaluate it. Facts, facts, facts. For example, if you believe that
someone has been unjustly convicted of a crime, don't just give one
or two facts to support that view; most people will simply assume
they are getting half the truth. If your opponents have circulated
their own arguments, you'll need to rebut them, and if they have
framed the facts in a misleading way then you'll need to explain
what's misleading and why. On the other hand, you need to write
concisely. Even if you are focused on the actions, good explanations
count more. After all, one of the benefits of your action alert --
maybe the principal benefit -- is that it informs people about the
issue. Even if they don't act today, your readers will be more aware
of the issue in the future, provided that you don't insult their
intelligence today.
12. Don't just preach to the converted.
When you are very caught up in your cause, it is easy to send out a
message in the language you use when discussing the issue with your
fellow campaigners. Often this language is a shorthand that doesn't
really explain anything to an outsider. If you really care about
your issue, you'll take the time to find language that is suitable
for a much broader audience. This can take practice.
13. Avoid polemics.
Your readers should not have to feel they are being hectored to go
along with something from the pure righteousness of it. Some people
seem to associate non-polemical language with deference, as if they
were being made to bow at the feet of the king. This is not so.
You will not succeed unless you assume that your readers are
reasonable people who are willing to act if they are provided with
good reasons.
14. Make it easy to read.
Use a simple, clear layout with lots of white space. Break up long
paragraphs. Use bullets and section headings to avoid visual
monotony. If your organization plans to send out action alerts
regularly, use a distinctive design so that everyone can recognize
your "brand name" instantly. Use only plain ASCII characters, which
are the common denominator among Internet character sets. Just to
make sure, do not use a MIME-compliant mail program to send the
message; use a minimal program such as Berkeley mail. MIME is great,
but not everybody uses it and you don't want your recipients getting
distracted from your message by weird control codes. Format the
message in 72 columns or even fewer; otherwise it is likely to get
wrapped around or otherwise mutilated as people forward it around the
net.
15. DO NOT use a chain-letter petition.
A chain-letter petition is an action alert that includes a list of
names at the end; it invites people to add their own name to the
list, send in the petition if their name is the 30th or 60th etc,
and in any case forward the resulting alert-plus-signature-list to
everyone they know. This idea sounds great in the abstract, but it
really doesn't work. The problem is that most of the signatures
will never reach their destination, since the chain will fizzle out
before reaching the next multiple of 30 in length. What's even
worse, a small proportion of the signatures will be received in the
legislator's office many times, thus annoying the staff and
persuading them that they're dealing with an incompetent movement
that can never hold them accountable.
16. Urge people to inform you of their actions.
If you are calling on people to telephone a legislator's office, for
example, you should provide an e-mail address and invite them to send
you a brief message. Explain that you'll use these messages to count
the number of callers your alert has generated, and that this
information will be invaluable when you speak with the legislator's
staffers later on. Only do this, though, if your mail server is
capable of handling 50,000 messages in a short period. You might
want to check this out with your service provider beforehand.
17. Don't overdo it.
Action alerts might become as unwelcome as direct-mail advertising.
Postpone that day by picking your fights and including some useful,
thought-provoking information in your alert message. If you're
running a sustained campaign, set up your own list. Then send out a
single message that calls for some action and include an
advertisement for your new list. If you must send out multiple
alerts on the same issue, make sure each one is easily
distinguishable from the others and provides fresh, useful
information. Above all, don't spam. Post your message only where it
belongs. When in doubt, ask the maintainer of a given mailing list
whether your alert is appropriate. And include a phrase like "post
where appropriate" toward the beginning so that people aren't
encouraged to send your alert to mailing lists where it doesn't
belong.
18. Do a post-mortem.
When the campaign is over, try to derive some lessons for others to
use. Even if you're burned out, take a minute right away while the
experience is still fresh in mind. What problems did you have? What
mistakes did you make? What unexpected connections did you make?
Who did you reach and why? Which mailing lists was your alert
forwarded to, and which of these forwardings actually caused people
to take action? Good guesses are useful too.
19. Don't mistake e-mail for organizing.
An action alert is not an organization. If you want to build a
lasting political movement, at some point you'll have to gather
people together. The Internet is a useful tool for organizing, but
it's just one tool and one medium among many that you will need, and
you should evaluate it largely in terms of its contribution to larger
organizing goals. Do the people you reach through Internet alerts
move up into more active positions in your movement? Do you draw
them into conferences, talk to them by phone, meet them in person,
become accountable to them to provide specific information and answer
questions? If not, why do you keep reaching out to them?
20. Encourage good practices.
The Internet is a democratic medium that provides us all with the
time and space to do the right thing. So let's use the Internet in a
positive way and encourage others to do the same. You can help by
passing these guidelines along to others who might benefit from them
(including people who have sent out badly designed alerts), and
refrain from propagating alerts that do not conform to them.
Remember, forwarding a badly designed action alert actually harms
the cause that it is supposed to support. Modeling thoughtful,
constructive action on the Internet, however, provides everyone with
a living example of democracy in action.
-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Duffield [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, March 30, 2000 3:22 PM
To: Acker; Church; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Union
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [recoznet2] Re: Oppression of Women in Afganistan
I got this letter from a friend and I thought I'd better forward it to you
all. It concerns the oppression of women in Afghanistan.
jim duffield
>
>
> Subj: Please Read...
> Date: 03/17/2000 10:28:55 AM Pacific Standard Time
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Shahryar)
>
> Dear Friends:
>
> Please do not ignore this email. This is something that we as
> human beings need to support - I don't know if this is going to help
> but take 3 minutes out of your life to do your part.
>
------------------------------------------------------
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