On Fri, Apr 28, 2000 at 06:08:25PM -0400, Matthew Gaylor wrote:
> Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >Matthew,
> >
> >I am now seeing you send the same articles--whether on State Farm
> >GPS usage, Echelon, whatever--appearing on multiple lists. Why?
>
> The reason I post and how and what I post are decisions made by
> myself. Judging from the thousands of subscribers and the large
> number of thank yous I get for posting material, I don't think I'm
> going to change one iota the manner, frequency or content of what I
> choose to say or post. I could list the positive results of my
> activism, but your request makes me suspicious.
Wow, I thought I was paranoid...
If you're subscribed to multpile lists and people cross-post
to all of them, you get a lot of duplicate emails. It's
mildly irritating. That's what Tim's complaining about, not your
content or your activisim (which he praised in the part that you
snipped out...).
But I see the trend continuing, especially now that email marketing
is in vogue... and by marketing here I do mean your list, or Declans's
or Hettinga's or Schneier's. It's in your interest to make your list reach
as far as possible, and mildly annoying a few people on the way
isn't going to keep you from cross-posting it.
It's a little sad, but inevitable.
However, as usual, technical solutions work the best. Procmail is a
great tool. It takes only a half-hour or so of reading to set up a working
set of filters. The procmailex man page shows many examples, including
one for filtering out duplicate messages from different mailing lists.
It's also good for filtering out spam and cypherpunks posts from
loons or with CDR: in the Subject.
--
Eric Murray www.lne.com/~ericm ericm at the site lne.com PGP keyid:E03F65E5
