Joseph Zitt wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 21, 2001 at 01:13:14PM +0900, Patrick Shirkey wrote:
>
>
>>If you receive this list with more than 500 names
>>signed, please send a
>>copy
>>of the message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>
>
> This petition, laudable as its purpose might be, would do more harm
> than good. Please do NOT pass it forward.
>
>>From Phil Agre's essential "Designing Effective Action Alerts for the
> Internet" (http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/alerts.html):
>
> 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 reachtheir 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.
>
>
Chain letters have been known to work.
For example. About 6 months ago in New Zealand the largest brewery in
Australasia decided they were going to relocate the finest micro brewery
in New Zealand. Obviously this would substantially change the taste and
therefore effectiveness of the beer. In the process they were going to
shut down the original brewery and that would have basically bankrupted
the small (less than 10,000 people) community who lived near it.
In less than a week they recieved so many emails generated by a working
chain letter that they reversed there flawed decision and instead
invested more money into the brewery.
Yes, Kiwis love their beer but we also understand the power of the
internet as a method of communicating our opinions. It just happened
that beer united us in this example ;-]
I suggest that Phil Agre has been outdated on this point.
Of course the likelyhood is that no-one can tell the US govt that war is
not an option. The US economy (nay the world) needs one every ten years
or so to sustain the massive amounts of debt that get generated in the
"less war" years.
--
Patrick Shirkey - Manager Boost Hardware Limited.
Http://www.boosthardware.com - For the discerning hardware connoisseur.
http://www.boosthardware.com/LAU/Linux_Audio_Users_Guide/
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