Tina Lin wrote: > After discussing the points raised here, we have decided to halt our current > practices of notifying list owners regarding their listings in the > Liszt/Topica directory and archiving options, and to spend more time > investigating the issues. What you should have done, and should do now, is make sure that public forums and mail list management FAQs include a mention of your service - and then stop bugging people. You are not the only service, and you will not be the only one in future. We come here to learn about stuff like Topica. > 1. As you know, we are now working with Liszt to combine our directories. > We believed it was important to notify the list owner that his/her list, > part of the Liszt database, is now part of the Liszt/Topica directory - > primarily to provide an opportunity for list owners to update/edit or remove > the information for their lists. If listowners actively sought participation with Liszt, i.e. there was a contract on their part, then of course it makes sense to notify them of the merge. If on the other hand Liszt was just harvesting the PAML or otherwise scouring the Net for listservs to catalog, then you have no more right to annoy unsuspecting owners with this news than you would if you repainted your dumpster. > 2. Many Topica users are subscribing to lists through us. That is your business. When they reach us they are not "Topica users" but (presumably) bona fide applicants who wish to join our lists like anyone else. We did not ask to be "portaled" through services like Topica, and we are under no obligation to support or give special consideration to companies who decide to try and make a dime doing it anyway. > We believed it > was important to notify the list owner that someone has joined his/her list > through Topica, with a one-time opt-in request to allow web-based reading > for that subscriber. You believed it was important for YOU, because you built your business model that way. As listowners we ALREADY receive sufficient notice when a new member joins, without your help. The only thing you are adding is spam. > It is our sincere desire and intent to deliver a valuable service for both > list owners and subscribers. You are not, imho, in a position to offer much of value to EXISTING listowners who intend to continue hosting their lists on traditional servers. Mail list surfing tends to yield junk subscribers - quality names come from richly related Web content. In English that means that GUITAR-STRINGS-L is much better off getting its members from guitar and music store websites than from some "directory" where people, or other spammers, gang-join everything starting with "G". In fact, given the potential for abuse, I will filter out requests from directory services soon, sending them to an autoreply that explains the right way to join. Note that ad-supported _hosting_ of new, private and ad-hoc lists is a very useful service, with about a dozen competitors, and I wish you luck. But lists you do not host are better off without you. > We invite you to continue to discuss the issues and help us make the best > possible decision. Rather than monopolize the discussion on this list, if > you are interested, please join the discussion on our List Owner Advisory > Board list: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]. As a satisifed Topica non-user, I have no interest in participating in some in-house "advisory board." THIS forum exists to discuss issues of concern to list managers. If Topica continues to misbehave, it will continue to be discussed here, among other measures. If it does not, there is nothing to discuss, here or elsewhere.
