You can't get mail without other someone else's computer. Mail
lists, when open, are designed to allow limited use of those
computers. This is a public service, open to all 24 hours a
day seven days a week.
Using a telephone as Chuq suggests would require direct human
intervention to get the dang thing to stop ringing. It would
seem odd to compare that with automatically answered email systems.
Or maybe many people have the list management messages sent to
their pagers?
Forcing somebody out of bed at 3am is nothing like sending a
message (or many) to their computer. In fact my computers have
been accepting mail for this list all night quite nicely while I
sleep comfortably.
Chuq Von Rospach wrote:
>
> At 5:32 PM -0500 10/11/99, Steve Bergeon wrote:
> > Can any conclusions be drawn from this small sample?
>
> How about "you probably don't want to run experiments that use
> someone else's computer without getting their okay first, or at least
> warn them what's going to happen"
>
> Frankly, Steve, that's the ONLY thing I think you did wrong, whether
> or not the experiment was ill-conceived or not. And frankly, I think
> THAT's a fairly minor oopsie, but one that would almost never happen
> outside of the virtual worlds. it's more an indication that we
> haven't yet figured out how to handle the social dynamics of the
> network, because I don't think anyone would ever consider something
> like "well, I'm going to call every phone number in the 364- prefix
> and see how many people answer at 2AM and what their responses are",
> but it happens all of the time in the virtual world.
>
> And in both cases, you don't really have to ask permission first --
> those are all "public/open" interfaces. But as you've found out, it's
> usually a lot less hassle to at least let people know, so they don't
> make basic assumptions about what you're doing that might or might
> not be correct.
>
> chuq
> --
> Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
> Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
