Commercial messages to our list

Mary Sue Ittner msittner@mcn.org
Fri, 06 Oct 2006 08:15:06 PDT
Hi,

It's been a very long time since I have reminded people on this list that 
one of the requirements for our being allowed to have a list and a wiki on 
ibiblio is that we are not commercial, that is that we do not pester our 
members with items for sale. Even though we have a number of list members 
who have a bulb or nursery business who subscribe to our list the majority 
of these members are very good about not advertising on our list. We do 
allow an occasional post telling about something special and asking members 
to reply privately, but we ask that details such as price not be sent over 
our list and that all correspondence about such offers be done privately. 
And we ask you not to do this very often. Certainly not every time you have 
a new shipment of whatever. I think perhaps once a year if there is a good 
reason should suffice. For additional announcements you need my permission. 
And this also applies to members of our list who would rather sell their 
excess than share with others through the BX or through exchanges with 
people who they have become friends with over this list. I understand that 
this means that those of you who would like to hear about what people have 
to sell will be deprived, but our list is intended to be educational, not 
commercial. Our BX is basically a way that people are sharing their excess, 
not really a money making venture.

Besides risking losing our list and wiki, there is another extremely good 
reason to ask you not to do this and this latest round with Bill's 
Amaryllis bulbs illustrates this.  He announced on the list and someone 
asked him about prices ON THE LIST instead of privately and he thinking it 
was private responded to the list. That has triggered a very large number 
of bounces since it looked like spam to some providers and AOL is now 
rejecting all PBS messages and all of the AOL members of our list have had 
their email  address disabled. As a result now either they and perhsap one 
of our adminstrators too will have to spend a lot of time sorting this out.

I know it is easy to hit reply and our list is set to respond to all 
messages from the list to go back to the list. If someone asks you to 
respond privately you will need to be sure that their address is in your 
To: section on your email. In Bill's case he made it easy. All you had to 
do was to click on his highlighted address in the body of his email to 
reply directly. Other times you may have to copy and paste the correct address.

Many thanks for your help with this.

Mary Sue
PBS List Administrator


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