[pbs] Commercial messages to our list
Mary Sue Ittner
msittner at mcn.org
Fri Oct 6 11:15:06 EDT 2006
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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