Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[Michael Czeiszperger <czei AT webperformanceinc.com>]

On Wednesday 23 January 2002 01:27 am, you wrote:
> What if you have no real opinion but hate getting email asking you to
> waste your time signing petitions that nobody will ever read?
>
>  http://www.aclu.org/congress/l071101a.html
>

That's a good question. When I get solicitations for a good cause over the 
phone, my answer is easy: the phone isn't an appropriate medium for 
communicating this type of information because its impossible to verify the 
accuracy of the source. In any event I don't wish to encourage more contacts, 
since there are so many good causes, our phoneswould be ringing off the hook.

The problem I have with advocacy is I don't think its effective. With most 
hot button issues the people who are interested are already plugged into an 
information network, and those who are not interested are not, so it doesn't 
do any good telling them about it. For example, every time a bill comes up 
that affects regulations for equines, the information is passed along through 
the huge number of formal and informal mailing lists on that subject. I could 
forward such messages to this group, but I doubt even those of you who like 
horses would appreciate being told about it, and even fewer still would take 
the time to write a letter to congress.

In this particular case, although the subject is orders of magnitude more 
important than equine transportation laws, I'm already an ACLU member and on 
their mailing list. And even though the subject is a weighty matter, there 
are so many other matters of similar importance, and I doubt many on the list 
want to get into a discussion of abortion, for example.

-- 
Michael Czeiszperger
Web Performance Inc.