Re: Architext

[dattier @ wwa . com (David W. Tamkin)]

Graham Spencer of Architext wrote,

| First: yes, we really screwed up with our mailing to list managers.
| I've explained this to a few of you in personal emails, but the basic
| problem is this: we accidentally sent out some mailings from the wrong
| account -- an anonymous account on a machine inside our firewall
| (list@cochese.atext.com) rather than the account of our engineer who's
| managing the project.

Both my lists got a letter with the subject "Apology from Architext" but
it, too, came from the "lists" ID.  It was signed with the name Jeff Young,
but Young's .sig as well as his headers used the "lists" ID again.  So, Mr.
Spencer, maybe it was a bad decision to write from lists@cochese.atext.com
(just as it was to misspell "Cochise"), but it didn't happen by accident.
Your company continued to write from it and even typed it into the .signa-
ture; that sounds pretty much like a decision to me.  Wearing swim trunks
to church is a mistake, not an accident.

| In any event, let me reiterate that we were trying to be polite, and
| through user-error we really screwed things up and were perceived as
| being rude. We'll be much more careful in the future.

I was rough on Young in my response to the first one but a little gentler for
that reason when I turned them down from my other list.  They do deserve some
points for stating their goals and asking first.  Most people in their posi-
tion just grunt a "subscribe" command [which I always turn down] to try to
slither onto a list without prior contact to make arrangements and without
saying who is behind "mlists" or "lists".

David W. Tamkin  Box 3284  Skokie, Illinois  60076-6284
dattier@wwa.com    MCI Mail: 426-1818   +1 312 714 5610