From the Administrators:
At the Washington, D.C., Kokonvention on August 10, some MuseBloggers exchanged “real world” names and e-mail addresses. Since then, some of you have compiled a big e-mail list of MBers — including people who weren’t at the Kokonvention — and have sent it to everyone on the list, again including non-Konventioneers. Some of the recipients have made it clear that they didn’t want to get the list and didn’t like seeing their names on it.
We think this is a bad idea. It’s one thing to send e-mail to individual MBers whom you have met in person and who have specifically said they’d like to hear from you. Sending e-mail to people who don’t want to get it, however, is spamming. Circulating contact information about people who don’t want it circulated is almost as bad. The Kokonventioneers we met are wonderful people who clearly mean no harm. But spreading information around just makes it more likely that someone might use it to harass MBers. We would hate for that to happen. MuseBlog and Kokonventions are supposed to make people’s lives better, not worse.
We can’t control what happens off the blog. But we’d strongly prefer that you
- don’t send e-mail to anyone you don’t know;
- don’t send e-mail to anyone who hasn’t asked for it;
- don’t reveal names or contact information of other MBers.
That’s how we run the blog, and that’s how we’d like you to help run our expanding Muser community.
Midnight Fiddler said it excellently in a recent post:
The GAPAs work really hard to make MuseBlog a fun and safe place to be, and I don’t think it’s fair to organize an email loop for several reasons. One, the health of the blog, two, it’s really exclusive to the people who have been lucky enough to go to a Kokonvention, and the others who didn’t make it get left in the dust. Three, I’d prefer to know, or meet in person the people that know my email adress. I’m not trying to be a spoil sport, but I think that this is an issue that needs to be discussed.
Thanks,
Robert, Rosanne, Rebecca, and Paul