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Spam From Event Organizer?


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On a slightly different note. While I understand that many people may only look for caches near their house it pays to check the state listing every now and then. This cache, as are all upcoming event caches for the state, is listed on the first page of the "California" listings, (aka newest caches in California).

 

The newest by state may not be the best choice to find a nearby caches (especially in the larger states) but it's really nice for finding events.

That is excellent advice Bons. I probably don't do that often enough. I know Joani does though, so I think I am kept in the loop. :)

 

--Marky

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Just yesterday I notified 75 area cachers of an event we're planning this weekend. This is a last-minute type of event, so we didn't have weeks or months for the info to spread via word of mouth. Moreover, the 75 people I notified were all charter inductees of my Southeast Texas Hall of Fame. Thus most I had met or corresponded with in the past, and were folks that I know would be interested in another chance to get together with fellow cachers.

 

If any of those people felt offended that I sent them a friendly invitation to a spur-of-the-moment event, they haven't mentioned it. Or maybe the selection process I used to induct people into the Hall of Fame prevented any [self-censored: profane derogatory comment deleted] from being on the list in the first place...

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From Chance Enclunters

If any of those people felt offended that I sent them a friendly invitation to a spur-of-the-moment event, they haven't mentioned it. Or maybe the selection process I used to induct people into the Hall of Fame prevented any [self-censored: profane derogatory comment deleted] from being on the list in the first place

 

I, for one am extremly pi@@ed off that you would violate my in-box with 1) Something that related to what I am interested in, 2) Would not have been aware of because it's 2 hours from my home, 3) Would give me great pleasure in getting together with friends and potential new friends doing something "we" as a community love to do.. 4) Something that there was no way in He^^ that I would have found out any other way, when I have some much other more pertinant topics to review.

 

I am way to busy looking at options for refinancing my home, new credit card terms and conditions, and reviewing offers to enhance my physical stature.

 

Please do not send anymore of this spam. :)

 

Really hope to see ya there, if we can still float to this one! :D

 

Txsyank

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Mmmm... SPAM :)

 

I have no problem with fellow geocachers contacting me through GC.com about upcoming events around our region. In fact, that's how we found out about the first event cache we went to. I have sent a few invitations for our upcoming event through the GC email system... none of the cachers I contacted knew about the event and were happy about getting the email.

Edited by cache_us_if_you_can
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Just yesterday I notified 75 area cachers of an event we're planning this weekend. This is a last-minute type of event, so we didn't have weeks or months for the info to spread via word of mouth. Moreover, the 75 people I notified were all charter inductees of my Southeast Texas Hall of Fame. Thus most I had met or corresponded with in the past, and were folks that I know would be interested in another chance to get together with fellow

 

To hell with you SPAMMER!!! Just be thankful that WhipArtist wasn't on your list, lest you'd have been dragged out in public, spanked and reported to this website.

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Just yesterday I notified 75 area cachers of an event we're planning this weekend. This is a last-minute type of event, so we didn't have weeks or months for the info to spread via word of mouth. Moreover, the 75 people I notified were all charter inductees of my Southeast Texas Hall of Fame. Thus most I had met or corresponded with in the past, and were folks that I know would be interested in another chance to get together with fellow

 

To hell with you SPAMMER!!! Just be thankful that WhipArtist wasn't on your list, lest you'd have been dragged out in public, spanked and reported to this website.

I need to remember NOT to take a drink of something before reading Briansnat's post's. ROFLMAO

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Just yesterday I notified 75 area cachers of an event we're planning this weekend. This is a last-minute type of event, so we didn't have weeks or months for the info to spread via word of mouth. Moreover, the 75 people I notified were all charter inductees of my Southeast Texas Hall of Fame. Thus most I had met or corresponded with in the past, and were folks that I know would be interested in another chance to get together with fellow cachers.

 

If any of those people felt offended that I sent them a friendly invitation to a spur-of-the-moment event, they haven't mentioned it. Or maybe the selection process I used to induct people into the Hall of Fame prevented any [self-censored: profane derogatory comment deleted] from being on the list in the first place...

Yep, I'm going. I think that I was the second one to sign up.

 

Sn :):D gans

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To hell with you SPAMMER!!! Just be thankful that WhipArtist wasn't on your list, lest you'd have been dragged out in public, spanked and reported to this website.

If you'll recall, I opened the conversation with (paraphrased), "This happened. Is it a typical and/or reasonable use of gc.com?"

 

I think it's a perfectly reasonable question to ask-- I didn't name names, spank anyone, or report them to gc.com, and I'm a little bit surprised by the personal attacks that have been directed my way. "Public branding/burning at the stake" ? I find it hard to categorize my question as either of those things, especially since I intentionally didn't identify the person who sent the mail.

 

Later in the discussion, Mr. Spaz identifies himself as the author and says that he was notified by gc.com that the spam was not acceptable, so I assume that someone else complained to gc.com. It wasn't me.

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Talk about a storm in a teacup! If people get upset at receiving one (I think questionable) email, then I want to use their mail client because they must have something I don't have--a perfect, give or take one message,spam filter.

 

Spaz I feel for you. Hang in there. B)

 

Ciao

RooBoy

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Everyone who might be interested in attending is already well aware of the event and has read the description.

I have found that a lot of people are casual geocachers and may go months at a time between looking at the site. Those people would miss out on events that they might otherwise enjoy. I don't neccesarily think you can assume all interested parties will be up to speed on an event.

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Man, and I thought I always agreed with Trippy also!

The "spammer" in this topic sent out 300 virtually identical emails in 4hrs, by his admission. Call it what you want, but it still smells like a canned meat byproduct to me. He's also in CA, which has 6 upcoming events listed. Should it be ok then for the other 5 organizers to email the nearest 300 people about it? Why not make it 500, CA is a pretty popular state for caching. Why limit it to events? Should it be ok to email the nearest 300 cachers when you hide a cache? Many people like trying to be FTF on a cache. A lot of people are casual geocachers and may go months at a time between looking at the site. Those people would miss out on caches that they might otherwise enjoy. I don't neccesarily think you can assume all interested parties will be up to speed on the chance to be FTF on a new cache.

I mean, I understand that some areas of California get 50+ new caches on a new weekend, but since those 50 emails are all about geocaching, it's all good, right?

What about the guy selling his GPS over in the garage sale forum? I mean, his ad is posted there for all to see if they are interested, but not every cacher reads the forums. There could very well be someone out there interested in his $80 yellow Etrex that doesn't read the forums. What's wrong with emailing 1000 cachers if 1 or 2 might actually be interested?

Where do you draw the line?

TPTB already drew the line. When you signed up for an account here, you agreed that none of the above examples was an acceptable use for the email system. That includes 300 emails about a local event. The very fact that you need make an effort (log off and back on after every 10 emails) to circumvent the system in place to reduce spam means you should know they don't want you doing it.

Edited by Mopar
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Everyone who might be interested in attending is already well aware of the event and has read the description.

I have found that a lot of people are casual geocachers and may go months at a time between looking at the site. Those people would miss out on events that they might otherwise enjoy. I don't neccesarily think you can assume all interested parties will be up to speed on an event.

You are probably right, there are a lot of cachers who don't check the website every hour like some of us. B) There is a core group of active cachers that check the site often, but there may be a large percentage that don't.

 

Maybe there should be a seperate subscription notification that GC could send: "Notify me of events in my area." that we could opt in to. I bet most people would opt in. It could trigger off e-mails at 1 month from the event and then again at 2 weeks. Something like that. What do you think?

 

--Marky

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Maybe there should be a seperate subscription notification that GC could send: "Notify me of events in my area." that we could opt in to.  I bet most people would opt in.  It could trigger off e-mails at 1 month from the event and then again at 2 weeks.  Something like that.  What do you think?

 

--Marky

There is already a system where you get notified of new events up to 100 miles away from your home starting the week they are submitted and once a week until they happen. It even tells you about other new caches too. If you aren't reading that one, you're not gonna read the extra event one, are you?

Edited by Mopar
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Maybe there should be a seperate subscription notification that GC could send: "Notify me of events in my area." that we could opt in to.  I bet most people would opt in.  It could trigger off e-mails at 1 month from the event and then again at 2 weeks.  Something like that.  What do you think?

There is already a system where you get notified of new events up to 100 miles away from your home starting the week they are submitted and once a week until they happen. It even tells you about other new caches too. If you aren't reading that one, you're not gonna read the extra event one, are you?

I'm unclear as to what you are talking about. As far as I know, there is nothing in place that will inform you specifically of events coming up. There is a weekly subscription that tells you about all new caches, but since I already get PQs more often than that, I don't subscribe to that list. Plus, it is a very noisy list and I would miss events easily. What I'm talking about is an e-mail that specifically gives me info on upcoming events within a set radius (100 miles works for me). Is there something in place like this that I'm not aware of?

 

--Marky

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First of all, the person who sent out the emails in the first place wasnt trying to spam! Heck, he went through an awful lot of work to further the hobby in his area. The Whipster dude, (and anyone else that got annoyed by his email invitation), should have replied back to him, saying that they werent interested and to please not send any more emails. That would have probably solved the dilemma right there. I have missed Events myself because most are held about 80 miles away and i dont bother to search caches that far usually so i know what he was thinking when he did the email thing.

 

WhipArtist, maybe you should get yourself an uncharted island and become a hermit so that the rest of us humans dont annoy you so much!

 

Marky says:

I'm unclear as to what you are talking about. As far as I know, there is nothing in place that will inform you specifically of events coming up. There is a weekly subscription that tells you about all new caches, but since I already get PQs more often than that, I don't subscribe to that list. Plus, it is a very noisy list and I would miss events easily. What I'm talking about is an e-mail that specifically gives me info on upcoming events within a set radius (100 miles works for me). Is there something in place like this that I'm not aware of?

 

In your pocket queries you can pick which caches you want to be notified of. I think you could set up one that just sends you Event cache notifications! :D

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Marky says:
I'm unclear as to what you are talking about. As far as I know, there is nothing in place that will inform you specifically of events coming up. There is a weekly subscription that tells you about all new caches, but since I already get PQs more often than that, I don't subscribe to that list. Plus, it is a very noisy list and I would miss events easily. What I'm talking about is an e-mail that specifically gives me info on upcoming events within a set radius (100 miles works for me). Is there something in place like this that I'm not aware of?

 

In your pocket queries you can pick which caches you want to be notified of. I think you could set up one that just sends you Event cache notifications! :D

This isn't what I'm asking for. With the current response of the pocket queries, I only run them on demand, never weekly. Plus, when I receive a pocket query, I have to go through a number of steps before I can examine the contents. I would really like to just be notified via e-mail with the details of upcoming events. I guess I should submit this as a formal request in the correct forum.

 

--Marky

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The event is back on. It doesn't seem to be getting much response, but it is a new style event, so it may take time to build. I started a forum thread about it awhile back.

 

WhipArtist is right she didn't name names. Let's not start dragging her around and whipping her in public either.

 

gc.com did warn me, so there must be something to the thought that tese emails were wrong. Therefore I have agreed not to do them any more.

 

So my question now is:

 

What would have been o.k.? Emails to the attendee's of my last event? Emails to people I have met? Emails to my geocaching friends? What about an Email to my brother, through the gc.com website? Emails to people who have contacted me through gc.com? (I have dozens of those)

 

Just curious????

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...

So my question now is:

 

What would have been o.k.? Emails to the attendee's of my last event? Emails to people I have met? Emails to my geocaching friends? What about an Email to my brother, through the gc.com website? Emails to people who have contacted me through gc.com? (I have dozens of those)

 

Just curious????

Any of those would likely be fine, as long as it wasn't sent through GC.com. In those scenarios, people would have given you their email addresses (and therefore their approval to send them emails.

 

Personally, I definitely can see both sides of this issue. In my opinion, the fact that a few people got torqued is reason enough not to send the emails.

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The event went of well. We had about 20 people stop by. I have arranged to have a monthly get-together here from now on. I will let word of mouth be my main advertising tecquine from now on. I hope people from the area and out of town visitors will have time to stop by occassionally. Thanks for everyones input.

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Who needs enemies when you can friends like those on this forum? On a scale of 1 to 10 your "serious infraction" hardly rates a fraction.

 

I hope that you are mature enough to take a shower and move on. Many would simply let someone else plan, and take the heat for, the next event that might help the community and promote Geocaching.

 

Do you really want to be associated with the friendly types on this forum? Your so-called caching friends aren't. Do not let them live rent-free in your mind. Find new ones who are not so quick to execute the messenger that they miss the message. Shallow is too deep of a word to describe their lives.

 

Keep on caching!

 

BB

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The definition of spam is, "unsolicited bulk email."

One thing you're missing in that definition is that "spam" is almost exclusively used to describe commercial emails where the intent of the message is to get you to purchase a product or service.

My how the times have changed.

 

I remember when a Spam message was some guy filling a BBS messsage with SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM BACON EGGS AND SPAM. Which is actually how we came upon the term Spam for nuisance messages.

The the Chef Bork guys started in with BORK BORK BORK BORK BORK BORK BORK BORK BORK BORK BORK BORK BORK BORK BORK but it never stuck. Getting Borked eventually coming to mean something completely different in politics.

 

Ahhh, the good 'ol days.

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well i know that its an old topic but i have a few words to say as well.

 

when i search for cache listings, i usually only check the places where i live or work, since its not convient to go to a place as far as fremont. I would, however travel that far for an event, if i knew about it(which I did not, since unfortunatly i did not get that E-mail).

 

I do not keep up with the legal definitions relating to spam, but im of the opinion that "bulk" would certainly mean that hundreds or thousands of the exact same mail were sent in one fail swoop to an entire list of unknown people(for example: every registered user in california)But in this case, even though the letter was the same, each e-mail was carefully chosen to go to a particular user that already had some sort of connection to the sender.

 

It saddens and frustrates me in these days to see people taking up a cause to fight for when they do not even have a complete grasp of what they are fighting against. are we only allowed to sent e-mail to those who have told us "please send me an e-mail" what's next? please dont invite me to your wedding, since i did not ask you to send me an invitation! Please don't invite my to a class re-union, since i didnt ask you to invite me. I really hate it when someone says "hello" to me as i walk down the street(since they did not have my permission)

 

In no way ever would i consider that letter SPAM . and btw whats wrong with all your e-mail services? i dont even get spam, although it certainly seems to be rapidly killing off the rest of the world. there was ONE week in almost two years of computer usage that i got what i would call spam, and that was only when i punched in the code numbers from my bottlecap at the COKE website, and removing myself from the registration there instantly put a stop to that.

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I like my SPAM on toast. hehehehe

 

This is funnier the the Sunday morning comics folks.

 

WhipArtist--Don't you and TeamSpaz go back to March 2004, I seem to recall something about Ellis Lake near Concord?

 

Thanks for the opportunity to educate the whole GC forum on SPAMMING rituals. We are a better society now.

 

Now let's get out there and do a little caching.

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Unsolicited means that the Recipient has not granted verifiable permission for the message to be sent. Bulk means that the message is sent as part of a larger collection of messages, all having substantively identical content.

 

A message is Spam only if it is both Unsolicited and Bulk.

  I regularly hang out in the newsgroup NEWS.ADMIN.NET-ABUSE.EMAIL, which is sort of the center of the anti-spam movement. (BTW, “spam”, in the context we are using it, is not capitalized.  Capitalized, it is a trademark of Hormel, and a reference to their well-known spiced pork product.)

 

  There is a great deal of disagreement with regard to any precise definition of spam.  In my opinion, it is any advertisement sent to me by email without my explicit consent.  A commercial advertisement, a political advertisement, an advertisement seeking to get me to support some cause, or to participate in any event; whatever.  I never give permission for my email addresses to be used for advertising purposes.  If you want to advertise to me, buy an ad in a newspaper or magazine that I read, or on a radio or TV snow that I watch or listen to.  Don't make me pay for your advertising.  Do not pollute my email with it; do not litter my car or my home with flyers, do not call me on the telephone, do not hijack any resource that belongs to me, for advertising, unless I have explicitly given you permission to do so (which I never will).

 

  With regard to “bulk”, I disagree with this as a part of the definition.  When I get an email offering me some miraculous product to enlarge my penis; I do not know — nor do I care — whether it was sent to anyone other than me.  All I know or care about is that my email address was hijacked, and my resources stolen, in order to advertise to me.

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A commercial advertisement, a political advertisement, an advertisement seeking to get me to support some cause, or to participate in any event; whatever.

 

So by this definition, an e-mail from an old college friend, or army buddy asking you to go out for dinner, or your old high school class president reminding you of an upcomming reunion is spam. That is awfully broad.

Edited by briansnat
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I really hate it when someone says "hello" to me as i walk down the street(since they did not have my permission)

 

I hate that too. If I wanted you to talk to me I would have told you to speak, like I do to my dog.And don't you dare make eye contact with me.

 

It really p***es me off when someone i know calls me on the phone too. especially to invite me somewhere with a whole bunch of other people. I wanted to be invited to a party with just the two of us.

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...There is a great deal of disagreement with regard to any precise definition of spam.  In my opinion, it is any advertisement sent to me by email without my explicit consent.  A commercial advertisement, a political advertisement, an advertisement seeking to get me to support some cause, or to participate in any event; whatever.

So, you probably wouldn't appreciate it if I sent you an email soliciting your written opinion for Today's Cacher. :)

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