*Please* don't forward petitions

[Guest guest]

Hi everyone

 

Forwarding petitions is a waste of time and totally ineffective, however

good the cause. I must have received the women in afghanistan one

at least *30* times, and they have been trying to stop it for years.

 

Just think about what happens when you forward these. Take a look

at the figures below, and realise how that increases if you send it to NDS

and harshasatangh which is 1000 people with just one posting, and then members

forward them on to more lists with hundreds of members each!! If

you think it through logically, this just cannot work. The only type of

online petition worth signing is via a website. All the rest just becomes

junk mail. Also, a lot of isp's will cancel your account for sending out

petitions, as they generate so much mail they can crash servers.

 

Read the article below before forwarding these, *please*:.

 

Gill

 

Allspirit Website: http://www.allspirit.co.uk

 

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http://alt.venus.co.uk/weed/various/petition.htm

 

are email petitions spam?

 

An email petition arrives with some information (often lengthy) about a worthy

cause. It asks you to add your name (and sometimes other info) to a list and

then pass the list on to all your friends and colleagues requesting that they

continue the chain. It also asks you that should your name be (eg) the 100th on

the list, to mail the list back to the organiser.

 

Let's suppose I start such a list, and pass it on to 5 friends, and ask that

they continue the chain. To simplify, let's suppose a) that no one signs the

list twice, b) that no two people supply identical information, c) that everyone

who receives the list passes it on to between 1 and 9 people, d) that no one

delays passing on the list, and e) that there is an infinite supply of people.

 

By the time there are 15 names on each list, up to 36,000,000,000 emails will

have been sent, and each one one of them has my name on it. But how many times

do the names appear of the 5 people I sent the original list to? And how is it

possible to know the total number of people who have signed the petition?

 

Perhaps instead of trying to count how many people have signed the petition, it

is intended to forward the returned lists on to the person or organisation being

petitioned. Supposing everyone passes the list on to just 3 other people, and

that all the lists are returned, each with just 15 names on them. Forwarding on

all the returned lists at the rate of 1 per second would take about 2 months.

 

Email petitions tend to continue circulating indefinitely. Some of the ones I've

been sent recently I first received more than a year earlier. Often useful

information is lost or corrupted in the process (exactly what details are

required, where to return the list to, expiry date of the petition etc). And

usually the older they are, the longer they are, and therefore the more time and

space they take up.

 

It's far better to use web-based petitions (see URLs below) where details can be

entered via forms, and the data can be processed automatically using scripts

which extract it and place it in a database. The address of the petition page

can be passed on using relevant mailing lists that people have d to, by

links on sympathetic web sites, or via messages to the appropriate newsgroups.

There is a world of difference between this and using a direct email technique

which is unlikely to accomplish the original purpose of the petition.

 

Ironically, it is often those who are most concerned about pollution,

environmental preservation and human rights in the physical world who are

responsible for this type of littering in the virtual world. The waste of time,

energy and resources is common to both. An email petition is merely another form

of the chain letter... and without wishing to be too harsh, IMHO it's spam.

 

web-based petition sites

 

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/

http://www.webpetitions.com/

 

 

Allspirit Website: http://www.allspirit.co.uk

[Guest guest]

, "Gill Eardley" <gill@a...> wrote:

> Forwarding petitions is a waste of time and totally ineffective,

however

> good the cause.

> Just think about what happens when you forward these. Take a look

> at the figures below, and realise how that increases if you send it

to NDS

> and harshasatangh which is 1000 people with just one posting, and

then members

> forward them on to more lists with hundreds of members each!! If

> you think it through logically, this just cannot work. The only

type of

> online petition worth signing is via a website. All the rest just

becomes

> junk mail.

 

Thank for the important reminder, Gill.

 

The net is filled with enough spam as it is.

 

 

Love,

 

Amanda.