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09/09/2003 Archived Entry: "Wolfe's Extreeeemly Tight Guideline"

THERE'S ALREADY A WOLFE'S LAW, so I can't propose one. (And anyway, who needs more laws?) So call this:

Wolfe's Extreeeemly Tight Guideline

The person with the least to say is the most likely to add you to his mailing list without asking.

First corollary to Wolfe's Guideline

The person who adds you to his mailing list without asking is the most likely to use open cc to expose you to spammers.

Second corollary to Wolfe's Guideline

The person who uses open cc to expose you to spammers will invariably, when requested to use bcc, respond, "But I cannnnnn't use bcc if you don't tell me howwwwwwwww."

Third corollary to Wolfe's Guideline

The person who adds you to his mailing list without asking is the only mailing-list operator who will invariably, when requested to remove you from his list, scream, "You're nothing but a big phoney who doesn't want to listen to what's really going on in the world!"

Fourth corollary to Wolfe's Guideline

N number of people will never Get a Clue, even if they live long enough to experience the heat-death of the universe.

(Webmistress Debra asked me to add this link to an old article of mine called "Libertarians and the Privacy of Friends." Toward the end of the article, you'll find a brief primer on simple, commonsense ways of respecting others' privacy. I hate to jump on newbies who may not know any better than to use open cc on mass mailings. But it's hard to distinguish an innocent newbie from someone who's arrogantly, permanently careless. And both will savage your privacy just as surely. I cringe when I recall my own newbie mistakes and am grateful to those who forgave them. But the bottom line is that people shouldn't be playing around on the Net if they haven't learned the fundamental rules of netiquette and don't know how to operate their own e-mail programs properly. It's not up to me, or any other victim of inexcusably sloppy privacy practices, to teach either netiquette or Microsoft Outlook 101 to those who haven't bothered to learn.)

Posted by Claire @ 04:24 PM CST
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