Readers take the wheel

Every week we put an e-mail address at the bottom of this column . . . and gosh-darn-it if people don't take the opportunity to be heard. Here's what they've had to say recently:

A piece about spam filters generating hidden costs by snagging legitimate e-mail as well as junk produced a boatload of replies.

Doug Murray, who says he believes spam filters are a "good idea," nonetheless recognizes their limitations:"Unfortunately, their widespread use is still fairly new, resulting in a couple of problems," he writes. "First, there is what I call the Zappa Crappa Factor ('Ninety percent of everything is crap.' - attributed to Frank Zappa). Most of the filters available probably leave something to be desired, not a fault of the technology, only evidence of its immaturity.

"Then there is training," Murray continues. "How many filter users actually make the best use of the product?"

It would seem not many.

"I have stuck with just using my delete button as a personal spam filter," Rudy Socha writes. "It is because I am afraid of what will be kept out. It takes me approximately 8 or 9 minutes per day to delete the 90 or so spams that I receive. Occasionally, I will even read one for entertainment."

Many replies were of the "I've been there" ilk.

"You cannot imagine the nightmares we've been having with these things," writes David Ring, whose company publishes legitimate e-mail newsletters. "We don't have a staff to deal with the blocked e-mails. The manhours required to get around these things probably costs a lot more than the cost savings in preventing spam."

Another item chastising the duplicitous eBay executives who for years peddled a fictitious anecdote about the company having been started to help the founder's girlfriend collect Pez dispensers drew this reply from an anonymous reader:

"The Pez fib isn't the only lie invented and propagated by PR [professionals]. When TGV (now part of Cisco) was promoted, its initial meaning - Two Guys on a VAX - was changed to 'Tres Grand Vitesse,' the name of France's high-speed train."

I'm sure we could fill a coffee-table book with this stuff.

No column in the past few months has drawn more response than the one that took a reader to task for sending an e-mail to a Network World newsletter author with the subject line "Hey, Stupid!!!!" The column attempted to understand what motivates people to act so uncivilly in e-mail as opposed to other media and included the sender's lame explanation that such subject lines - he calls them "stingers" - are intended to increase the likelihood of a reply.

"Perhaps we can take the sting out of stingers by returning such messages with a note indicating that the e-mail was unacceptable," Joseph Filice offers. "If people discover that rudeness is ineffective and disadvantageous, we may put some civility back in our civilization."

"You're wrong about one thing," Rick Thompson writes. "Some people also act like complete jerks over the phone, too."

"There is no complex explanation," Bill Reitsma writes. "Adolescence is not easy to cure in many of us."

My favorite response to the "Hey, Stupid" item comes from Paul Desmond, a former Network World editor who took me up on the column's invitation to write if you had "a better theory" about such boorish behavior. "I just read your column," Desmond responds, "and, yes, I do have a better theory. . . . Two words: Yankee fans."

Desmond didn't know it, but the fellow who sent the "Hey, Stupid" e-mail lives in New Jersey. Sure, he might be a Mets fan, but what are the chances?

If you don't agree that Red Sox fans should be forgiven for such stereotyping, the address is buzz@nww.com.

RELATED LINKS