[or-roots] K & S chronology

[Leslie Chapman]

Since Nancy has so blithely accused us of being rude to K & S in an
unprovoked attack I thought I would review the chronology of the wonderful
exchange of views.

Before I start on that however I must have a helping of crow, I just checked
Google and they no longer post name and mailing address when your name is
typed in, I guess they got so much flak for it they discontinued that
"service".

Les Chapman khanjehgil at presys.com

"At approximately 4 p.m. Monday July 26th (I assume PDT, though the
archiving format at OR-roots makes that less than clear) whoever was using K
& S's email address began sending this message in response to EVERY post to
the OR-roots list;

Please remove our email address from your computer.   All messages from you
are now blocked.

Thanks!"

At; Tue, 27 Jul 2004 02:04:50 EDT  which if I remember right is 11:04 p.m.
PDT someone attempted to unsubscribe by sending this message in the body of
their email;

"Please unsubscribe me. Thank  You."

At; 7/27/2004 6:08:38 PM Pacific Daylight Time

Walt was the first person on the list to respond with the question and
advice;

"I have recieved about 10 of these what does this person want. If they want
to be removed from the list I don't think this is going to help.

I suggest following these directions.

_mailto:or-roots-request at sosinet.sos.state.or.us?subject=unsubscribe_
(mailto:or-roots-request at sosinet.sos.state.or.us?subject=unsubscribe) "

at; Tue 7/27/04 10:11 PM

I had to throw in my two bits about the virus discussion and added a post
script to K & S as follows;

"P.S. Kevin and Shirlee; you will be relieved of all our babble as soon as
you take walts adivce and unsubscribe properly."

At; Wed, 28 Jul 2004 09:06:07 -0700 (Pacific Daylight Time)

someone, maybe Dan, (when we post thing in html format the archived letter
is real gibberish) but I thought it was Verdena? made a comment about folks
leaving and suggested it was because the didn't understand "Oregonianese"

Shortly after; Wed, 28 Jul 2004 09:20:09 -0700:  Pat posted the following
note;

"Walt and all

This person has an auto reply set with that message.

I sent them an e-mail directly, from another of my aliases, with these
instructions. We will see if that
gets through. Otherwise, we can write to AOL.

Thanks, Walt, for looking it up for us."

Now perhaps we could have tried harder to make whoever happy, but to this
point we had largely ignored their repetitious and pointless emails, except
for a couple of attempts to explain how to deal with THEIR problem.

Kevin or whoever fired of the first true rudeness;

Wed, 28 Jul 2004 20:07:32 -0700

"Please remove our address from your computers.  Your mail is blocked.  Who
in the hell is Walt and what does he have to do with anything.  You tell
Walt to unsubscribe.  His mail has been blocked  also.  You old farts need
to get a life and do something besides looking up dead people.  Unplug your
computer and do something with live people.  Much more rewarding."

I am not going past this point, as has been admitted by several of us we
returned the kindness, but I would point out that by then we had been
putting up with a pointless barrage of emails, which since their was in
truth no real point to much of the discussion that had inspired those replys
other than flogging the dead horse of "what a pain in the ass viruses and
spam are" which in fact is highly off topic and for those lists with admin
types not as forgiving as list Mom would get us all the boot, common
courtesy dictated we just ignore them. Several of us tried OFF LIST to
explain to them that only THEY could deal with the email situation. Now by
and large while the list got increasingly rude, the only really viscious
thing done was to post their phone number and address, which since Dan knew
damn good and well none of us were going to use that information
maliciously, (we prefer to save our malice for snide remarks in here) was no
big deal.

I kind of wonder if Kevin or whoever was having such a hard time with
getting all our email and so clueless about what to do with the situation
even considered the implications of that information being posted. If we had
really wanted to be jerks somebody could have instituted a real flame attack
on them and not only royally PO'd them but also brought down their ISP in
the bargain.

Now I put this question to Nancy: since we didn't put them on the list,
whoever did, and I don't think you can put somebody else on the list but I
might be wrong, had to know it was a GENEALOGY list, how is that WE are in
the wrong for getting our dander up over such rudeness after we had ignored
so much nonsense from thier email address and when Walt tried to help with
the solution his reward was abuse, I ask you how you can say we were the
baddies here, in point of fact mostly we made a joke of it and several of us
went to great lengths to help solve the problem to no avail.

Cecil and I had a short discussion of THEIR problem off list, and I am going
to leave that off list but I just want to advise you we could have been a
LOT! ruder than we were, with out resorting to scatological humor. It just
goes back to the old "TACT AND HUMOR" discussion we had a while back where
some of us tend to shoot from the lip a little too readily, but it's a free
country and List mom doesn't crack the whip too hard here, as I pointed out
earlier there are lists where just a glimmer of the virus discusson that T'd
K&S off so bad would get you the boot, some lists will give you the boot if
all your emails do not follow a rigid format;

subject line must includ "surname first all caps" first name middile info if
known, relevant place name followed by relevant time frame, query must
follow format

SURNAME, First Name, Middle info if any; b. (god help you if you write
"born" ) day month year (screw that up and we won't post your query) must
have all place info town, county, state, country; ma. (not wed, or marr. or
mar'd ) date place as b. format . . . .  you get the picture? Personally I
prefer the informallity of this list, sure we babble too much and wander
afield a bit (like the three hundred or so emails on weather and disasters
of the past in January) but often those discussion stimulate someone to ask
a question they were too timid to ask or they forgot they wanted to know or
whatever.

Some of us "old farts" have memories that . . . . uh what was I talking
about agein, oh yeah memory; memories that don't work linearly, often these
list discussion that get "off topic" remind me of some family history thing
I wanted to share either with the list or my family that I might never have
remembered otherwise. So folks that don't want to see an occaisonal blizzard
of email probably should try someplace else, I can recommend a number of
lists that they would be happy with, I have one list I am on where the only
email I have had in the last two years were the list moderator telling us he
had moved his web site or the email address of the list was different. Some
day I will probably change emial addy again and lose that list simply
because it is so dead I forget it exists most of the time. What's the point?

SHUT UP LES.

Anothe danger at least from me is if I am tired or drunk I am not always as
tactful as I might be.

Good night.

Les C
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