Dear Colleagues, I am troubled that I cannot email other members directly as I see fit. I joined the association because I wished to form collegial relationships with other researchers around the world. This is more than a simple "fear of spam" issue to me. It goes to a crucial use of the Internet. As the Cluetrain Manifesto so clearly articulates, the Internet is about unfettered conversations. This paranoia about abuse actually reflects a systemic misunderstanding of the subject we are attempting to study. Clearly you have an opinion about this subject. One way or another, please email me at my email address wrc@tcfir.org and state your opinion. I intend to submit the results to the AOIR leadership. I am trying to understand the policy and your opinion is important. You have my permission to communicate with me at will. I do not object to hundreds of emails from my new colleagues! Reid Cornwell ________________________________ W. Reid Cornwell Ph.D. The Center For Internet Research 720.212.0719 (voice) 970.485.5109 (mobile) 801.807.3130 wrc@tcfir.org http://tcfir.org
The policy was that AoIR puts the privacy of its members foremost. AoIRa\ does not distribute any information about its membership beyond what people make available themselves. To that end, in the past, AoIR has not sold its membership lists, it has not published lists of emails or contact information, or provided that information in other ways. This has the added effect of limited the amount of spam that member receive, but that in my opinion, was not the primary motivation. The primary motivation is that each aoir member can choose to do as they wish individually with information that they may view as public or private, and aoir should not dictate this to members. As for what you believe the internet is for, that is a matter for your opinion, i don't think it has any normative end that defines it as a whole, just as I don't believe that the organization can determine for each individual member whether their information should be public or private. I don't think there is any paranoia. I've always thought that the best reasoned position for this is to let individuals announce their aoir membership if they want, but that is for them to do, aoir will either certify that it is true or not. That argument really isn't about abuse of information, though that could quickly become a an issue the first time that such abuse occurs. It is also the tradition of this organization to deal with these issues openly when possible, not in a private poll. In the end, decisions about things like this are generally referred to the paying members in a vote or through discussion. The original discussions about this policy will be found on the old conference lists and elsewhere. As i recall, didn't we have a vote when we instituted the non-discrimination policy the first time. On Feb 15, 2006, at 12:52 PM, wrc@tcfir.org wrote:
Dear Colleagues,
I am troubled that I cannot email other members directly as I see fit. I joined the association because I wished to form collegial relationships with other researchers around the world. This is more than a simple "fear of spam" issue to me. It goes to a crucial use of the Internet. As the Cluetrain Manifesto so clearly articulates, the Internet is about unfettered conversations. This paranoia about abuse actually reflects a systemic misunderstanding of the subject we are attempting to study.
Clearly you have an opinion about this subject. One way or another, please email me at my email address wrc@tcfir.org and state your opinion. I intend to submit the results to the AOIR leadership. I am trying to understand the policy and your opinion is important.
You have my permission to communicate with me at will. I do not object to hundreds of emails from my new colleagues!
Reid Cornwell
________________________________
W. Reid Cornwell Ph.D. The Center For Internet Research 720.212.0719 (voice) 970.485.5109 (mobile) 801.807.3130 wrc@tcfir.org http://tcfir.org
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wrc@tcfir.org wrote:
Dear Colleagues,
I am troubled that I cannot email other members directly as I see fit...
And just what is stopping you from doing this? If you have an email address, as you would if the person has posted something of interest to you on the list, you may certainly respond to that person with a personal email note rather than as a posting on the list (just as this note is being sent both as a personal note as well as to the list). If someone has posted a paper or other material on the website, there is generally contact information with it, unless the person posting has intentionally suppressed it. But if your intent is simply to send email randomly to AoIR members rather than responding to specific issues or scholarship, well yes, that's spam, and you can keep it to yourself, thank you very much. Frankly, I don't see an issue here. -- Mark D. Johns, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Communication Studies Luther College, Decorah, Iowa http://academic.luther.edu/~johnsmar/ ----------------------------------------------- "Get the facts first. You can distort them later." ---Mark Twain
participants (3)
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Jeremy Hunsinger -
Mark D. Johns -
wrc＠tcfir.org