Rant

I spent an hour last night writing an impassioned email to someone I barely know.

A board member of one of my former associations had recently become responsible for the association's yahoogroup. Unfortunately, he has the mentality of a spammer.

Yesterday, he approved 18 Yahoogroup messages, 16 of which were unsolicited commercial emails (a.k.a. spam). Only 2 of the emails were even related to the association. Unsurprisingly, group unsubscriptions began arriving within a matter of hours.

I tell you, it drives me nuts.

Frankly, there's only one reason I care about this: I started the Yahoogroup in 2002 and actively nurtured it for three years. I vigilantly moderated the group and went out of my way to keep the content relevant. In that time, group membership grew from literally nothing to over 600.

By 2005, I left the association, but stayed on as group moderator in an unofficial capacity. Things were fine until this year, when one of the newly-elected board members got in touch with me and asked to take control of the Yahoogroup.

To see years of carefully cultivated goodwill being eroded by someone who can so cavalierly abuse the permission and attention of group members fills me with more dismay than words can express.

I hope that the email I wrote last night will get through to him.