Letter to the WSFA Journal (June 1998 issue)

Dear WSFA

I'm sorry to have to take my e-mail address off the WSFA web page.
While I am happy to receive e-mail direct to me from WSFAns, I do not
want to be on any list that is used to send e-mail to everyone in WSFA.

The reason for this is that such e-mail lists tend to devolve from
infrequent emergency announcements, to frequent announcements that
duplicate what I find out at WSFA meetings, and finally to matters
that are not expected to be of interest to everyone on the list but
which the sender hopes to be applicable to someone on the list. The
ease of sending e-mail to a large list of people means that more time
is spent by the people reading such a note than was spent writing it.
And the ease of copying such a list of addresses from one e-mail
message to another means that one message sent to such a list of
addresses begets others.

Those of you who have your e-mail addresses on the WSFA web page will
know that it was used for two general announcements this week, and I
do not envision that they will cease.  So if you want to send e-mail
to everyone in WSFA, please treat me as having no e-mail address.
I do welcome person-to-person communication, and I hope that I may
make this easier by listing my e-mail address in the off-line WSFA
directory without having it used as a distribution list.

Dan Hoey
Hoey@AIC.NRL.Navy.Mil