Elite Members spamming for RC5.

[Rendus]

Just logged in and noticed I had a new PM. I read it, and what is it? A spam from an Elite Member (dennilflos) trying to get me to join his RC5 team. The message I got is pasted below.

--begin paste--

Do not make private messages public without consent from the sender.

AnandTech Moderator

--end paste--

If this is an accepted practice, I'm saddened. I've been with d.n since prior to the first DES contest, originally for Team Slashdot and now for Team HardOCP for lack of anyone else to send block in for. (Anyone remember Bitbucket?) Spam has always been frowned upon, and has always turned me off to any team that spammed me to join. Unfortunatley it seems to be an established member of TA, and that just makes the practice more disturbing.

 

[Rendus]

Just saw the thread prasising dennilflos for spamming people. Sad.

 

[nickdakick]

<< I will not repeatedly spam >>


He asked you a question ? You could have answered it with Yes or No. End of story. Where's the big deal ?
And yes, Denis does this frequently and nobody ever complained. They either joined or didn't. Denis does a great job helping the TeAm by asking ppl to join.

 

[TwoFace]

Hi Rendus,

I'm sad that you felt this to be spam! But consider this... this is a thing dennil does to people that frequents these forums... not perfect strangers! It's a carefully composed message, and as he wrote

<< I don't know if you are already cracking some rc5

--if you are, you need not read any further-- >>

Since you've been with DNet for a long time that should be enough for you to delete that PM! Most of the guys in OT/GH doesn't know what this is and a PM as long as it isn't sent to EVERY user of these forums can hardly be called spam can it? As I've understood this dennil is pretty careful who he sends this to, and ALWAYS respects people that don't want anything to do with this!

You can resolve this by PM'ing dennil back and tell him that you don't want to be a part of the team!

What makes you think this is spam btw? These are the Anandtech's forums and it's a recruitment attempt for an Anandtech team. The mods have put certain restrictions on us concerning where we can recruit people, and the only two places except for the Dist.Comp. forum are OT and GH. I believe dennil only sends these PMs to people that frequent these two forums, and chose to do this by PM instead of posting a separate thread about it. I'm sorry if you felt violated by dennil, and I'm sure you won't EVER hear anything more from him about this issue!

Have a nice day!

Two-Face

 

[Bakwetu]

I don't consider this spam, it will only be sent to you once and is more like a personal invitation and a helper if you're interested. I also got a similar letter, which was the final push for me to join TA and the rc-5 contest. For me his letter clarified what rc5 was about and how easy it is to join. I had been interested before but was unsure about a lot of things. Dennilfloss got me started and also answered all my questions I PM:ed him (really quick too). I'm greateful he sent me that letter, and I think a lot of other TA members feel the same. I'm sorry that you feel offended, but for a lot of people it's a helper not spamming.

 

[optoman]

Denni has been a great asset to the TA team. He is not spamming. He writes everyone personally and he takes the time and effort to try and get a couple of people cracking, to be part of the team. The one great thing that he does is bring everyone together. If he wanted to spam poeple then he could just cut and paste everyone's email and do a mass mailing. You should look around these forums before you talk. We welcome everyone!

 

[Rendus]

I have PM'd him. Was less friendly than I normally am about it, but bleh. I was actually expecting this to be an exception to the rule. I'm rather suprised it's an accepted practice.

I only remember posting one post (of of my total of 23) to OT or GH. It was a reply to a 131 post long thread about the issues with the IBM 75GXP. Otherwise I usually hang in the For Sale/Trade forum. Not going to nitpick on the entire limited-to-certain-forums thing, I don't really care.

It's more an annoyance than anything else, I suppose, but it's spam nonetheless. He's pretty much indiscriminately (I can't spell) sending PMs, certainly unsolicited as I've never shown interest in RC5DES on this forum. -Shrug-

Sorry, didn't know pretty much random advertising was accepted these days. Been out of the running for quite some time (stopped around the fall of DES 2, lost almost all interest at DES 3). At the very least, this got me interested in cracking again, which I guess is a small victory. But my blocks won't be going towards &quot;The Borg&quot; or whatever his subteam is called, at the very least.

TBird 900 WinME, K6-2 333 Slack, K6-2 300 WinME, Dual P233MMX Slack, P200 Win98.

 

[optoman]

If you don't like it then you could always turn off your PM.

 

[Rendus]

<< If you don't like it then you could always turn off your PM. >>



These arguments have always bothered me. It's sort of like saying &quot;Don't like the way I drive? Then don't drive.&quot;

I just pointed out that I got spammed to join RC5. Like I said, I didn't know the practice was accepted.

 

[Jani]

I thought Denis was inviting his AT forum friends I'm not supporting this kind of recruiting

Quoting Abuse.net

<< Spam is flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message, in an attempt to force the message on people who would not otherwise choose to receive it. >>

 

[optoman]

I don't think you understand what he is trying to do. He wrote you a letter asking you if you would like to join a RC5 team. The mini-team that he is a part of belongs to TeAm Anandtech. We have these mini teams to keep everything interesting and we all help each other out when we have problems with our computers or the stuff that runs on them. This is our way of giving back to the forums. It is a little community in here and Dennil did not mean to piss you off. All the man did was ask you a simple question and you get all worked up about it. You could of simple replied saying I am already cracking or that you were not interested. That is what the PMs are for, to talk to each person individually. I am sorry that you feel this way and that we have inconvienced you.

 

[Rendus]

Everyone so far: The argument seems to be it was targeted towards particular people. It was only targeted towards people on AT's forums, yes. But certainly not as narrowly as you seem to think

Jani: That's what I'm saying... If I were some sort of regular, I probably wouldn't have cared either way. But outside this post I have 22 posts to all the forums combined according to that post count at the bottom.

optoman: I'm not trying to take anything away from his efforts to recruit people, I'm all for trying to recruit. But when he starts violating (what used to be, anyway) distributed.net policy about spamming (can't find the document anymore on what NOT to do when recruiting) it's going a bit too far. As far as I can remember, d.n has always asked people to refrain from mass mailings. It wasn't mass as far as I can tell in that he hit everyone and anyone he saw, but I certainly am not a standout member of the Anandtech community. I'm more a lurker than anything. (Hell, my Slashdot user ID is 2430, and I can remember when Rob ran it off the Multia at The Image Group, yet I have maybe 100 total posts there.) I'm not inconvenienced by this, nor am I inconvenienced by regular spam. I just thought if I pointed it out someone would say &quot;Hey! Stop that!&quot;. Obviously that's not the case.

 

[PG]

So this private message constitutes a one-time invitation to join Team Anandtech and be part of my Borg group in a miniteam called TA Cube. Rest assured, I will not repeatedly spam you on this.

Please don't be too offended. Dennis is a nice guy, and these are one time invitations. You can simply ignore it if you like, and you won't get another invitation ever.

 

[CurtOien]

Rendus,

Welcome to the AnandTech Forums.
Welcome to the team.

 

[Rendus]

<< Rendus,

Welcome to AnandTech.
Welcome to the team. >>



Heh. Exact opposite is true at the moment, actually.

Although I just noticed I'm teamless at the moment. -Shrug- May join just for lack of a team. (Or I'll go back to Slashdot. Dunno.)

 

[squaddie]

<< Heh. Exact opposite is true at the moment, actually.

Although I just noticed I'm teamless at the moment. -Shrug- May join just for lack of a team. (Or I'll go back to Slashdot. Dunno.) >>



Or join us to help us claim the 'right' position (#1) for DPC

 

[JimMc]

Rendus, hope you'll consider joining the team!

Though many of the Borg tend to communicate in monosyllabic grunts comprising but a sentence or two D, WW must have written DF's prose ), the Team could certainly use your help and you would be very welcome as a solo member. Rather than just &quot;lurking&quot;, feel free to join in the forum activity---you've obviously been around for a while and your viewpoints will be of interest.

Most everyone here is supportive of dennilfloss' recruiting, but that certainly doesn't mean he or anyone else intended to unduly bother you, we just want to make as many people aware of the team, whether you chose to join or not is clearly your decision and no one will bother you about it whatever your decision.

 

[Rendus]

At this point, I'm more annoyed than anything else about the spamming. It's not a big deal, just suprising it's accepted. -Shrug- (Just getting home from work probably didn't help my attitude about it too much )

I apologize if I came across like a hotheadded fool. I more or less was trying to let people know what was going on if for some reason nobody else had mentioned it before, but I guess people already knew and didn't care. I'm against it (obviously ), but life goes on.

Throwing my blocks at TA (no idea how many are unallocated at this point), and starting RC5 cracking on my TBird 900, K6-2 300, P200, and going to bed. I'll take care of the dual 233 and probably try to get my 333 running again in the next few days. (either that or I'll sell them)

 

[jinsonxu]

This is what i like about TA, calm logical discussions that give satisfactable results!

A Big Welcome to Rendus for joining TA RC5! Yeah!

 

[PeterN]

Welcome to the Team, Rendus!

Glad you decided to join us, regardless of your feelings towards the recruiting attempt by Dennil.
Your help is much appreciated. We're loosing ground to the DPC fast, but we want to stay on the no. 1 spot.

Peter.

 

[blade47]

Personally I don't consider a single invitation to join TA through PM to be considered spamming. I'm sorry if you feel that it is. That's your opinion on the matter just as most of us have ours. Your the first to complain out of the many who have recieved an invitation from Denis to join TA. So I'd have to conclude that the majority of the people who have gotten a PM from Denis don't consider it spam.

Edit: BTW welcome to the team and I hope you'll &quot;lurk&quot; here in the DC forum some and even better yet post a few messages ever now and then.

 

[Jator]

Here's a quick brain teaser,

It's not considered unethical to send snail-mail in bulk to people to try and get them to join a church, local organization, not-for-profit organization, etc. It's not even illegal to call them on the phone. So why is it considered 'bad' when someone sends you a perfectly well written letter, one that gives you all the details available, not just the info you 'need' to know?

dfloss has been a very frequeant user of this board, and he has met more people than I ever will, so I think it's perfectly legit for him to ask those people to consider joining, or at least encourage them to learn more if they wish to. He didn't buy the address from some marketing list, he simply is spreading the message to the people who are closest to him in the cyber world, us.

I know this is a grey area, and we all have different opinions. Doesn't make it any easier....does it.

 

[Bakwetu]

Welcome to the team Rendus, I'm glad there's no hard feelings on either side.

 

[DanC]

Rendus,
Personally - you might want to consider it as a compliment. Since Denis talks to people, (or at least observes them first) He extended an invitation. You are free to decline, but it appears that you are intelligent and pretty open-minded. Why not hang out with us awhile?

 

[JHutch]

Ok, I'll chime in my two cents worth ...

As a whole, we do not condone spamming in the name of the Team. In fact, we've had some MAJOR arguments about this very topic with some ... overzealous ... team members.

However, Denil's efforts were deemed to NOT be spam for a couple of simple reasons.

1) Denil only sends PM to members of Anandtech forums.
2) He customizes each PM to the person he writes. He doesn't have a form that he simply writes <insert name here> in the greeting.

Now, in the past, I've noticed that Dennil targets people that he thinks, for one reason or another, would be interested in DNet. I'm not sure what his reason for contacting you was.

I know each person's tolerance for unsolicited mail is different. Personally, it annoys me and I usually delete it without reading if I don't recognize the sender. Sometimes, though, I've wanted to physically HURT extremely persistent spammers! If Dennil's PM bothered you, I apologize for the team. It was not meant to be perceived as spam, and that is the only excuse we have. I promise that you will get no other PM.

Again, we apologize for bothering you and welcome you to the team if you decide to join.

JHutch