Member Contact Discussion.....

[DanC]

For heavens sake people... dnet isn't the CIA. They aren't even the ones who invented the internet. Can we grow some cojones, or do we just roll over and let DPC have it all?
Which is it?

 

[osmo]

DanC-

Actually, there have been many good ideas in this thread so far.

The team has a newsletter, I do not subscribe to it, but it's subscribed membership is probably your best resource at this time. I would suggest contacting those in charge of it to learn how often it sent, who is in charge of it's contents, etc.

I think that a mailing list is a good idea. There is no reason to not start one starting now. We control the content of the Team page at DNET, I believe that is where the link to join the team resides. The mechanism to join a mailing list can be placed there.

Finally, I think that it is a matter of maintaining interest. LeBlatt's incite on the projects in process is not far off. A team website, pproxy (which should require subscription to in my opinion) The Race Page that LeBlatt has created, the irc channel, LD's Gamebox, Paulson's FAQ's, Brad's efforts with the Round Robin proxy configuration are all positive selling points for our team. Projects along these lines fill needs and create interest that cannot be provided by the contest in it's current implementation by DNET.

Those are a few things we can do and I'm sure that others can come up with more.

Osmo.

 

[NT4Mike]

Dan,

As a matter of fact, I have been reading the thread Thank You.

<<Fact is - there is little difference *where* an address came from, as there is no evidence for - or against the *where* -
This particular aspect is nitpicky IMHO. I can't believe any member who is actively cracking for TA would object in any way to being informed of TA sites, forum, or any team-oriented stuff.>>

Did you ask them? The problem is that you think that they would not mind. Well, they make look at it a little differently.

What you are proposing is just like what the user you complained about earlier today did as far as we are concerned. Sure the person might be on your team now and might have been at one time. But in no way did they ask for you to keep them informed about the team, or authorize you to use their email. Their email was submitted to us. Not to you.

&quot;&quot;spamming&quot; either on behalf of your personal team or for distributed.net in general is expressly forbidden.&quot; reguardless if the person was previously on your team or not this says that any kind of mass mailing is forbidden.

-Moose

<<Mike - you're not reading the posts are you? - TA.com is already owned.
This isn't about TA.com>>

The ta.com I was referring to was www.teamanandtech.com which, whenever I check it heads over to Mika?s. I thought that this was going to be the location for the united TA Distributed Computing site. Perhaps I missed an update to the plan, if so someone please enlighten me.

Dan, I find your enthusiasm and your energy refreshing. My caution would be that people are careful not to go near ?spamming? for a reason. If you are going to generate a list of people on your own to send out a newsletter to, then rock on and we are all with you. However, if you are thinking that you can get a list of email addresses in any way shape or form from Dnet then you had better ask them about it first before you get the whole team disqualified from the contest.

-Mike

 

[ViRGE]

Yeesh, you people make me look pathetic in school, as you've typed more than I've thought all day.😉 Anyways, here's my take.

As it's allready been said, Dnet specificly prohibits this kind of thing. Unless we can get Dnet to agree to let us have the emails with Anand's permission(he's the owner of the team for peat's sake), the idea won't fly. It's not worth getting into trouble with Dnet, or heaven forbid, getting the team kicked, just because we wanted to run a SPAM campagine(and yes, any mass mailing of this kind would be SPAM🙁).

Now, assuming Dnet would give us the emails, then I think we could easily pull this off. We could simply create a mailing list, and then send emails to the bottom 400 as part of the annocement of the list, and website; and have the email invite them to check out all of TA's new resources. We could then also add them to an opt-in mailing list(one that sends critical updates), and should they not want to be a part, they can opt-out, say nothing(only get a 1 year opt-out), or opt-in to receive the list. Then, from there, we could hopefully motivate the &quot;bottom 400&quot;.

As for the website itself, yes, we're still waiting on Win2K. I've launced Plan B, which includes some redundancy, so we should have a copy of Win2K soon. Then from there, it would only be a matter of having Mika finish coding a few things, such as the news engine, and the site could then be launched. There is however, the minor issue that Mika's a newly-wed, so he may not have a lot of time to work on it.🙁

Either way, we definately need to catch the &quot;bottom 400&quot;, as they represent a good chunk of the key we need to beat the DPCs; but the methods being prescribed, just won't cut it.😱

 

[BGod]

ViRGE, DanC, Train, osmo, etc...

Wouldn't it be adviseable to put a link right on Team AnandTech's own distributed.net stats page? I'm sure Anand or Mike would be willing to alter the HTML to include such a link that would send the person to a page to sign up for the newsletter. That way all this talk of *SPAM* can come to an end.

Another place to have links would be on each of the baby bovines and Mika's site. Everyone I've gotten interested in the contest has been sent the stats links by me, and they keep an eye on them. We could also provide links on some key members stats pages if need be.

 

[osmo]

BGod- I agree (see 3 posts back), those are good ideas.😉

Osmo.

 

[Beefcake]

Dan, the reason you are getting so many people not so passionate about your idea is that it has been discussed many times before over the years.. believe me.. I remember the stats box outage of 99 😉

We even sent an email out to all the members once. Since then this topic has been discussed many times and DNet were not very keen on the idea saying that they could kick the team if we go ahead.

Personally I think this idea is slightly different and say go for it!!! as everything that gets us more blocks the better 🙂🙂 But in my heart I'd say be careful as we dont want to risk losing the team for the sake of sending out an email!

 

[JimMc]

<< spamming&quot; either on behalf of your personal team or for distributed.net in general is expressly forbidden >>



I thought it was clear that Dan's suggestion was to email people to invite them back to our DC Forum--he wasn't soliciting for TA Cube or TA!. In fact da Borg have made up all kinds of rules designed, I suppose, to prevent recruiting from other teams, etc.

I understand Dnet doesn't want spamming on it's behalf, but individual email's to inactive members inviting them to come back to the DC Forum is a matter for Anand to worry about, not Dnet.

This infighting is BS. Dan C. is just trying to do what most everyone's shared goal ought to be, recruit more members, help with educating the new members (like me), and have some fun. It ought to be about encouragement, teamwork, a little friendly smack talk, and winning the damn race!

 

[osmo]

JimMc- I understand DanC's intention. I also support the idea of creating a list to contact and manage the projects with the membership.

The issue as it has developed throughout this thread is whether or not DNET's Team list should be used as the source for a contact list. It doesn't matter how you split the hairs here, if anyone who is contacted determines with DNET that their email was gained from that source it can be called SPAM.

If the list was created by searching the archives of the forum for inactive participants, then I would agree with your statement that it would be Anand's call.

I would like to point out that DanC's idea has not been discounted! The title of this thread describes a discussion. Discussions include ideas, their positive and negative aspects, and constructive additions or modifications to the proposal until you come up with a viable solution as a group. So far the idea has support in concept, it's the implementation that is in question.

Osmo.