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clayart & aol member profiles (longish)

updated wed 18 nov 98

 

"Terry Sullivan/Nottingham Center for the Arts. San Marcos," on tue 17 nov 98

This is for AOL useres. Others may find it of interest but needen't read on.

For those on the list who use aol as their ISP; why not use the aol members
profile feature ?

Aol is the largest ( well over 11 million ) and most used ISP in the world but
not nessesarily the best.
If one is going to use aol then why not take advantage of some of it's unique
features. One of the best, IMHO, is the Member Profiles feature.
It allows others to know something about you, of your choosing, but conceals
important security information like your address and phone # ( if desired).
We are all ceramist/potters and most of us are in it as a business or
profession in some way. Seems to me that in this huge world society; anything
that helps us find and communicate with others of similar interestes is
usefull and valuable.
Isn't that exactly why we are all on Clayart ????
Why would you want to "hide" that and/or information which would allow an
interested person from making contact as long as it doesn't compromise your
privacy or security ????

To stem the tide of myths about aol profiles:
The use of this feature does not appriciably, if at all, increase Spam.
I have tested this myself using different screen names ( aol lets you have 5).
Aol site/screen name addresses are most commonly gotten by software that
strips these from aol chat files etc. not the member profile lists.

I have used a special screen name site on aol for Clayart Listserv only,
NottSchl@aol.com, for quite awhile and get fewer than one in 40 non list
related messages. These are very obvious while wading through the dozens of
list posts.
I simply don't open and read them ( along with the Clayart posts I don't
read). Sure, one sometimes slips through and gets opened and I hit the delete
key.
Takes about 5 seconds.
Once you have read all the Clayart posts of interest; you can clean out the
entire, or part, email box in bulk by: highlighting a post, hold down the
shift key and sweep/highlight all the stuff to be trashed. Press "Delete" and
it's gone.

Spam by an aol member to other aol'ers, or to any other service, is punishable
by removal from aol (report/fwd.to TosSpam@aol.com) usually after one warning
unless the spam was sexually offensive in which case it is immediate.
I wish some of the other servers were as strict.

Aol "mail controls" allow you to easily control who can send mail to a site
but, unfortunately, do not allow this with Clayart because the software
doesn't recognize Clayart as the sender but rather the original sender to the
list.
Nonetheless the anount of spam is tinny ! Not a
Problem..........................................

This is probably not a topic for general Clayart discussion so perhaps
responses could be sent to my personal email box: Go2tms@aol.com and if there
is enough interest I'll set up a private chat room and anounce the time on
Clayart so we could all discuss it in real time. Please put "Clayart/aol" in
the Subject line when responding.

Terry Sullivan
Nottingham Center for the Arts
http://www.nottinghamarts.org