[Foundation-l] spamming of the english wikipedia users detected

[The Cunctator]

On 7/3/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 7/3/07, Peter van Londen <londenp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I am sorry, but your actions are misplaced. It is trying to influence
> voters
> > selectively.
> >
> > It is "not done" and reason to doubt the results of this election.
> > The election committee will have to make a standpoint what this means
> for
> > the election as such.
> >
> > The election committee might have made mistakes (which ones you did not
> > mention though), but your mistake is absolutely the biggest.
> >
> > Kind regards, Londenp
>
> I'm sorry you see it that way.
>
> It's an impressive double standard, however.  Other projects have
> already had organized campaigns to increase voter turnout, even ones
> lead by local community leaders, local chapter leadership, etc.  ...
> And their success is reflected in the differential turnouts from these
> projects.
>
> Perhaps once it is done we will see eye to eye, whichever way that is?
>
> If, at the end, a greater percentage of eligible English Wikpedians or
> commons Wikimedians participate than contemporary projects I will take
> your criticism to heart... but even with the emails I do not expect
> that to be achieved.
>
> While I spent one paragraph of my message to Enwiki eligible users
> making the point of why it is important in particular for them to
> participate, my view is that we all need to participate. I worked on
> English because it had such a large problem, because it is the
> language I speak well, and because it is a community I have been a
> part of.  Other, more qualified, people have been addressing turnout
> in other languages.


If you had just added your note to people's talk pages, as everyone else has
ever done when considering mass notifications of other users, you would not
have stepped on anyone's toes.

I understand your desire to reach as many people as possible, and I respect
that you may have made many people happy, and I'm even willing to consider
it an acceptable abuse of the email notification feature because of the
rarity and importance of Board elections, but it was an abuse.

I'd be much happier if you were willing to admit that it was spam and you'll
take your lumps instead of your self-righteous defense of your own obviously
spammish actions.

Good intentions do not guarantee good actions.