please help with forwarded messages

[colist-admin at comm-org.utoledo.edu]

Hi COMM-ORG.  Your friendly editor/moderator here.  I need your help and
support on an issue that I may be pretty neurotic about but which is
none-the-less near and dear to my heart.

I am getting an increasing number of "forwarded messages" that come from
other lists or from individuals.  Now, first, I very much appreciate people
passing along what is almost always very important information.  Second, I
also very sincerely want you to help me make the Internet a
relationship-building rather than a relationship-ignoring medium.

I consider all e-mail to be as personal and sacred as postal mail.  I
wouldn't photocopy a letter someone sent to me and send it to a hundred of
my friends without the original sender's permission.

So please, when you forward a message, request permission from the original
sender to forward it to COMM-ORG and at the beginning of the message type
"forwarded with permission." 

Why?
1.  sometimes people only wanted their message to appear where they
originally sent it.
2.  asking for permission begins to build a more personal relationship with
the original sender and gives them the impression their words are being
treated with respect.  I could tell more than a few stories about people
who have been so very thankful that I asked permission to repost their
message, and a few that I continue to stay in touch with.
3.  maybe they never heard of COMM-ORG and contacting them for permission
also gives you the opportunity to tell them about us.  

I try as much as possible to request permission when I get forwarded
messages, but sometimes I get so many that I simply don't have time to
request permission myself and the messages languish in the server until
they are so out of date I just discard them.

Now, of course, you don't need to request permission of messages that are
press releases or say "forward everywhere" or some such thing.

I really am intensely committed to this kind of policy.  I, like many of
you, are inundated with e-mail and most of it is so impersonal that I
ignore it just because it is so impersonal.  One of the greatest risks of
the Internet, in community organizing terms, is that it reduces, rather
than builds, personal relationships.  And I will do everything in my power
to see that we find ways of making the Internet more personal rather than
less.

Sorry to rant and rave.  And if you think I am really off the wall about
this please tell me and if there is an overwhelming rejection of the idea
of trying to emphasize relationship-building on the Internet I will bite my
tongue until it bleeds and go with the wishes of the group.  And if you do
respond, please let me know if you wish your message to be distributed to
the list.

:-)  

Randy