Question?????

[Sir Edgar]

This may be a foolish question with an obvious answer but I have to ask it. Why do posters put a "phony" address on their posts without a note in their text to that effect? The only reason I can see is so they will not get e-mails in response to their questions. I read a post that had a question which had a sense of urgency about it. I had the answer and rather than wait for it to be posted I sent an e-mail to the address shown. It promptly came back with an invalid address notification. Actually I felt rather annoyed that I had taken the time and trouble to help someone with a problem and I was writing to a "ghost". I won't mention any names but the question had to do with removing a frozen screw. If there is something I do not know about this, please enlighten me. You are welcome to post your responses or write an e-mail. Thanks. Peace ~ Sir Edgar =F8=F8=F8=F8=F8=F8=F8=F8=F8=F8=F8=F8=F8=F8=F8=F8=F8=F8=F8=F8=F8=F8=F8=F8=F8= =F8=F8=F8=F8=F8=F8=F8=F8=F8=F8=F8=F8=F8

[Leon]

Most often to prevent SPAM and or a bot from sucking up all the e-mail addresses in a news group and sending more Spam.

IMHO the e-mail address, if invalid, should be easily recognizable so that it can be easily corrected by an individual responder. Offending Computers normally dont read the address and make the corrections needed for a successful Spam attempt.

[Gerald Ross]

[Other Brother Kevin]

I have emailed people directly with information for a nationally known craftsman, so this craftsman wouldn't have to defend his statement every time he runs into one of you.

I have also emailed to flame the bastard who I totally disagreed with his point or the attitude it was delivered in. A good old personal flaming.

I have had people reply to me and the group with the same post

Most of the time it's just something I DON' T care to share with you and if you don't know I'm sharing with others you won't miss it any ways.

Kevin

Remove SNIP to reply, but I haven't looked at that address for almost a year so don't bother.

[Michael Baglio]

snip...

Sir Edgar, it's generally considered good manners to respond to a usenet posting on usenet and not by direct email. People use false email addresses primarily to avoid spam, but that's a seperate issue from the one you posed about being annoyed that an email from you bounced back.

Today, storage space is dirt cheap, but it wasn't always so. In the dim dark days of early usenet, those who had email boxes paid a lot more for the space they took on their ISP's server than we do now. Because of that, it was considered bad form to reply by email to a usenet posting. You simply didn't take up someone's email server space with an answer that could be read "for free" by the original poster on usenet. Bad form and all that...

The convention still (largely) holds. Although members of this group and I correspond with each other off group all the time, if a question is asked on _this_ forum, I reply on this forum, and I don't copy it to the poster's private email address. It may, nowadays, be a quaint custom, but I still think it's courteous not to impose on someone's email box without invitation.

Since this is usenet it's almost certain that others will have differing opinions, but I'm sticking with mine. ;>

Hope this helped,

Michael Baglio Chapel Hill

[timonjkl]

what good for the goose isn't good for the gander?

Well then do you use usenet at all its not a private forum use IRC or IM I don't use a e-mail address because I don't want anyone to have it until I feel someone can be trusted and that I may be interested in personal conversation with. I don't know you and it sounds like I don't want to know you. If you want to flame me do it here I don't care. It's easier to filter the sh?t here that my in basket that is why

BYE

Thsi is as bad as spam 8-)

[Edwin Pawlowski]

I'd agree if it was a perfect world of servers. If I have something of importance, I'd rather use email as it is more reliable than newsgroup postings. I've seen where someone replied to my posting only because a third person made another comment. The original reply never appeared on the server my ISP uses.

For general comments, posting to the NG is sufficient. Ed [e-mail]

[Silvan]

Feh. I've been on usenet for 10 years now, and I've never used a munged address. I abhor the practice.

Yes, I do have to deal with spam, and yes, I do hate spam. When I hear people talking about how spam has to be protected, I want to stand them in front of my table saw and kick pieces of wood into their midsections. To say nothing of what I'd do to the spammers themselves if I ever got ahold of one.

[Gerald Ross]