Spamming for a Knighthood
How Not to to a guy a favour
Dateline: 11:45, Tuesday, October 18th, 2005 - my inbox.
There is an online campaign afoot to lobby for a knighthood for Prof. Sid Watkins, for many years the chief medic to formula 1 racing. Unfortunately, the people behind the campaign have taken to spamming to achieve their end (spot the throw-away gmail account).
From markbellf1@gmail.com Tue Oct 18 11:45:33 2005
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Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2005 11:41:39 +0100
From: Mark Bell <markbellf1@gmail.com>
To: a@b.c
Subject: Sid Watkins knighthood petition - please sign (link inside)
Hi
There is a petition as part of a campaign for former F1 medical chief
Professor Sid Watkins to be knighted for his services to F1 and
motorsport safety, the petition is at
[blah blah blah]
Thousands of F1 fans have already signed and around 100 members of the
paddock (names of paddock members displayed on front page)
Please can you enter your first name and surname as entries not in
full name will have to be deleted
Thanks
Not only that, but they're faking entries in their petition. The original text of my entry:
Spamming is not an appropriate method for lobbying for a knighthood, markbellf1@gmail.com. Whether Prof. Watkins deserves a knighthood or not, this campaign is tarnished by such behaviour.
Five minutes after writing it the entry miraculously became three short words: "Knight Sid Watkins", and subsequent entries I made complaining about that were deleted. It raises the question of authenticity of all the other expressions of support.
Now I fully appreciate that the man has undoubtedly performed a great service to the sport over the years, but I am not altogether sure it merits a knighthood, although people have been knighted for less. However, whether Professor Watkins deserves the knighthood or not, these miscreants are somewhat souring his chances, probably completely without the knowledge or sanction of the man himself. It just isn't appropriate to the nature of the campaign, it completely undermines what they're trying to achieve, and could even have a directly detrimental effect on his chances.
I have half a mind to call the owner of the domains hosting the campaign page and the guestbook being used for the petition, and presumably of the web sites, (one Elaine Thompson of Epsom, Surrey) to give her a piece of my mind.
Adding Insult to Injury
Dateline: 18:45, Tuesday, October 18th, 2005 - my inbox, again.
Well just to cap it all, I've just had an e-mail (also from a gmail account) from one Chris Thompson (recognise the surname?) self-styled "campaign manager" of the petition, claiming to know nothing about the spamming and not to have sanctioned it and threatening to report me to Blueyonder for my repeated entries in the guestbook complaining about my original entry having been edited to misrepresent my views. Sorry, fella, you proved yourself able to delete entries by removing my complaints, but you still continue to display your fabrication of support under my name. If you are prepared to put words in people's mouths and misrepresent their views for your own ends it calls your own inegrity into question. Your righteous indignation simply doesn't wash, and a person trying to re-assert their own views in the face of your fiction can hardly be deemed an issue of abuse.
