Dear All,

An excellent way to deal with unwanted postings is to ignore them, which
eventually discourages the sender. In some cases, as experience shows, the
sender feels validated by receiving any kind of attention, even negative
attention. We have certainly gone through all this on Conch-L before; it's
one reason why I took a vacation of two or three years. If you feel that you
absolutely must criticize the sender, write to his private email address,
and please try to make the criticism positive, as in, 'I really like your
posts on collecting wentletraps better. Why not talk about them on Conch-L?'

The strategy works best if it's accompanied by starting other, more
interesting threads of conversation. I'll make a stab at that in a minute or
two.

Andrew K. Rindsberg
Geological Survey of Alabama