Gather Connections - Did you know??

I agree. I don't understand why people would think it would help them to spam, when people have never liked spam from the start! I try not to hold it against somebody, but it doesn't really help things. I look for interesting articles, and if somebody writes many articles I like, I will make sure they I look at their articles on a regular basis. It is that simple. I may not see it every day, but I will find it.

This hasn't happened to me yet. I really wouldn't mind if it were an article someone knew I would want to see and didn't want me to miss. I'd be annoyed if it were just drivel though.

Don't get me wrong, I love the personal messages. I enjoy being told about special things on Gather. Some just take it to far and I am just wondering if I misses something or they did?

I understand your point, but I just delete.

I guess it's because some REALLY, REALLY want you to read what they wrote. It doesn't matter of they send a Spam-Mail or not. If I like the topic; I'll read if...already being notified by Gather E-mail it's been posted. If I don't care to check it out; they can send 100 Spam-Mails and that's still not going to change my mind. Though I don't really care for Spam-Mailing; it's really not that big of a deal to me. I just check a box and click delete and it's gone in a second. Occassionally, something omitted from a post you get alerted to or a link to use because the one in the article malfunctioned...and there have been a couple times, something very important has been brought to my attention; even though I already read it...but the subject was good enough to draw extra attention to it. Personally, I hope never to send one as people know where I am and how to find me either through regular posting notification, "subscribing" to me or checking through my home/name page. When I posted my very first article, my best friend sent his connections a Spam-Mail to announce my arrival...and I've been on my own since then. Something like that I don't mind, either, otherwise, I might not learn of new arrivals who I'll enjoy reeading and being connected with. But I get your point from your post here.

I too see your point but I kind of cut them some slack. Everyone's writing is their "baby" and they come here to get feedback and help so I dont blame them for being anxious. The problem I have is one someone does a "one liner" and spams me....then I get a little pissy...not to the point of disconnecting them but I will just delete the email.

I agree with you..it can be a pain! I have done it only once when I published my first article. On the other hand within the last week or so I recieved numerous connection requests. Dozens I would say. Yet when I post something I get the same three or four people commenting is all. I'm not complaining..just curious. Why did you want the conection if you dont want to see what I post? Commenting has to be a two way street! Good topic for discussion Sara! C):-)

There is a way to block senders from sending email to you. When you open a letter you should see next to the sender's name a circle with a line through it and then next to that you should see the words in blue: block sender. Click on the words, block sender, and they cannot send you anymore email until you unblock them. Easy as pie.

I recently disconnected from two connections who sent messages on a daily basis about their articles..... I dutifully would go to their articles, read and leave a comment....but they NEVER would read mine - or at least, I never knew if they did or not because they never commented....

I don't mind being notified when someone is being featured or when someone wants to introduce a new member or even when someone wants to make sure you read a particular article by another member...............but it is annoying to me when I get a daily posts to read YOUR articles, when we are connected anyway....

I can't read all of my conenctions on a daily basis, but I do scan all Articles for Me and pick and choose what I want to read published by my connections - the title has to be one to attract me, though...........

I also get annoyed by those messages. While I am not signed up for any notifications from my connections I do always go through the articles for me that have been posted since the last time I checked. If the article interests me I will check it out from there. I just ignore those types of messages. Sometimes it even makes me not want to look at the article. I do not mind the ones that are individually addressed to me to look at an article or image, but the mass ones majorly annoy me.

I have to confess to you guys, I have no idea what your talking about. I am new to computers , and even newer to Gather. So , Sara if I am guilty of doing this , I apologize to you and to everyone. Does that mean I joined to many groups? Im not sure what to do different.Could someone let me know? So , it could be some people dont realize they are doing this. Thanx in advance...........................chrisp

No, Chris.....it doesn't mean you joined too many groups.....This is about the people that use the inner Gather mail system to SPAM all of their connections with a message (mailed to your own Gather mail address) just to tell everyone they are connected to read something they wrote....

When you log into Gather it should first take you to a page with your icon and where your points are listed.....on that same little box will be listed connection requests penind, messages for you and pending group invites.

Some members love to send a message to everyone on their connections list at one time - once or twice is not too bad but when they do it every single time, it is more than annoying. ;-)

I could not agree more with this article.
I love getting a personal message from someone with me and maybe 1 or 3 others on it that the article would be of great interest to, but mass mailing all connections every day gets old. I have weeded out most of the mass mailers from my connections, so now it is not as much of a problem for me.

Andrea R. has the cutest icon up there... what do we do when we find our kids standing in the toilet? Scream? Yell? Punish? NOPE, we run for the camera!

I agree with you to sara. thanks for posting this for all the new ones coming here to post. We all have to do our part. I can remeber when I was first starting off. It is hard to get started in the beginning. Or did all of you forget what it was like when you started out.

For some that have got real bad at spam I've blocked then and don't get any of their messages.

I agree, if I am going to read it, I will. I don't need to be wasting time checking the email that I could be using to actually read everyone's articles!

Thanx Sonia , that helps alot. I havent sent any private messages yet , I'm not sure how that works yet , but I'm learning. I've made alot of new friends here recently and the last thing I want to do is upset anyone. Thanx again...........chrisp

You're very welcome, Chris P!

It has gotten worse of late. I've done it, sparingly, to notify my fairweather connections of something they might enjoy. The multitude of other e-mails has undoubtedly gotten in the way and most couldn't be bothered. I ended up deleting those that:
a. didn't show up anymore, and,
b. sent more spam than comments.
Manage your connections, don't acquire too many, and this shouldn't be a problem.

I never do it!

Darn - I hope that I didn't miss which option to use - sometimes it seems like i find out my connections have posted things and I don't get the notification :-(

This is an issue that has generated many, many articles. A few thoughts (well, questions, actually):

--I wonder if the spamming would stop if the spammers were named in the many articles complaining about it? Would it be against TOS to write an article saying "I am so tired of the daily spam I get from *****, ******, and ******"? Would that be considered defamation? It would be interesting to see if the same names kept coming up. That might stop 'em.

--Have any spam victims ever replied to the spammers directly (vs. writing an article about it), expressing their displeasure? What was the result?

--Do blocked senders know they are blocked (does the message bounce back or something)?

--If it annoys people so much, why not just block and disconnect from the person? Clearly those who do it (spam) don't think any of these many articles complaining about it apply to them. Why would people want to remain connected to such thoughtless people?

I ask these questions because I don't get mass e-mail spam from Gatherers, aside from one or two people who asked me to read their First Chapters entires. I also am pretty discerning about who I connect to.

Janna - It would not bother them to be named, many don't care. many continue doing it despite having been confronted about it. They never reply to a confrontation message. I have blocked a number of Spammers. I think Gather needs a bounce message when someone has been blocked, not that it would matter but the Spammer would then see their messageis not reaching anyone.

I have been blocking. I've been disconnecting but understand that is then my time that they continue to waste. I think people who do it are very rude and uncaring people who don't understand how Gather works.

An interesting little side note to this article, since posting this article I have received more connection requests in one day. On disconnect (but I think that was for other reasons and I know who). The amount of Spam I received in one day went from many to a couple few. Now I did block a lot of people but this stopped more then the ones I blocked. Maybe, just maybe one has to get ticked and let the world know about it before a person realizes how far they pushed an issue . . .

Look out ranting groups!

I was thinking about this some more after I commented last night. You say going public with names doesn't help--I haven't seen any articles in which specific people are called out (except for the awesome KEO incident/J5K parody), but I can't claim to have read every article on Gather.

At the very least, naming names would help others know who to avoid when connecting. When no one mentions any names, the perpetrators don't think the complaints apply to them.

Sara said: "I think people who do it are very rude and uncaring people who don't understand how Gather works."

Or, they are *very* aware of how it works. If you click over to their article, they get the points for your visit. Why not go to the article you're being spammed about and leaving your message there? You're giving them what they want by going to their piece but at least the likelihood of them seeing how annoyed you are is greater than them reading this article. You can also announce that you are blocking them and disconnecting.

The beauty of this is that you have a greater chance of the offender seeing your message and you can inform others who happen to be reading who the e-mail spammers are in a non-confrontational way (vs. a separate article naming names). The downside for is that you may not be comfortable telling people this up front and you wouldn't reap the points that articles about mysterious unnamed spammers seem to generate.

Im still learning about this even thought i started a few weeks ago.

It can be frustrating, I know. I don't mind the ones that are contests or introducing something since I am always running behind lately. But, if it is just a regular e mail about an article and I already know that I will receive a notification about it, I will delete it.

I don't send one out for every single article I write, but I have been posting a daily chat to which I always invite everyone who hasn't told me they'd rather NOT be invited. (Only 3 out of over 200 people...)

I completely feel you I have over 7000 messages waiting in my inbox on here... and have till Jan 20th to get them all done, publish things on here, organize my albums and post any new pictures I might want people to see while I am attending classes next semester... Yeah I feel you.

Not everyone is on Gather all the time. I'm usually on for 2-3 hours at the most. That means unless I actively look for a post, I can easily miss something I would like to read. I don't have the post turned on because as it is I get several hundred emails from Gather anyway and don't have a chance of reading a fraction of them.
People spam because it works. Now that most of the points are for posting and receiving the attention of view and comments from others, it will probably get worse.