Don
Good suggestions! ALSO I might suggest when outing an EBay bike/frame; please include very basic size info; i.e. seat post length at a minimum cause there are some of us that restrict our interest to items that we can ride!
thanks
Ken Sanford
Kensington, MD
> Hi, after talking to Dale I have decided to post this suggestion
> to the CR mailing list.
>
> =====================================================================
>
> Dear CR members,
>
> please remember that this is an "archived" mailing list. What you
> write is recorded for posterity. As a result, here are some
> suggestions to improve archive quality :
>
> ==============
> From: somebody@somewhere.com
> Subject: CR Members, Hey Look at this ?!?!
>
> Can you believe this ??
>
> http://www.tinyurl.com/
> ==============
>
> In the big cosmic email scheme of things, this is not useful to
> posterity. Both the subject and the body of the message contain no
> permanent information. First, the TinyURL service may not be around
> forever. So there is no guarantee that the link will work for even
> one day. Second, to stay tiny, they _must_ eventually recycle tiny
> urls (which are HTTP referral responses). I calculate there are less
> than 1.5M tiny url's available, and if the site takes off they could
> be wrapping every 30 days or less. So a better message would be this:
>
> ==============
> From: somebody@somewhere.com
> Subject: CR Members, Hey Look at this ?!?!
>
> Can you believe this ??
>
> http://www.tinyurl.com/
> =============
>
> Now, there are times when i don't have a browser sitting open and in
> fact URL's wrap and get munged are often painful to follow. So I will
> not follow an URL with no incentive to do so. If I follow the URL and
> its not impressive then I will have very bad impression of you forever
> more. Many people will not follow the URL or will follow it and be
> disappointed. So this posting is really irritating the CR list.
>
> What's worse, four months from now nobody will ever know what you were
> talking about since EBAY items last only 3 months. So a better
> message might be :
>
> ==============
> From: somebody@somewhere.com
> Subject: Look at the price on this Red Super Mondia !!!
>
> It has "Buy It Now" for only $12.95, seller pays shipping !!!
>
> http://www.tinyurl.com/
> =============
>
> This is an excellent CR ebay referral message. People have enough
> info to get the precisely right viewership. Uninterested people can
> skip this URL. Twenty years from now everyone will know what you were
> talking about.
>
> Thanx for listening,
>
> - Don Gillies
> San Diego, CA