Wednesday 23 February 2011

A polite refusal

Dear james@becomeknown.co.uk

Thank you for your posting on our entry Traffic Calming by YK06USX.
 Hi Bristol Traffic,

I work with a company that sells bollards and we would LOVE to get a link to their site from Bristol Traffic. Especially as these inventions feature on your blog quite often, such as your History of Bollards Is this something you're open to?

If you could let me know either way that would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

James 
And
Hi again, my email address is james AT becomeknown DOT co DOT uk :) 
While you were posting your two comments, you would have had time to notice the text immediately above which stated "No adverts, no spam, no requests for cross linking. We will only be rude.".

As this text warned, we not only decline your request, we do so publicly, with your email address put up online with the email address converted into an Internet Engineering Task Force RFC2822-compatible form, RFC2822 replacing, as you may recall, RFC822, so ensuring that spam-bots will find your address and get in touch with your inbox, giving you opportunities to buy discounted counterfeit pharmaceuticals as well as Nigerian 419-spam about how this-week's toppled middle-eastern leader's bank funds could be yours for a small investment up front.

Now, perhaps our rules were not clear enough, so we have reviewed the text and the IETF RFC2119 standards on the correct use of MUST, MUST NOT, SHALL, SHOULD, SHALL NOT, SHOULD NOT, MAY and MAY NOT.

Here then is our new statement in which we state our expectations from commenters and the response that faces comments that violate the rules:
Commenters MUST NOT post spam, MUST NOT post requests for cross linking and MUST NOT post up requests for paid links. Such attempts SHALL result in one or more postings in which we MAY be rude or we MAY make fun of you and MAY include your public email address. Furthermore, we MAY report you to google for attempts at paid linking, who SHALL then punish your site. 

This statement follows RFC2119 rules regarding the use of MUST, MUST NOT, MAY, and SHALL and MUST be treated as normative.
We hope that this clarifies things, and that you do not attempt to add any more comments, as if you continue to do so we SHALL go to the relevant google form and report you and your customer.

Thank you for your participation in the Bristol Traffic Project.

1 comment:

'Old Skidmark' said...

Don't waste your electrons, your brothers over at Aberdeen Cars have also recieved bollard-promoting spam. Only we think it's bot-generated. Like traffic lights, parking meters and artificial intelligence number-plate recognition (for our convenience, huh, don't make me laugh!) we think this is all part of a conspiracy by a sinister Robot Army to which seeks to enslave the drivers of Aberdeen and Bristol Cars by robbing us freedom of movement in the mode of transport of our convenience and free choice.

You may consider Bristol Traffic duly affiliated to our Anti-Bollard League, sworn to resist our sinister robot overlords and their bollards of motoring inconvenience.