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Unknown News is more fun and more informative with your participation, so please don't be shy. Consider yourself invited to speak your mind.
We're especially interested in hearing and considering different perspectives. All we ask is that you conduct yourself sanely and civilly. For the most productive dialogue, it helps if you'll cite a specific article or concept we've gotten wrong.
You can contact Helen & Harry at newsuneed at yahoo.com. If that address ever fails, our back-up email address is unknownnews at inbox.com. (If you send the same email to more than one of our email addresses, we'll probably assume it's spam and delete every copy.)
But please, don't email us unless you're really and truly, honestly, actually trying to send the publishers of Unknown News a communication you're not sending to anyone or everyone else.
Please don't send attachments or other crap we don't want.
All sales pitches, mass mailings, and clearly clueless or crazy communiqués are filtered into the trash or deleted, with no acknowledgement and no apologies.
If you're new to the internet or new to good manners in general, please click here for the complete list of crap we don't want.
If you send stuff we've specifically asked not to receive, you'll eventually get on our nerves. And when that happens, your email will be automatically deleted or blocked.
If you're trying to reach us but getting no reply, it's probably because you've sent us crap we don't want, so we're filtering your emails into the trash, unopened and unread.
If you'd like to have your email address unblocked, simply send a sincere apology (from an un-blocked email address).
Anything sent to Unknown News may be published.
If you don't want it published, say so plainly.
Of course, we publish all incoming hate mail.
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When we publish incoming emails, we usually edit out the sender's last name, email address, or anything else that would tend to uniquely identify the author (if we slip up, please let us know). But if your email is unambiguously intended only to annoy, insult, or threaten us, we'll publish all the details, and leave it on-line forever.
Webmasters — We would love to hear from you when you feel your site has published something particularly noteworthy, and we'll put up a link if we agree.:)
But please don't add us to your routine mailing list (where you send out announcements describing each day's updates to your site). If we're on that list, we'll filter your emails into the trash, and never hear from you again. :( |
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We love hearing from readers, but please don't send attachments or other crap we don't want. To get past our filters, please send only plain, uncoded text.
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We're trying to say this politely: If you send crap we don't want (see below), it will be filtered out, blocked, or deleted. Chances are, we'll never even see it. So if you'd like to save yourself some time and trouble, please read these friendly notes:
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We neither open nor send attachments.• Every incoming email with an attachment is filtered into the trash, unopened and unread. Repeat or especially obnoxious offenders will have their email address permanently filtered into the trash or blocked.
All email that smells like spam is filtered into the trash, unopened:
• We filter out all "mailing list" emails, and we're dead serious about this, so please pay attention: It is simply rude -- and simply spam -- to add people to your mailing list without permission. It doesn't matter that you "know" we'll be interested or you "think" we're friends or political allies. Our filters are set to sort "mailing list" emails into the trash with the rest of the spam.
• We filter out anything and everything encoded to include graphics, animation, sound, or change font color or size. It's almost certainly spam -- and even if it's not, we're not interested. To get past our filters, please send only plain, uncoded text.
• We filter out all email bigger than 50k. Anything that huge almost certainly contains coding, which could be either spam or something nefarious -- and even if it's neither, it's still much bigger than anything we've ever published, anything we'd ever want to publish, or anything we'd ever want to read on a computer screen.
• We filter out any email containing common spam terms, like "penis enlargement," "Nigerian prince," "online pharmacy," etc.
• We filter out all email that's not addressed to us and only to us.
• We filter out all email with blank "subject" or "sender" headers.
• We filter out all forwarded email.
If it gets past our filters, that doesn't mean we're going to read it:
• We delete, unopened, all email titled "important," "urgent," "confidential," "please help me," "look at this," or any of the other routine spam titles going around (unless it's from someone we know and want to hear from).
• We delete, unopened, any email that's "Re:" something we didn't send or publish, or "Re:" nothing at all.
• We delete, unopened, all copies of anything received more than once, or received at more than one of our email addresses.
• We delete, unopened, all email with nonsense or obvious sales pitches in the "subject" or "sender" headers.
• Repeat or especially obnoxious offenders will have their email address permanently filtered into the trash or blocked.
Once we've opened an email, we're still pretty quick with the 'delete' button:
• We delete anything that looks like spam. And we don't look closely.
• We delete anything that starts out by saying it isn't spam.
• We delete anything that starts "To whom it may concern," "Dear friend," etc., or opens with a salutation to anyone who isn't us (just now it was "Dear Mr. Bradley," and instantly deleted).
• We delete anything when we start to wonder whether it was sent as part of a mass mailing.
• We delete anything inviting us to look at an e-postcard, an e-joke, or an e-anything.
• We delete anything that doesn't interest us within the first few paragraphs, and we're pretty easily bored. If you're sending a 20-page legal document, for example, and you don't bother typing a few sentences explaining it, it'll be deleted. As soon as you mention the Bilderbergs, Illuminati, Rosicrucians, Skull & Bones, space aliens, Zionism, or anti-Zionism, or as soon as you begin hinting that you have access to information unraveling a centuries-old conspiracy, we're already reading the next email.
• As we've probably mentioned elsewhere, we won't publish and aren't interested in advertising disguised as a submission (believe me, we can tell the difference), lunatic emails or material that's wildly off-topic (unless it makes us laugh), "Johnny One-Note" stuff (serialized emails reiterating the same points over and over again), comments that amount to endorsements of the status quo (hint: the status quo isn't working), today's amusing anecdote that's already in everyone's email in-box and on-line at 171 websites, long and/or rambling commentary unrelated to anything on this site (e.g., your lengthy opinions about the Vice President's wife's new dress, or elaborate theories about who really killed JFK or engineered 9/11), or anything else, if we don't see your point, or if we don't see what it adds to the website.
• We delete anything from anyone who's repeatedly wasted our time in the past. (This may include mailing lists, press releases, inappropriate submissions, perpetual pet peavers, people who ignore questions we've asked, hate mailers, or other wastes-of-time we haven't yet gotten around to blocking or filtering out.)
• And I suppose there might someday be an exception, but so far we've deleted everything sent to us via anonymous remailers. Most anonymous remailers are just sending insults, but if you're unwilling to face any dialogue in response, you're just not worth our time. We have occasionally received "hot news tips" via anonymous remailers, but this presents insurmountable problems: How can we believe what we're being told, if we don't know who we're talking to? Sorry, if you've got serious news you'll need to un-cloak and contact us with an email address where we can respond.
When we've noticed that email from a particular sender is repeatedly a waste of time, we block the sender's email address. After that, anything that's ever sent from the same address skips our in-box -- and instead goes straight into the garbage:
• We delete all form letters, petitions, and chain letters -- and filter the sender into the trash.
• We delete unwanted press releases, or un-asked-for promotional announcements of any kind -- and filter the sender into the trash. This definitely includes webmasters who send announcements of every website update, unless we've specifically asked to be on that list. Please note: We've asked to be on exactly one such list.
• We delete anything that's incoherent, offensive, intellectually empty, irrelevant, or clearly inappropriate in any way -- and filter the sender into the trash.
• We love publishing original commentary. We'll cheerfully work with experienced or first-time authors, and we'll try to present each article the best we can. We have day jobs, however, and work on the website whenever we have a few minutes, so we don't have a lot of time to waste with writers who won't read or follow these guidelines. It's sad but we're serious: Submissions that clearly violate the most crucial, common sense parts of our guidelines are simply deleted, and any future submissions from the same writer will also be deleted.
Also, please note: Because we're a weblog of outside-the-mainstream political opinion, we usually edit out last names, email addresses, or anything else that would tend to uniquely identify writers when we publish articles, comments, or incoming emails (if we slip up, please let us know). But if your email is unambiguously intended only to annoy, insult, or threaten us, we'll publish all the details, and leave it on-line forever.
All this may sound stern, but these policies leave us much more time to patiently peruse, ponder, and publish material sent by our actual readers, instead of by spambots and imbeciles.
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If you'd like to have your email address unblocked, simply send a sincere apology (from an un-blocked email address).
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There's much more than this at Unknown News.
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