The Bad News
The chain letter e-petition you signed and forwarded will
almost certainly never be delivered to its intended recipient.
Why? Because these types of petition are generally created by
individuals who do not realise the inevitable consequences:
- The reply e-mail account will almost certainly be
closed. It's simple arithmetic - if you send an
e-mail to 50 people and they each do the same, then after
only 4 levels (1->50*50*50*50) you have over 6 MILLION
e-mails flying around. Thankfully many people ignore
them, but you can see the problem: when these lists
actually reach 100 names and are returned - BANG! Their e-mail
provider is not set up to handle the high volumes that
result and are very unhappy because their
servers are jammed.
- The principle is fundamentally flawed.
They end up with multiple lists, each with some of the
same names. Removing these duplicates would be a
nightmare due to the messy text layout of the e-mail and
if they just include them all, they would lose any
credibility.
- The list very often gets corrupted. E-mail
forwarding and various language symbols get added so it
ends up a complete mess. This makes any attempt to
produce a clean list very hard.
- It has zero integrity. What is to stop
the subject of the petition being changed or the names
being copied on to other petitions? It is just a text e-mail
that can be easily copied and edited. It simply carries
no weight and even if it ever reached its intended
recipient, they would (quite reasonably) dismiss it.
- It is very often months or even years out of date.
They can (and do!) circulate for years after the
original issue, ending up with changes and misinformation.
But don't feel bad about it - you were not
the first and certainly won't be the last to fall for it. If it
is an issue you care about that has been sent by a friend, it is
totally understandable to immediately do as they suggest without
thinking about it.
I responded to one about treatment of Afghan Women which was well-intentioned but
pointless. Then a friend said they had tried to contact the
originator to ask some questions and the e-mail was rejected. A
little bit of research made it clear what had happened (the
University e-mail systems had been swamped) so I decided to find
out about the issue myself. I dug up some useful links to
organisations and forwarded this along with an apology to all the
people I had forwarded the petition to.
This brings us to...
e-petition.org