I've been posting the names and email addresses of folks who have been spamming me at email addresses other than the official hip hop pr address for ProHipHop, Hip Hop Press and netweed, which is:
hiphoppress(at)netweed(dot)com
When folks have emailed me at other addresses, I sent them two emails. The first time, I send them an email politely asking them to remove whatever address they've used improperly and to use the above address.
If they continue to send email to the wrong address, I do a follow-up email telling them that, unless they can step up to the occasion, they are banned from all outlets.
What I've found is that the people who are going to follow through generally do so with the first email. Those people are generally quite polite and quickly take care of business.
I've also found that folks responding to the second email who ignored or missed the first, are much more likely to become abusive when they finally clue in to what's happening. Which, of course, seals the ban and adds them to the banned list.
But, after posting a number of names and emails identifying spammers, I've had only one person step up at that point and address the issue, though they were ultimately unable to do so, even after multiple exchanges.
So I'm removing the banned list posts and, in the future, will be sending only one email requesting a change of address. After that, if spamming continues, the person will be banned without being informed unless they contact me to ask why their stuff isn't going up. Otherwise, they and their clients won't appear on my sites and, in extreme situations, I'll remove all past content as well.
At this point, that seems to be the easiest way to maintain my sanity and continue to give the best service I can to those people who know what's up.
Note:
There have been a handful of people with whom I've had an initially tense exchange who finally agreed to work with me and send their stuff to the hiphoppress(at)netweed(dot)com address which is where I go when it's time to post (i.e. they finally get the idea that this is all about putting their content into my work flow in the easiest manner possible).
Despite some of the harshness expressed in those exchanges, once they agreed to simply send things to the right address, I've always let the negativity go as best as I can. In any case, I start posting their stuff again.
It's so damn simple. Send it to the right address and I'll try to do something with it. Why is that so hard to understand?
