Studies show that studies suck. Which doesn’t have a damn thing to with what it triggered. At the bottom of the linked article, there’s the author’s email address. At the bottom of a number of articles, these days, there will be the author’s email address. I’d like to suggest, if you really want to get ahold of me, you try my first name (Kramer) my last name’s first initial (W) and do that at astrofish.net. Pretty simple. The requisite “about” section has a mailing address and phone number. Voice mail, actually. Much easier that way.
Kramer Wetzel at linked in
Kramer Wetzel at My Space
Kramer Wetzel at Twitter
Kramer Wetzel at Face Book
The first time I was besieged with a deluge of e-mail, it was in the formative stages of a certain national ISP that carried my material. The first couple of times, when I got front page placement, I was thrilled. But I was also swamped with “fan” (e) mail. Mostly good, some spam, and a little bit of the “you suck” variety. I think I saved most the “you suck” comments, just for entertainment value. As snide retort, to the detractors, I’m still here.
Access is easy, but I was curious why there was so much access on some of the more recent news articles I’ve seen. As a, for example, newspaper, I’m not sure I’d like my writers’ access available to just everyone. What happens if the writer snaps at some criticism, rightfully or wrongfully, and that can alienate a reader? Customer? Each and every interaction with the public is fraught with pitfalls and dangers. Which is one reason why I try and limit access to myself.
As a sidebar kind of note, a former editor has turned this kind of customer interaction into a cottage industry, leading the way with consumer evangelism. But that’s not what it’s really about. Despite being linked, the overwhelming ways to get to this website is from bookmarks on individual machines, and the primary form of communication is e-mail.
Email. Every email, or most of it, has a time stamp. An individual address, both physical and electronic, can, in theory, be traced. Might take a court order, but there’s usually enough data in a header to get some sense of source, route and destination. Not always, but if someone really wants to be anonymous, the effort far outweighs the results.
Maybe that’s why the web stories all have the various ways to contact, included as part of the article.
If the Inter-web thing is really the new wild west? Work with that image, I was one of the original pioneers with a pack mule, trudging along. Still am.