Hi there, I have noticed that you are an active member of a modelling community. My name is Roger Gaemperle and I am working on a Master Thesis about community building on the web for the Technical University ETH in Zurich, Switzerland at the institute for technology and innovation management (www.time.ethz.ch). Since I am a modeller (and collector of aircraft memorabilia) myself I dedicate a full chapter to the community of modellers. My work is sponsored by swapey www.swapey.com/modelling which is a new virtual showcase for collectors and modellers. In order to better understand the needs of modellers and how to support community building in general I have started a survey at the following forum:
If you are interested in your personal showcase you can find an example here. Among the participants the university sponsors a gift coupon for a model (max. cost incl. shipping $100). In order that the coupon can be delivered we kindly ask you to register yourself at swapey. I do hope that you are not annoyed by the direct way of contacting you. I need the support of as many modellers as possible to have statistically significant statements from the survey. Please also excuse my English, I was born in Switzerland and my mother tongue is not English. I would be very grateful if you would support my work. Best regards Roger Gaemperle

Got hit on my Yahoo account finally......................

Just got an email from them today. Now I don't feel so left out.

Hi Jim

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Point # 1, people whose addresses don't even figure on the lists were getting e-mails.

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There are other modelling websites and modellers with private homepages who we contacted, armorama is not the only place for modellers in the WWW. The feedback we received was very positive. Most people seem to like the concept and many registered and there are new models added to the swapey museum on a daily basis. Again, there is no commercial intention behind, we are a group of modellers and collectors who wanted to create something useful for people who share our passion.



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Point # 2, by what right did you feel you could send UNSOLICITED e-mails to ANY registered user of this site? Not one of the many advertisers this site has resorted to these highly questionable tactics.

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We did not, only to a fraction of the people who are registered here (perhaps 100 out of 40'000 or about 0.25%).

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Point # 3, Spamming doesn't just 'happen' - any system has to have a Spambot working within it to 'harvest' e-mail addresses.
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We didn't have any "spamming" intention. The e-mail addresses were made public by some members on this page https://armorama.kitmaker.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=Members_List&file=index&letter=U&sortby=uname&ccode=
(by the way, they still are) and we just clicked on an individual's name to write an e-mail, just as anybody else could do. So, no Spambot. We assumed that people who made their address public by themselves wouldn't mind if they get some information about an enthusiastic and completely free project that can do no harm.

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Point # 4, Multiple e-mails WERE getting sent to individuals. Here's an example:

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i think i have the record from them.i got a total of 68 in one day,then they flooded my e-mail account with hundreds.it took over and hour to delete them all.and i have not be able to stop it.
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We didn't do that, I - again - give you my word. If it happened for any reason (I can't think of any explanation) it was 100% not our intention. What would we have wanted to achieve by sending 68 e-mails to one individual? It is obvious that someone who receives so many e-mails would be more than annoyed and would never visit swapey.

Meanwhile, many interesting models including tanks have been added to the swapey showcase. In addition to the mini-forums attached to each model (at the bottom) we will soon add a general forum where people can discuss general topics.

Again, my apologies if anybody was annoyed by our direct way of contacting modellers. The last thing we want is to annoy modellers since then all our effort and free time we put into swapey would be in vain. We are modellers & collectors ourselves and swapey is completely free of any charge or advertisement.

All the best
Roger