Interenet Listings (longish)

[Israel Stein]

On Wed, 19 Apr 1995 Don_Mannino@yca.ccmail.compuserve.com wrote:

>      Isreal Stein posted the following in a message:
>
>      >. . .I suspect that posting a full listing of RPTs and their phone
>      >numbers on the 'net is liable to result in a large volume of nuisance
>      >calls . .
>
>      I feel strongly that these fears are groundless.  I can't imagine a
>      lot of net surfers spending money to call technicians out of their
>      area. Local technicians can be found in the phone book - those are
>      free calls. It doesn't seem likely that somebody would say "That
>      technician didn't want to talk to me, so I think I'll call this one in
>      Timbuktu instead."  The toll calls would stop it.
>

Don,

You are right. Nobody is going to call make nuisance calls long distance.
There is still, however, a great potential for netsurfing dingbats to find
technicians in their locality on a net listing and pepper them with
nuisance calls. I suggest you read the archives of rec.music.makers.piano
for the past six month or so. You'll have a good sampling of the kind of
inquiries that you'll be inviting by making phone numbers of RPT's easily
available on the 'net.

You are also forgetting that the 'net and the Web are increasingly being
used and marketed as entertainment aside from their more practical
functions. I can just see some netsurfer in Binghamton coming accross the
listing, deciding that this might be a good way to find out if there
really is a harp inside a piano or should piano keys be cleaned with milk,
doing a search by locality and calling poor Ed Pettengill who doesn't even
know that his name and phone number have been posted. Nobody cruises the
Yellow Pages or the PTG Directory for kicks, but people do this on the Web
all the time. Besides, many technicians ( here in the Boston area over
half the practicing ones I know) specifically avoid being listed in the
Yellow Pages - too many nuisance calls. You won't be doing such people a
favor by listing them on the PTG Page.

Anyway, I am not opposed to an RPT cyberlisting. I just think that nobody
should be listed without their explicit permission.  Several subscribers
to this mailing list posted very valid reasons as to why they would not
wish to be in the proposed listing - or why their phone number should be
omitted. I would imagine that many others who aren't even aware of this
list or the PTG Page or the proposed listing would have concerns equally
valid. Listing them without their knowledge and then expecting them to
request removal from the list is an invasion of their privacy.

So - poll the RPT's by mail or wait until the next membership renewal.
Rushing ahead on this can cause dissention, resentment and outright
trouble for some. I don't see where waiting a few months would make all
that much difference.

Israel Stein