The spam has grown to such unmonitorable proportions that I now cut wide swaths through it with the delete key. There stands a very good chance that an occasional legit message or two has been flushed in the onslaught. It worries me that I might be missing email from people I -do- want to hear from.
I can recognize the names and addresses of people I know - that's no problem. It's the random new person whose name I don't know, who may have gotten my address from this site, that worries me. What an insensitive ass I must seem, not to answer, when the truth is that I haven't even seen their message among all the exhortations to lengthen my nonexistent male anatomy and get in on the best MLM deal ever.
Therefore, I've whipped up an email form, and am now taking care of the thousands and thousands of instances of my email address peppered throughout this site. I do have some automated ways to handle this, but they aren't perfect, so it's taking some time. I know these efforts won't ease up my spam - it's way too late for that, as not only this site but Usenet, Active Worlds, and bunches of other sites also contain the address, which has surely been burned to CD with 5 million others and sold for profit years ago. That's not the aim. The aim is to not miss the real stuff.
