This week’s Justify Your Existence is an interview with a member of Anonymous, the anti-Scientology group. Though she’s unnamed, you’ll recognize her as the same young woman I made fun of talked about earlier when a video was posted on YouTube in which she said Scientology conspired to get her fired from her job. Though I suggested she was weird, to her credit, she was willing to sit down with me and explain herself. Reaction on their forums is starting to build here.

There’s also a protest today at 11 near Lafontaine Park, for anyone interested.

UPDATE: For those of you who are reading this article because it was posted on the Anonymous forums and have never read it before, Justify Your Existence by its very nature takes a tough stand against its interview subjects — part of the reason it’s tough getting interviews sometimes.

Also, from the Enterbulation forums:

NO WAY!!!!
His name is Steve Fagay?????

Actually, no it’s not. But I’m touched by the maturity.

Finally, I’ve already got hate mail. Sweet.

NFL vs. CFL

This week’s Bluffer’s Guide is about the Buffalo Bills game in Toronto this week, and what the NFL testing the waters in Canada could mean for our national football game. There’s suggestion that the Bills might move to Toronto after its current owner dies and the franchise is sold off. Such a move, worryers say, would spell the end to the Toronto Argonauts, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and probably even the CFL itself.

It comes the same day as this piece from The Gazette’s Herb Zurkowsky, quoting league officials worried about the NFL threat. He also has some interesting history in his notes that I wish I’d stolen from is useful for context.

UPDATE (Aug. 21): A reader points out that other NFL games have taken place on Canadian soil. This will be the first time that regular-season games take place in Canada, however.

See also:

• July 14, 2008 — Fair Game
• January 19, 2008 — TWIM: Kenya and bus schedules
• December 29, 2007 — TWIM: Griffintown and telemarketers

UPDATE: The article has apparently gotten people interested and donating, and he’s already raised more money than last year. I’ll go ahead and take credit for that.

See also:

• August 2, 2008 — Nobody wants to read 1,000 comments
• June 18, 2008 — Another blogger war with the Evil MSM
• May 8, 2008 — Over the top

But then a funny thing happened: The show’s ratings weren’t horrible. It got more than 8 million viewers in its premiere, and 7 million last night, winning the night against such fierce competition as repeats of America’s Funniest Home Videos and more repeats of Most Outrageous Moments. Now CBS is talking about potentially renewing the show beyond its 13-episode order.

Then again, that Just for Laughs ABC show also had adequate ratings in the face of critical failure, and it didn’t last long. The plug on that show was finally pulled in May.

UPDATE (July 22): The plot thickens. CBS has rewarded Flashpoint with a switch to Thursdays at 10 (Swingtown does the reverse). The Gazette has a piece on the show, with a dig about how the franco press aren’t covering it.

See also:

• January 29, 2008 — U.S. network picks up a Canadian series
• August 16, 2008 — TWIM: Scientology, the NFL and other threats to our existence
• August 12, 2008 — A, eh?

Because NHL contracts are complicated, I figured some training might be useful for us less-than-insane fans and well-wishers. In order to do that, of course, I had to read the collective agreement that was signed in 2005 after the lockout.

Unfortunately, I failed to realize that the agreement is over 450 pages long (PDF).

Didn’t get a lot of sleep that night. And I’m sure I still got a bunch of things wrong.

Not that I’m worried. If I fail at journalism here, I can always sign in Russia, right?

See also:

• August 16, 2008 — TWIM: Scientology, the NFL and other threats to our existence
• July 19, 2008 — TWIM: Can Flashpoint become Due South 2?
• July 2, 2008 — Salaries in perspective

Somehow, despite working 42 hours this week, I managed to put together another bluffer’s guide, for the Liberal carbon tax plan. Liberal leader Stéphane Dion calls it Green Shift, which I guess is not to be confused with this Green Shift. From the video, it seems to have something to do with stock photos of plants and animals, combined with people in suits clapping awkwardly in a white room.

The 48-page plan (PDF), which ironically wastes quite a bit of space by having blank pages and one-word all-green title pages, explains far more details than non-Liberal politicians would have liked, because now they can’t attack Dion for being unclear.

That doesn’t mean they won’t attack the Liberals though. The Tories have already setup a they-think-it’s-funny website mocking Dion and his plan, saying everyone but the tooth fairy and leprechauns will have to pay more taxes as a result of it.

Basically all you need to know about the plan is this:

• It would tax polluting fossil fuels and cut income taxes to balance the money difference
• It exempts gasoline, because politicians are too scared to admit that high gas prices help the environment when suburban soccer moms are griping about how much money it takes to fill up their SUVs. This makes the plan useless for its intended purpose.
• It’s a Liberal plan, and the Liberals have to become the government and get support from a majority of MPs before they can implement it.

See also:

• June 15, 2008 — Sorry for the genocide
• January 7, 2008 — GST, PST, MST?
• December 29, 2007 — TWIM: Griffintown and telemarketers

The latter is certainly a good idea because despite the huge amount of information out there, a lot of it is contradictory and it would be nice to get some more accuracy about a very shameful part of Canada’s history. I had a lot of trouble with conflicting information about when the schools started, when they closed, where they were located and how many there were and what their ages were (in other words, about half the information in this Reuters factbox). We’re still not entirely sure how many people are involved, but it could easily be over 100,000.

That said, for further reading I would recommend the Indian Residential School Survivor Society and the residential school settlement website.

Also, be sure to check out this classic 1950s CBC educational video about the school system. It’s so cliché it hurts.

See also:

• June 22, 2008 — TWIM: Dion’s carbon tax idea
• December 29, 2007 — TWIM: Griffintown and telemarketers
• September 1, 2008 — GRN: 1

Naturally, because I’m drunk with power, I included a near-non-sequitur about Stephen Colbert:

But what about Stephen Colbert? True, the city did name March 20, 2007 “Stephen Colbert Day” after the mayor lost a bet with the TV satirist over a game between the Oshawa Generals and Colbert’s favourite Saginaw (Mich.) Spirit, who named their mascot after Colbert. This came after Colbert encouraged Spirit fans to throw copies of GM’s earnings reports onto the ice during a game, a gesture that would perhaps seem not so tongue-in-cheek now.

See also:

• August 16, 2008 — TWIM: Scientology, the NFL and other threats to our existence
• July 19, 2008 — TWIM: Can Flashpoint become Due South 2?
• July 7, 2008 — NHL free agency explained (I hope)

But I noticed something on one of the pages of the report:

I thought that was funny because the report had so many blank pages in it, to serve as bookends for the title pages. I did a quick count of the blank pages and mentioned to my boss that of the 310 pages in the report, 34 were entirely blank (not a single dot of ink).

She asked me to give her a couple of paragraphs saying that, and it turned into the shortest article I’ve ever written, in today’s paper. (It was a bit longer than that to begin with, but it was cut down for space, and also because it went on a bit too long, by a ruthless copy editor who ironically turned out to be myself).

Admittedly, both the environmental policies and the blank pages are common practice in government reports. The Johnson Commission report (PDF) has a similar notice (though it actually calculates how much of the planet you’re saving), and also has blank pages (though not as many).

Without the blank pages and title pages (including pages that repeat the title page or just include photos of the commission chairs, but not including the environmental/copyright notice above which is on an otherwise blank page), the Bouchard-Taylor report would have 60 fewer pages, for a 19% reduction in paper use.

Wouldn’t that have been better for the environment?

See also:

• December 11, 2007 — We can’t accomodate freedom
• November 27, 2007 — Reasonable information on reasonable accommodation
• November 23, 2007 — Gas company critics are hypocrites

I was actually responsible for the entire Seven Days page this week, replacing the vacationing Peter Cooney. So I ended up filing the story to myself (literally, in that I emailed it to my work address from home).

For those who don’t subscribe to the paper, Seven Days also includes a summary of headlines from the week, quotes from each day, editorial cartoons from papers around the world (this week it’s all about Myanmar’s reluctance to accept aid and its decision to keep on with a constitutional referendum to give its governing junta more power) and a few items from this week in history (it was 15 years ago this week, for example, that the Expos retired their first jersey, No. 10 Rusty Staub)

No online link for the bluffer’s guide, so I’ve included it below:

So, what happened? On May 2, Cyclone Nargis made landfall in Myanmar, and became the deadliest natural disaster in the country’s history, killing tens of thousands. International relief efforts have been stymied by the government’s reluctance to issue visas.

Wait, wasn’t that Burma? Yeah, it’s confusing. In 1989, the military junta unilaterally changed the English version of the country’s official name from Burma to Myanmar. Democracy activists reject the legitimacy of that decision and continue to use the name Burma, along with countries such as the United States and Canada. The United Nations, however, recognizes Myanmar.

So how bad was this cyclone? Bad. The storm grew in the Bay of Bengal during the last week of April. It then began weakening, before rapidly intensifying the day before it hit the coast. By that point, it had reached peak wind speeds of 215 kilometres per hour, the equivalent of a Category 3 or Category 4 hurricane.

What’s the death toll? Nobody knows for sure. The UN confirmed 38,000 deaths, while the Red Cross says the number could be anywhere from 60,000 to 130,000. The official government figure is 130,000 dead or missing. It is probably the deadliest cyclone since a 1991 storm hit Bangladesh, killing 138,000 people.

What’s being done to help? Western governments and the United Nations have begun relief efforts, but report frustration that the Myanmar government is being slow to grant visas into the country.

How are neighbouring countries responding? Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, countries hardest hit by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake (and receiving no assistance from Myanmar) offered millions of dollars worth of money, food and medicine. India, which still has close ties to Myanmar, has led efforts with 140 tonnes of materials.

What is Canada doing? The federal government has promised $2 million in relief aid, including 2,000 shelter kits that left Canada on Wednesday and are being handed off to the International Red Cross in Thailand.

Why is Myanmar resisting aid? Because it makes them look bad. Myanmar has been a military dictatorship ever since a coup d’état in 1962. Free elections in 1990 resulted in a landslide victory for democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi, but the results were ignored by the government which refused to step down. Opposition political parties are banned, the Internet is strictly regulated, the media (what little of it is not run by the government) is thoroughly censored and prisons are filled with political prisoners.

Is anything getting in? Yes. Though the government accepted money and supplies from other countries (which it would then proudly hand out to its citizens to improve its image), foreign aid workers would embarrass the military junta, and are being resisted to an extent the UN World Food Programme called “unprecedented” in modern history. The first U.S. military relief plane was only allowed to land in the country 10 days after the disaster.

How will this affect the food crisis? It doesn’t look good. Myanmar is a fertile source of rice, and the cyclone hit at a critical time. Farmers lost 149,000 water buffaloes, which won’t be replaced before the critical plowing season. Aid groups are trying to replace them with Chinese-built machines, but time is running out. Farmers also need tonnes of rice seeds after the ones they had just planted were washed away. If the harvest isn’t saved, a famine might dramatically increase the number of casualties.

Bad timing: Only 10 days after the disaster in Myanmar, a major earthquake in neighbouring China (magnitude 7.9) caused a catastrophe on a similarly devastating scale. The earthquake has affected relief efforts in the region, which must now split between helping both areas.

Worse timing: In the aftermath of the disaster, the Myanmar government decided to proceed with a controversial constitutional referendum, delaying the vote only in the worst affected areas until May 24. The new constitution, which the government said was approved by over 90 per cent of voters and a 99 per cent turnout, reserves parliamentary seats for military officers and restricts who can run for president.

Open-ended discussion question: How would this diaster have affected Myanmar if the country had a free and democratic government and a healthy economy like its neighbours?

See also:

• August 16, 2008 — TWIM: Scientology, the NFL and other threats to our existence
• July 19, 2008 — TWIM: Can Flashpoint become Due South 2?
• July 7, 2008 — NHL free agency explained (I hope)

To most people, this is just a bus. The kind that will take you to work on a daily basis.

But to a select few, this rust bucket is something special. A group of about 30 public transit fans chartered this RTL bus for a day last weekend, just for fun. I tell their story in today’s paper.

I first met the transit inclined a few years ago, and went along with a similar charter trip in 2006. Then, the group chartered one of the STM’s oldest active buses, No. 59-019. At the time, there were suggestions the bus was near retirement and might not see regular service again. This was billed as one last ride on one of the few remaining STM buses with a non-electronic rollsign.

I’ve always wanted to write about these guys (though there aren’t many stereotypes that tie them together, they are almost universally male), but I never got a chance to before now.

This is Shanake Mario Seneviratne, aka SMS. He organizes the charters.

This is Tristan Roy, the driver. He’s a transit fan as well, and volunteered to drive the bus around for free. That helped reduce the cost, as well as provide a few perks.

By coincidence, during one of the first stops at LaSalle metro (which used to be a terminus for some then-STRSM bus routes), there was No. 60-013 sitting a few stops ahead ready to do a run of the No. 12 Île des Soeurs route. The 60-series buses date back to 1990 and are among the oldest STM buses still in service (though a year younger than the 59-series). 59- and 60-series buses are few and far between, especially outside of weekday rush hour. Seeing this bus on a Saturday morning is unusual, hence all the excitement.

This plate, installed above the driver’s window, is hard to make out, but places the date of manufacture at November 1989.

Though the hope is always that beautiful sunny weather will prevail, rain was on hand for a good portion of the charter, necessitating umbrellas and camera-protection gear.

At one point, Tristan gets out and wipes away the rain off the front rollsign of the bus. Unfortunately that did nothing for the fog on the other side of the glass.

Operating the manual rollsign is the funnest part of this activity. Before the electronic signs were installed, drivers would have to press a button that scrolled up and down through two rolls of digits and a roll of names (the latter could take forever getting from A to Z). Because the sign is almost 20 years old, there are plenty of names of routes that no longer exist. Some of the stops involved going to places no longer served by the RTL and setting up the rollsign to display the name of a route that no longer exists.

The rollsign also has a few typos.

One of the charter participants takes a photo of the bus at LaSalle metro.

At the St. Hubert garage, Tristan lined up three types of buses the RTL currently uses. On the left, a Van Hool AG300 articulated low-floor bus, used mostly on the 45 express bus between Terminus Centre-Ville and Panama terminus. On the right, a Novabus LFS low-floor bus, which is what most of the STM fleet is currently made of.

This is Mike Boone. Apparently no relation to this Mike Boone. This guy is from Belleville, Ont., one of many who made the trek from far for the opportunity to explore with fellow transit fans. What he’s doing, by the way, is not recommended while buses are in motion.

Here’s Boone again taking photos. While everyone was taking photos of the bus, trying not to get anyone else in their shots (and staying out of the shots of others), I was focusing on taking photos of the transit fans, who were the subjects of my story.

If this kind of thing appeals to you, be sure to check out the Canadian Public Transit Discussion Board (in English) and MétrodeMontréal forums (in French), as well as the YUL bus charters official website.

See also:

• August 29, 2008 — We need to rid our city of driver-side bus mirrors
• April 2, 2008 — The 211 death trap
• March 28, 2008 — Attention: Un feu dans l’autobus nous oblige à … run for your lives!

Angry French Guy, aka Georges Boulanger, is a francophone who is trying to explain the perspective of francophones to us anglos.

“Driving a truck is not a healthy lifestyle,” he says. “Getting angry about the reasonable accommodation debate, Jan Wong and other nonsense from home while listening to my satellite radio was putting my life in danger.”

And for that, he’s gotten grief from both sides of the divide, with some fellow francos calling him a traitor:

His response: “Fighting off Barbara Kay on one side and now these clowns on the other. I must be doing something right.”

Anger really is the great motivator.

See also:

• No related posts

Something to think about as I’ll spend the equivalent of 500 million Zimbabwean dollars tonight on a fast-food dinner.

See also:

• August 16, 2008 — TWIM: Scientology, the NFL and other threats to our existence
• July 19, 2008 — TWIM: Can Flashpoint become Due South 2?
• July 7, 2008 — NHL free agency explained (I hope)

Revver tried it (paying users $1 million in its first year), but the overwhelming reach of YouTube has greatly limited their success. People who post videos to Revver have to also post them to YouTube or find someone else doing it for them.

And, of course, there’s Capazoo, whose business model involved having its users “tip” each other and getting a cut of that pie. This week, they appear to have died a horrible, horrible death, though it seems to have been more about bad management than a bad business idea.

I spoke to Evan Prodromou, who wrote an essay last July about the problems inherent with paying wiki contributors. The arguments hold true for video-sharing sites, blogs and just about anything where users are expected to work to give your site value.

His conclusion is that “it just doesn’t make a lot of sense” that websites pay for users, because payment makes it seem like work. Instead, they should focus on building communities, where work is valued in a non-monetary sense, and more importantly where the contributions provide value to the users themselves. YouTube allows you to share videos and give them a global reach. Same with Flickr on the photo side. These are user-generated websites, but they’re seen primarily as free services to users.

Many clueless latecomers to the user content game (and especially many media organizations) have been trying to push user participation to the point where they’re beating us over the head with it. Newspapers cut and paste uninteresting, anonymous comments from their message boards. TV weather presenters introduce photos of snow (and dogs in snow) taken by viewers. They all plead with you to share your news tips so they can get the exclusive (and not credit you for it) — provided that news tip doesn’t require too much investigation, of course.

When you try to share your family photos or stories about grandma, shocked that such dreck actually gets published/broadcast, you’re met with 1,000-word user agreements that state IN ALL CAPS that you give up all rights to your content including moral rights and (effectively) copyright, and they can do whatever they want with it without asking you or paying you a dime, even if it has nothing to do with the reason you submitted it. Oh yeah, and it also gives them the right to seize your home, take your dog and copy everything from your hard drive. Didn’t you read that part?

The result is that we get a lot of fluff, but very little useful information. Uninformed opinion, but little news. In other words, a whole lot of junk.

As a freelancer, I’m tempted to say that paying people is the answer. Forget this user-generated crap and get real journalists, photographers, videographers and writers to give you quality news and information. But that plea would fall on deaf ears of money-crunching media executives who see Web 2.0 as a magic ticket to free labour.

One of the lessons that should probably be taken away from this is that in order to get good content from your users, you have to respect them and at least not seem to be evil. They have to feel like they’re doing something valuable that’s worth their time (paid or not). Right now, getting your picture in the paper or on TV is still a pretty big reward for those seeking their 15 minutes. But if nobody reads that paper or watches that TV station because they don’t have quality content, will that continue?

As the article mentions, there are some coming out on the pro-payment bandwagon. Jason Calacanis says that top contributors (that 1-2% who represent the majority of content) are providing much more value to these websites than they’re taking back, and it makes sense to pay them if only to keep them loyal.

Even Wikimedia (which runs Wikipedia and related sites) is paying contributors for the first time with its Philip Greenspun Illustration Project. It’s an exceptional case, with money donated for a very specific purpose. But it represents a step toward paying users for their work.

Prodromou himself agrees that some work should probably be paid for. Administrative work, editing and other non-sexy contributions probably wouldn’t get done otherwise. It makes sense to have a small staff of employees to concentrate on that work. At the same time, web projects must be careful about not instilling a sense of resentment among its non-paid users. It’s a fine line to travel.

But what do you think? Does paying users cheapen what they contribute? Should only extreme superusers get paid for what they do? Or should the economy be allowed to give a monetary value to even the smallest contribution, even though for most people payment would be orders of magnitude less than what we would consider a minimum wage?

(Side note: This article sets a new record for the delay between filing and publication. I completed the article in November, and it sat on the shelf while the Business Observer section was being planned. Since it wasn’t particularly timely, it stayed there until just this week.)

See also:

• August 7, 2008 — CBC’s awful hockey theme contest
• July 11, 2008 — Mitch Joel’s new Gazette column
• June 4, 2008 — CTV, TQS move to sucker-generated content

This morning’s paper features a big story by yours truly on the issue of privacy on Facebook.

Specifically, it talks about Montrealer Steven Mansour, who last summer found out that in order to delete his Facebook account he would have to first delete every wall post, comment, photo, note, everything he had ever done since he first registered his account. One at a time. It took him 2,504 steps. He’s not crazy about having to go through all that effort.

The same issue annoyed UK blogger Alan Burlison and others, but Facebook wouldn’t budge until the New York Times took it up last month. That led to the company proclaiming it would be easier, without making clear exactly what it was changing about the process.

Currently, on Facebook, you can “deactivate” accounts, which makes them inaccessible (though reports of fragments being left behind are common). But deleting them completely requires an outside-the-box email exchange with Facebook staff.

Not unexpectedly, Facebook didn’t respond to my request for a clarification about their policy.

Neither did Canada’s Privacy Commissioner’s Office, when I asked whether it had received a complaint from Mansour and/or were investigating Facebook. The office’s PR contact got back to me finally, and says he’s looking into whether there are any investigations concerning Facebook.

Mansour has a roundup on his blog of reaction to his story and other Facebook privacy issues. Only some involve conspiracy theories about links to the CIA and stuff.

The article also touches on TRUSTe, an organization that counts Facebook as a member and seems to do nothing to rein them in; Facebook’s draconian terms of use; and what Mansour thinks needs to be done to safeguard privacy rights online.

See also:

• August 28, 2008 — Patrick Lagacé wants to be your friend
• August 12, 2008 — By-election politicians on Facebook
• May 31, 2008 — Facebook destroys privacy, eats babies

Rather than explain what happened in boring text though, let’s do it in video form:

There’s also a video of just the time-lapse part, for those who don’t want to hear me speak.

See also:

• July 9, 2008 — Strange crosswalk
• February 24, 2008 — Frozen at Berri-UQAM
• February 22, 2008 — Flashmob freeze planned for Saturday

I have to admit, part of me totally expected last weekend’s underground city scavenger hunt to be a complete dud. It’s happened before with these organized-on-Facebook just-for-fun events. Facebook had 35 people attending, but those numbers are always hyperinflated due to the way Facebook works.

As it turns out, there were 39 participants, and that was way more than was needed to have fun.

For my article in today’s Gazette, I spoke to organizer Robin Friedman while boyfriend-and-co-organizer Jody McIntyre was registering people. I then followed a team through the two-hour hunt.

Photos, the list and more after the jump below.

I got to the designated meeting place a few minutes early to find a small crowd had already gathered. Slowly it ballooned to about 40 people, enough to get security to come by and ask what we were doing there. I figured at that point they’d put the kibosh on the whole event and demand that everyone leave. Surprisingly, they let it go on (though they kept a close eye on it and had the real cops monitor the situation as well).

That’s not to say security was the nicest in the world. They wouldn’t let me take pictures, saying I wasn’t allowed to take pictures in the mall. (Excuse me? Since when? And what about everyone else taking pictures in this mall?) The guy wouldn’t answer me when I asked him why not, so not wanting trouble I put my camera away until he was gone.

Oh, and it’s also apparently forbidden to sit on the floor at the Eaton Centre. Just FYI.

For the race itself, I quickly found Kristin Donovan and Alex Dowgailenko, who agreed to let me follow them around and write about their experience. They ended up about the middle of the pack, mainly because they stuck together for half of it, and the items Alex collected during the second half were disqualified because he arrived at the finish line two minutes late.

(Judge Jody McIntyre inspects Kristin’s self-serve sweets bag… if ya know what I mean)

The list

• A spa treatment pamphlet
• 4 cups from 4 different coffee/resto chains (must have establishment logos on them): 2 points plus 2 bonus if all are the same size and material
• Passport application
• Store credit card application
• Pen with a business name on it (2 points)
• Packaging with writing that’s not English, French, or Spanish
• A full matchbook
• Beer coaster (2 points)
• Mall directory (any mall)
• Self-serve sweets bag (plus 1 bonus if it has coke bottle gummy candy in it)
• Train schedule
• Pharmacy flyer
• Movie stub (1 bonus if it’s an Imax movie)
• Hour, Ici, Voir or Mirror magazine from January 31 or earlier (2 points)
• SAQ wine/liquor guide
• Cell phone coverage map
• 3 different perfume samples
• Banking services brochure from 3 different banks (2 points)
• Something Easter related
• Product guide from a beauty store
• Something that smells like strawberry
• Last night’s Super 7 lottery numbers
• Bus schedule for a single-digit route (2 points)
• A Popmedia postcard (2 points)
• BONUS: A photo of the pink plastic forest (5 points)

Some were easy (like the mall directory), some were surprisingly hard (the beer coaster, since there aren’t many bars in the underground city, and the old weekly newspapers, since it had already been more than a week and there aren’t many distribution points underground), and some, like the cups and movie stub, involved dumpster-diving unless you wanted to pay for them. Some just became more difficult because this was a Saturday afternoon and businesses and banks were closed.

Keep in mind, these items had to be found in the underground city alone. Participants couldn’t go outside or take the metro.

(One half of) the winner: Team Batman. The jealousy from others was dripping.

At the end, I noticed a lot of negotiation going on. I hadn’t even considered the possibility that people would get doubles of hard-to-find objects and trade them to boost their collections. Nothing in the rules prohibited this.

More?

I asked Robin if she was planning an encore, and she seemed game:

I am hoping for a “next time”, probably starting in a different location where security guards will be less of a problem. Not sure when yet, Ideally when it’s still winter-y out. I don’t want to do it too soon, otherwise i fear the novelty will wear off quickly. But if I wait too long it’s Manhunt season, or final exams, or too nice outdoors to look for stuff indoors.

A difficulty is finding a whole second list of stuff that can be found in the underground city.

Elsewhere:

• Green514’s blog post
  
• Flickr photo set from Glenn Grant

See also:

• February 9, 2008 — REMINDER: Scavenger hunt today at 3
• February 2, 2008 — Flashmobbing is cool

• Kanuk (which is still sending me such emails)
  
• Rogers (my wireless provider, who seem to think being a customer is carte blanche for spamming)
• CIBC

In all three cases, I can only theorize about why my email was added to these marketing lists, because not one of them responded to repeated requests for an explanation, the first as a regular spam victim, the second as a reporter researching a story. CIBC’s media relations guy asked for more information about the email, but I never heard from them or their email services provider Komunik again.

A fourth company, Chapters/Indigo, was left out because (a) the article was already way too long, (b) they responded to my request and investigated promptly, and (c) their investigation determined that my mother signed up for an account there two years ago. Here’s what it would have looked like:

Company: Indigo Books and Music
Date: Sept. 24, 2007
What they were selling: Book bargains
Email service provider: ThinData

Indigo’s email followed what has apparently become an industry standard of having people fill out web forms before they can unsubscribe from email lists. And like other companies, it assumed I have an account and wouldn’t let me unsubscribe unless I logged in. But Indigo responded promptly to my initial complaint with a thorough investigation.

Well, actually ThinData found a blog post I wrote with the complaint and then alerted the company. Within two days I had a response from Indigo’s customer service director explaining that someone else (my mother) had used the address to set up an account in 2005, and they have “only recently been reaching out to our past customers.” He unsubscribed me from the list and apologized for problems I had unsubscribing. Both Indigo and ThinData provided copies of extensive privacy and anti-spam policies.

The original message violated some best practices for email marketing that ThinData swears by, such as providing a simple one-click way to unsubscribe. Nevertheless, the provider accepted the response from Indigo and said they “consider this matter resolved.”

That last part sort of irked me. Despite promises that they’re 100% against spam, these companies seem to defer to their clients when it comes to actually determining whether policies are being followed. Explanations are accepted at face value and no independent investigations are done.

The article also includes some suggested best practices for commercial email marketers, compiled from industry sources and the Canadian Task Force on Spam. Hopefully some companies will be a bit more strict about conforming to them.

I’ll let you know if any of these companies decide to respond now that the article is out. In the meantime, do you have any spam gripes about companies that should know better?

See also:

• October 22, 2007 — CIBC not above outright spam
• November 20, 2007 — Kanuk not above outright spam
• November 19, 2007 — Rogers not above outright spam

The blog’s name comes from Les Chinois, a 1988 pop single by Quebec singer Mitsou, the lyrics of which suggest Chinese people treat their lovers well. On his blog, Sam took a lyric from that song, “regarde les chinois” literally, and one of its regular features is interviews members of Montreal’s Chinese community.

UPDATE: Kate blogs about Spacing’s blogging about my article about Cedric’s blog. So I figured I’d blog that.

See also:

• August 14, 2008 — CTV Montreal gets kudos for diversity
• April 2, 2008 — Want to work for Jim Duff?
• December 11, 2007 — We can’t accomodate freedom

The article (which Kate thinks has an editorializing headline but I think is a legitimate question, even though I didn’t write it) is cut off online. Here’s the missing text:

Alerts are given to drivers by text message on their cellphones. Doesn’t that encourage dangerous cellphone use while driving?

We can walk and chew gum at the same time. It takes a second to read, and you can hold the cellphone in front of you as you read it, to keep your eyes on the road. It doesn’t worry me. We’ve studied this. Ads on the side of the road or drinking a coffee are more of a distraction than a text message.

I talked with Munoz last week in the small company’s log-cabin-like offices in Old Montreal, around the corner from the municipal courthouse. He sat me down on his expensive-looking leather couch and we talked for a while about the ethics of his service and tickets in general.

Munoz, a young technically-proficient businessman, not only didn’t agree that what he was doing was morally questionable. He feels he’s helping society through this service:

• It keeps the idea of speed traps in drivers’ heads, so they’re conscious that they need to slow down
• Because it relies on members reporting speed traps, it’s not 100% and won’t encourage people to drive faster because they can never be sure a cop isn’t there
• Everyone speeds anyway. It isn’t less safe
• Speeding tickets don’t make highways safer, they just bring in more money to the police
• Dangerous driving is caused by 16-18-year-olds who are taught about signage and the highway code but not how to drive safely or keep a car under control in an emergency

Munoz sees S.O.S. Ticket as the only true force representing regular car drivers. He philosophizes that nobody has ever changed the world by being liked by everyone.

Whether he does more good than harm is something for you to decide.

See also:

• January 9, 2008 — SOS Ticket expanding its ethically-questionable services
• May 28, 2008 — Another radar trap alert service of dubious morality
• August 16, 2008 — TWIM: Scientology, the NFL and other threats to our existence

This week’s Justify Your Existence concerns the STM’s bus service improvements I mentioned a week and a half ago. Asked why three buses (18 Beaubien, 24 Sherbrooke and 121 Sauvé/Côte-Vertu) had reductions in service (primarily on the weekend) when they were announcing service improvements, the response was that these are normal seasonal variations in service for these lines. The STM changes schedules four times a year, and compared to the winter schedule of January-March 2007, there are no reductions in service:

At each schedule change, we look at the weekend offering, and we adjust based on customer demand. The 24 line, for example, mostly serves business workers, so fewer people take it during the weekend. There will be about 14 hours less service on the weekend for those three lines, but we’re adding over 115 hours of service to those lines during the week.

See also:

• August 16, 2008 — TWIM: Scientology, the NFL and other threats to our existence
• December 29, 2007 — TWIM: Griffintown and telemarketers
• September 6, 2008 — Opus sucks too