Raffles

Most of us have bigger readerships via email than we have in terms of page views. It is also totally separate - most of my email readers never visit the site. We email our stuff very early morning and it is required reading on the rail commute into London!

oliver2002

But that is only possible if you provide the full content. Most Titan only provide teaser headlines and invite you to read the rest on their blog.

diburning

MailChimp seems like a good idea from the sender's view, but it's a nightmare on the recipient's end. I've used MailChimp as both a sender and a recipient.

As a sender, MailChimp lets you upload/add a list of email addresses you want to send to, so you can fire off an email from MailChimp and it will automatically email all of the recipients on that list. What MailChimp doesn't do is perform maintainance on your list. That is up to the sender. The big issue is that if you're not a large company, and you're just sending out a newsletter or something, some people may hit the reply button and ask to be removed, and you may or may not receive the email with the request. It pisses people off, especially the non-tech-savvy folks who can't figure out how to get your emails to stop. You'd have to include your own unsubscribe link in the email, and have a server to capture these requests to either remove them manually, or have a script do it automatically.

As a recipient, MailChimp is one of the largest email distribution services used by spammers. (another notable one is SendGrid). MailChimp sucks when trying to contact them for spam complaints. If I forward the spam email to their abuse address, they ignore it and the spam keeps coming. If I fill out their webform, I get an automated response, and then a 50/50 chance of whether they'll actually crack down.

Eventually MailChimp does crack down because they want to keep their mail servers off the public spam blocklists (like Spamhaus). I think Lucky's problem was that either he/his team either didn't spend enough time (if any at all) purging emails when people unsubscribe. You know how when you unsubscribe from an email list, they give you some absurd "Please allow 7-10 days to take effect" message? That is basically a courtesy request for time for the webmaster/list manager to purge your email from the list manually. People are NOT obligated to honor the 7-10 days (the CAN-SPAM Act does not require this), and can start reporting all future emails from them as spam. MailChimp, despite their lethargic response, will usually crack down (whether the sender is sending legitimate emails or not) if they receive multiple complaints as it's in their best interest to stay off public spam blocklists.

LizGross144

I've had MailChimp for 5+ years for a small mailing list (less than 500). It's the free version and it supports automatic unsubscribes.

Beltway2A

I haven't visited the site in a year or two now, but when I did OMAAT would delete any comment that referenced the site's founder no longer being welcome to participate in United MileagePlus.

Edit: For context, this post was moved from the "What blogs censor comments" thread to this one.

CodeAdam10

Glad to hear that. OMAAT is a privately owned blog and as such, OMAAT doesn't need to tolerate such commentary. Those who were around and active in this scene 5-7 years ago, already know what happened with all that. And it is my opinion that his 'new readers' should be spared the nitty gritty walk-down-the-memory-lane, which has no purpose, other than to make OMAAT look bad.

Beltway2A

OMAAT can do whatever they want. I just find it hilarious that anyone who tried to reply to the "Why don't you credit [insert Star Alliance product being discussed] to United?" question that always appeared in *A review would always gets blocked/deleted. Very Trumpian.

hugolover

Ben deletes any comments that highlight his climate crimes and continued hypocrisy over Trump and various left wing issues such as gay marriage; women’s exploitation-completely ignoring the biggest “left wing” issue of our time-the climate emergency.

84fiero

Last I saw some comments about his United ban pop up was a few months back, when Lucky opened the door to it himself. He was on his sanctimonious soap box about the ongoing AAdvantage shutdowns, lamenting the supposedly unethical behavior and slamming the folks who were locked/shutdown. Aside from the fact that he didn't have all his facts straight and that the AA situation is more nuanced than some have portrayed it, his words were basically the same type of criticism that people have had of his United fraud. He shouldn't have been surprised that people called out his hypocrisy.

I'm not sure why a new reader can't make up their mind about an author's character and credibility any more than a longtime reader.

Of course he is free to delete comments on his business website - and others are free to discuss his business on other venues if they like.

jamesinclair

Can someone give me a very short summary on his United problems?

Adam1222

The best information available suggests that he discovered a way to use customer service vouchers multiple times, and did so. United discovered this. He was suddenly no longer doing trip reports on United.

jamesinclair

I feel like this is something he should disclose. It helps to explain why he keeps flying AA so much.

Adam1222

Well he also "lives" in Miami now. I believe the UA stuff happened while he still lived with his parents. I believe it's alluded to in the Rolling Stone puff piece from a few years ago.

EDIT: Yup, here it is https://www.rollingstone.com/culture...or-free-43961/

jamesinclair

Interesting article.

This is the relevant bit:It doesnt sound like he broke the rules though.

Its also interesting to compare what the article says he does:

To what he does now, which is mostly pay cash using revenue from affiliate links and his husband's job.

Adam1222

What the article says and what actually happened are not necessarily one and the same. You can go back to the discuss of this article from five years ago in this thread.