Looking for more Cookbook contributors

[Alex Martelli]

Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:
   ...
> 1. list the invalid (bouncing) email address you have, if any.

Not sure about the ones Jonathan listed, but I believe they aren't
bouncing, in general: they're simply not receiving our mails, or not
responding to them.  Maybe spamfilters somewhere... it seems
inconsiderate to list a mail address for somebody who has not explicitly
"published" that address, and attract spam to that address thereby,
though.

> 2. try Googling both the web and newsgroups if you have not.

Dunno if Jonathan has, but I have -- and for anybody recently posting
with different addresses from the one(s) they gave when posting to the
ActiveState site, we've tried it all.  With some limited successes.  But
with several remaining failures, and the names Jonathan listed are such
failures (for the first few chapters -- we have many more to come...).

> For instance 'Sebastien Keim', first web hit, has s.keim at laposte.net on a
> page generated a month ago.  Is that the invalid address you have or 
> something newer maybe?

It's that one.  It's not invalid: we don't see bounces.  Our mails are
just getting ignored -- that's all we know.

If somebody puts their email addresses on the web and newsgroups,
they're probably getting thousands of spam messages a day, so either
they don't read that mailbox or have strong spamfilters on it -- and
strong spamfilters sometimes misclassify some valid mails as spam,
inevitably.  So, we're trying to get through or around anyway, to get
the "Python community's book" 2nd edition published with all proper
permissions, and credits, and a complimentary copy to each contributor.

It was nowhere near as hard for the 1st edition -- posts were more
recent, there was less spam around, the community was smaller.  Sigh.
With things as they are now, the model just doesn't work any more; it
takes far too much time and energy to chase down everybody we'd want to
credit as a contributor in order to get proper permissions and snailmail
addresses for complimentary copies.

If anybody ever again in the future tries to make such a
"community-written book", my FIRST piece of advice to them is: _start_
by accepting into the website only those submissions which are
accompanied by whatever permissions, acceptances, addresses, etc, you
need (in case those submissions are later included in the book) to be
legally covered, give credit where credit is due, and send complimentary
copies or whatever.  Otherwise, the process is just too difficult:-(.


Alex