Well, Steve, you've convinced me. It seems to me that the right way to do this would be to have an opt-in and promote the heck out of it. I'll bet we'll get alot of mail disagreeing with us. Much of it will come from the folks at Rootsweb but I'd bet alot of it comes from ordinary people who think we're nuts. A lot of the people who do online genealogy are not all that knowledgeable about netiquette and don't realize they are being spammed.
People seem to complain when they receive spam from other places.
Perhaps many people have already complained to RootsWeb about this, but we just have not heard about it. The snobealogists have created this monster with an atitude that if it isn't Rootsweb, its no good. If you think about it, Rootsweb has created this sort of mystique where everyone thinks its some sort of public charity and anyone doing any sort of online genealogy who isn't contributing to them should be ashamed. That's why nobody complains very loudly. Oh, and one other thing, don't forget that if you complain about Rootsweb, your likely to be banned for life.