On average, I receive over 5,000 emails a day. I would say as an individual and small business owner who is NOT selling any goods, this is an extremely LARGE volume of emails for one person to handle. Most of the email is spam, garbage and undeliverable returns. 100% of the email is read, and almost ALL of it gets responded to. Seeing as how I have such an extremely high email load, I have better things to do than get further abuse on a stupid little video game site.
I'm basically a nice guy. I started this stupid little video game site over on my personal web space 3 years ago to help teach myself HTML. I made the mistake of doing some minor promotion of the site in my signature file that I used for usenet postings. Almost immediately I was getting traffic. I started a "FAQs Via Email" service, even providing exact and simple instructions. Due to excessive abuse, such as one guy who made over 50 requests for the same file but never ONCE did it right, or the guy who mailbombed me with PROPERLY done requests then complained about my emailer not automatically sending the requested files and then complained about his self-caused mail-bombing, I was forced to shut down the FAQs via email service. There were even the people who would make up request lines for files I didn't have, and then would get ANGRY when I would not deliver the file to them. Then there are the people who would send requests, then get angry when they didn't get their file within 2 minutes. There were more reasons to kill off the FAQs via Email service.
I would constantly get annoyed for requests for help on games I didn't own. I'd politely say I can't help them. For this, I was usually thanked with a very angry email back. Such requests would even be for games I wasn't aware that existed for systems that I didn't know about. Since this is a hobby of mine and at the time there were MUCH better sites, they would come to my site and abuse me via email. Many of these sites that existed at the time have truly evolved into feature-packed web sites offer THOUSANDS of things I won't ever offer. To prevent such abuse from people looking for files, I created the links page, and directed people to that, and for that I was also repaid with more abuse.
Over time, I found people asking the same questions over and over again on specific items, namely the Sega Genesis Nomad. Out of necessity, the Nomad Genesis FAQ file was created. That got good results and some of my email load went down. Unfortunately, people were constantly telling me WHERE to buy Genesis games and demanded that their information be included in the FAQ. I had to refuse ALL of these requests as it's too regional. Despite a polite "thank you" and a brief explanation that the FAQ was not accepting such contributions, I was replied with abuse almost every time. I think there was one reply that was a rather polite reply that agreed with me. One of the hardest issues I had to deal with were the loaded question of "which system is best". I never liked dealing with this issue and responses would be LONG. As a result of this issue, the System Comparison page was created. I haven't been following the hits on the comparison page so I can't comment on how effective it has been.
Apparently a lot of people feel that video game sites are their personal shopping lists, meaning that if you list it, it must therefore be for sale. Only a few items on this site are for sale, NOTHING else is. People would ask of I was selling my Nomad or some other system, and I'd reply back that the system was not for sale, and they'd reply back with abusive email. I made up the "For Sale" page, but that doesn't seem to stop people from asking to see if anything else is for sale, despite saying that NOTHING else is for sale. Those who have requested items I am selling have either backed out of deals or refused to make an offer. I don't have a problem with people backing out of a deal as I haven't been ripped off nor have I ripped anyone off.
Getting frustrated, I created a web board. I was hoping this would reduce my video-game related emails. While my emails were reduced for a while, spammers discovered the web board and were polluting it with porno ads and other illegal material, all of which were unsuitable for children and were in violation of the web board rules. I had a few parents complain about this problem and I can't blame them. I made some corrections to the web board CGI and re-started it. Then gamers started using it as a classified board, which was also against the board rules. Some idiot posted an ad, and another idiot answered the ad, then the seller ripped off the buyer and I was getting called by cops for being an accomplice in mail fraud. All of this deal-making happened in the middle of the night while I was asleep so it was impossible for me to remove the posts in a timely manner. With that, the web board died. I replaced the web board with a links page where users could add links. Again, spammers discovered this and began filling up the page with porno links and links to other spammer sites. The links page lasted perhaps a month before dying. I didn't feel like bothering with a guestbook. Again, kindness at MY expense was repaid with abuse. Some especially stupid individuals decided to take their video game needs over to the anti-spam web board. I recall one case where someone wanted to buy a TurboGrafx Express so it posted an ad on the Anti-Spam web board. I deleted the post, so they posted again. I again deleted the post, and they posted again but said they'd figure it out if I deleted the post again. I deleted the post and apparently Mr. Genius figured out that those sort of posts aren't appropriate. Recently some dolt posted and demanded hints to a NES game be posted to the web board. That post was removed. Don't even get me started on what abuse has forced me to do on the Anti-Spam web board.
I was forced to reduce my email load so I buried the email address behind 3 discouragement pages. I also removed the email address from any of the other pages on the site so the only way to find me is via those email discouragement pages. To further discourage emails, I added a disclaimer to just about ever system page. My email load dropped dramatically. The only people getting through were people who were also serious about video games and were for the most part polite and civilized. However, despite this, a few trouble-makers would slip through the system but there is no avoiding this problem. The larger problem was that I was using a "mailto:" tag so the video game address was harvested by spammers. To prevent this from happening, I created a form to hide my email address, which seems to have worked.
The thing that amazes me more than anything is that if the site is up and running, I get LESS complaints than if I were to tear down the whole site. I now mainly keep the site up to keep complaints at a minimum. Seems I can't win, no matter what I do, I get abused.
I finally reached a breaking point. Between the spam being received on the video game site address being slightly higher than usual, some jerk decided to go through the email discouragement pages to throw an insult at me. It's time people see the abuse I am constantly subjected to. From now on, ALL abuse will be posted to this section. Spams will be cross-referenced to the Anti-Spam site.
Please note, I don't mind getting notes to FIX problems. I can't tolerate mistakes. Since this site is done 100% by hand, any mistakes are mine.