HN Explorer

Tell HN: Please, don't send form letters in protest of SOPA

7 points by beatpanda ↗ HN
The EFF's heart is in the right place with their new campaign against SOPA[1], but sending form letters en masse is usually a bad idea.

Once the people reading the letters know where the language of a form letter came from, those letters are usually taken to represent the interest group rather than the individual who clicked "send".

If you want your letter to be read and taken seriously, edit both the subject and the the content of the message to reflect your personal feelings about the law. Personally addressing your congresscritters in the text doesn't hurt either.

I know something about this because I worked on a tool this summer to group public comments on regulations by similarity, which you can find here: http://anacostia.sunlightlabs.net:8080. You'll note that the vast majority of these letters are exactly the same, and don't really provide compelling reasons why individuals are affected.

This bill is bad enough that you should be able to find plenty of reasons to be outraged, rather than defaulting to someone else's. And contrary to popular opinion, congress really does read these things. Together, we can kill this thing.

[1]https://wfc2.wiredforchange.com/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=8173

3 comments

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inetsee
I understand that calling on the phone to express your opinion carries much more weight to the staffers tallying the constituents attitudes towards a particular bill.
thekevan
It depends on the office. If you can get the Legislative Assistant, maybe. Chances are you are going to get a Staff Assistant (the lowest paid person in the office) or anintern. Then it is just up to whether or not they take notes and/or how well they take them.
thekevan
When I had a job in Congress, 1,000 form letters pretty much counted as 1 letter. It wasn't hard to send one form letter in response in just 5 minutes to everyone.

An individually written letter--not a copy and paste job--gets the most attention.