Sounds like your other listowners could use some education -- they allowed
their lists to be spammed by distributing a message which may have had no
relevance to their list.  I'd point out to the offending listowner that
this is not the most appropriate means of distributing event information,
but he did ask ... and I can't see that his list should suffer any
repercussions.  My lists sometimes receive requests that we post messages
for non-members, and it is up to my co-listowner and myself to decide
whether or not the message is relevant to the list, and to act upon that
decision.  I'm not sure what you mean by "this was sent to over 500
addresses, but no lists were sent the message" -- that each of the
listowners sent individual mail to each of their listmembers rather than
distributing the message via their list?  Then it seems to me they're the
ones guilty of spamming ...

Sherry

>This is honestly something that I had never considered would happen.
>Last week, one of the people that owns a list on my Listserv gathered
>all the addresses of the other owners and sent them a message asking
>that they distribute the attached message to their list.  From what I
>could tell, this was sent to over 500 addresses, but no lists were
>sent the message.  The message was for an event for a local student
>group.  The message was sent to the owners of all the lists - including
>those with worldwide distribution.  I have not been able to determine
>whether or not that student group encouraged the message to be sent out,
>or if it was something this person did on their own.
>
>
>Q1:  would you consider this a spam?
>
>Q2:  what would you do:
>     to the listowner?
>     to the list he runs?