On the http://www.straightdope.com homepage invitation to join the Straight Dope Mailing List, it says: “Don’t worry, we’ll never sell, give, rent or otherwise convey your name to anyone else, cross our hearts.”
However, if you click on the link to sign up for the list, it takes you to a page on the http://www.jokeaday.com website. Alternatively, you can sign up by e-mailing jokeaday.com.
Reviewing that website, it appears that it is run by Joke A Day, Inc., which appears to have no connection with the Straight Dope or the Chicago Reader, except that the website reprints the Straight Dope column by express permission of the Chicago Reader.
So, my question is what is the relationship between the Straight Dope/Chicago Reader and Joke A Day. Obviously, user names are being conveyed to Joke A Day (and the “don’t worry” statement on the SD homepage is at best confusing, if not actually misleading). What procedures or contractual requirements are in place to prevent Joke A Day from distributing the names of those who sign up.
More personally, I would be pleased to sign up to an e-mailed Straight Dope Mailing List (though I check the boards compulsively anyway) if my name were to be kept among Cecil, Ed, and the other fine people at the Chicago Reader. However, I am much more dubious of the those who are at the unknown Joke A Day (particularly as the joke on their home page today was not merely unfunny but uninteligible).
Humor, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder.
We’re using Joke-a-day for the management of the list (we ain’t in the list business), but that’s as far as it goes. We will not sell or otherwise misuse the information you share with us and joke-a-day better not either.
Just to add a little to Tuba’s answer, Ray, the guy who runs Joke-A-Day, has been a Straight Dope fan for a long time and has been running the SD on his site with our permission since last spring. Ray makes a decent buck on his mailing lists and has been touting the list idea to us as a potential revenue generator. (You can sell ads once you reach a certain scale - it’ll take us a while before we get to that point.) Ray has made a substantial investment in mailing technology and offered to send out our mailing at no cost to us in return for getting the “jokeaday.com” name before our distinguished readership in the promotions we do on this site and (soon) in our subscribing newspapers. Although as a list administrator he technically has access to the names, our arrangement with him is that control of the list remains with us. So don’t worry: no spam.