As some of you may know I maintain a list of gun shows for the Dallas/Fort Worth area.  It gets around 4000 hits a month by people looking for information on gun shows in the area.  What I find interesting is that I have a big disclaimer at the top of the page explaining that I’m not officially connected with any of the shows:

Important disclaimer—please read: I am not a promoter and do not have any official connection to the shows that are listed. If you have questions about the show or about promoting your product or service at a show, please contact the promoter directly.

Despite this, I still get a couple of requests a month via the contact form asking for information on how to get a table at one show or another.  What’s worse is that clicking the show’s date will take you to the show entry page, where the promoter’s phone number is given.  Clicking the show venue will take you to the promoter’s website.  I don’t know how I can make it any more simple, especially given the disclaimer. 

While I’m griping about the gun show list, it’s also starting to attract spammers.  I give a form at the bottom of the gun show page for people to subscribe to get announcements whenever I change the show listings.  When you sign up you get an email confirmation from the list manager, which appears to come from the list’s email address.  A few spammers have trolled the form and grabbed the email address and then attempted to spam the list.  But since it’s an announce-only list, the email only comes to me, rather than going to the whole list.  But what’s worse is a hunting guide from East Texas who signed up for the list and then attempted to send announcements to the list promoting his services.  I’ve told him twice now that he can’t send announcements because I’m the only one who can do that (and further that I consider it spamming to try to send stuff to my list given that I explicitly promise at the bottom of the form to use the list for gun show announcements only).  I’m hoping that he got the message the last time, but we’ll see.