If you want me to post your article, you’re going to have to try a bit harder than this…

This morning I received the following e-mail via the contact form on this site. I get these somewhat regularly but this one was a bit worse than the others. I don’t think this post will actually solve the problem, but I’m in an advice-giving mood today.

Name: [removed]
Email: [removed]
Message: Hi,

I am curious if you are the person responsible for adding content to the following page: travelinlibrarian.info/2006/05

You’re using the contact form on travelinlibrarian.info and you’re asking if the recipient is the person responsible for a page on travelinlibrarian.info.

Next, the URL you’re asking about isn’t even a particular post or page on the site but an automatically generated page of all the blog posts from May 2006. Way to be specific.

Oh, and you’re asking about content written 6.5 years ago!

I am a contributing writer to an online project that seeks to be a comprehensive educational resource for current students, prospective students, and even parents who are interested in learning about accreditation.

Read: link-bait site. Why, because you’re not giving me any useful information like, say a URL or even the name of your “project”.

After considerable research, I have published an article that discusses the pay raise that teachers receive for obtaining a graduate degree, often referred to as the Master’s bump, and provides tips on how teachers can evaluate and select a university program. I thought this resource might be of interest to you and your readers. I’m curious if you’d like to see it? Please let me know and I’ll send it over.

You have obviously not read my blog at all. You probably came up with that particular page through some sort of keyword search in Google and then clicked “contact”. I suppose I’ve mentioned librarians in schools on and off through the years, but really, why do you think this is something that I’d post?

Thanks for your time. I hope to hear from you soon!

I hope you appreciate the time I spent on your request, in the form of this blog post which you’ll probably never see, as it is all the time you’ll be receiving from me.

[name removed]

Michael