No good deed goes unpunished

The Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association has a mailing list system that allows for the communication of events and other ICSA information. But sometimes lists like this get messy with communication that, while well intended, gets presented to a larger audience than desired.

Here is a series of emails that were focused on the Match Race Nationals, or specifically, the event’s website. To protect the parties involved, we will use the names of the original Beatles lineup: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Stuart Sutcliffe and Pete Best.

JOHN
Not sure who is the creator/ designer/ decision maker behind collegematchrace.com but it is unfortunate that it looks like a pro-match racing web page that only has the skippers names and bio's and one needs to dig down to find the crews. Good effort with not much thought.

PAUL
JOHN wins the Unconstructive Criticism of the Day Award! Similarly, you did not give sending an email like this out to the list much thought either. In the future if anyone would like to give constructive criticism, please contact myself or someone on the ICSA board directly and we can pass it along to the appropriate recipients. If you want to give unconstructive criticism, just send those to me directly.

GEORGE
I think it was a perfectly fair point to raise. Every college sailing press release and results list makes it clear to list all the players, and for good reason. That we are dealing with match racing doesn't change anything.

JOHN
I thought if I put in the part about a good effort and using a soft word like unfortunate it would have been constructive criticism. Constructive criticism is criticism kindly meant that has a goal of improving some area of another's person's life or work.

STUART
It would be great to have JOHN’s email sent to you alone or a board member as it could be an easy fix rather than embarrassing the hosts or people who have worked so hard to get this event going. This is a great event and a great site I applaud the creators of the site and I know I'm glued to the coverage. What a great thing for ICSA!

PETER
No good deed goes unpunished these days.