I will endeavour to respond by e-mail to any queries you have on the contents of this website.  Please send them to:

 colinpykett (at) hotmail (dot) co (dot) uk

Forgive the way this appears, which is an attempt to defeat email harvesters.

Most emails will receive a reply or acknowledgement.  Click here to see my email handling policy.

Please note that no responsibility can be accepted for any unwanted consequences which may follow any advice given.

Email handling policy 

As might be expected, this site has attracted innumerable emails since it first appeared in 1999.  The vast majority have presented no problems, and in these cases all have been replied to or acknowledged.

However a small minority of messages have presented difficulties, which in most cases means they have been ignored.  If just 1% of all emails, say, have fallen into this category, this means a large number of correspondents have unfortunately not received a reply over the years.  To explain why some emails other than obvious spam are not replied to, the following guidelines might be helpful.

Replies are not sent to emails which are:

1.      Not received.  Although a statement of the blindingly obvious, it might be worth re-sending your message in case I never received it first time round.  However please continue reading first ....

2.      Mailshots.  If you include me in mailshots of any type I will regard it as spam, even if we had been corresponding previously, and will thereafter blacklist your email address.

3.      Multiply-addressed.  If you write with copy addressees included I may not reply.  Note that it is easy to check whether you have “hidden” the other addressees, which I will then interpret as a lack of good faith.  One university-based correspondent habitually copied his messages to his entire address book, and presumably my replies as well!  This wearisome practice is second only to sending blatant spam in my view.

4.      Offensive.  Judging by what I have sometimes encountered, there are obviously some weird and sad individuals in cyberspace, so it is my definition of offensive which counts here, not their’s.  Note that sometimes I have not replied to an email which was innocuous in itself but from someone who had previously posted offensive remarks about myself or my site on discussion forums etc.

5.      Seeking personal information.  Some emails have sought personal information about my home address, phone numbers, family members, bank account and credit card details (true!), etc.  As I do not know the majority of the originators, such requests are obviously ignored.

6.      Disguised.  Emails from anonymous correspondents or those using pseudonyms, nicknames etc are ignored.  Also some correspondents have turned out to be not whom they said they were, and in such cases I cease the dialogue without notice.  In one case the Board chairman himself, would you believe, of a well known digital organ company was trying to get information by acting incognito (not very successfully, obviously).  One more added to the blacklist ....

7.      Excessively demanding.  I do not respond, or will cease responding, if the originator seeks excessive amounts of free consultancy.  Nor if his/her messages are too long and too frequent, come with huge attachments, etc.  If you want to send large attachments (more than about 1 MB) please check with me beforehand.

8.      Time wasting.  I don’t mind the occasional request for trivial information which could just as easily be obtained by a bit of surfing (if you just want to know what a Diapason is, why not try Wikipedia first?).  But too much of this means I will eventually stop responding.

9.      Too argumentative.  If you ask a question I will try to answer it, but if you don’t like the reply please don’t keep arguing.  I have other things to do.  You might find a chat list more to your liking.

10.  Delusional.  Don’t say you are a well-known recitalist, organ builder, musician, scientist or important in other ways if you are not.  Remember it is easy for me to check these things on the internet or via my own networks.  If you use a university, company or other form of “professional” mailing address be aware it is simple to check your credentials and actual position in the faculty or whatever.

11.  Too one-way.  Rather too often I get repeated requests for assistance which are never acknowledged until the next one comes along.  After a few of these I cease to respond.  An occasional acknowledgement or “thank you” would not go amiss! 

In summary – I think most of my correspondents will agree that I am happy to conduct a dialogue in good faith on a personal basis with reasonable individuals provided they treat me the same way.  Otherwise I will blacklist your email address, which in practice means your message will be automatically deleted from my ISP’s server before I see it.