By DITA DE BONI
The principal of a small Manawatu primary school says he would "have to be mad" to repeat an email project that has spiralled out of control - thanks to the Education Minister's office.
Taonui School, a 60-student primary 5km southeast of Feilding, last month began a project that tracked an email sent from the school around the world. The students plotted its progress on a map by getting people to respond to the message (saying where they were from) and then passing it on to friends.
Principal Tony Small said that within days the map was abandoned.
The email address set up to receive the responses from around the world was flooded and people were phoning the school to complain they could not post to it.
Mr Small said soon after being sent, the message had landed in the in-box of Education Minister Trevor Mallard.
Although the Government endorsed a code of practice in 2000 to avoid junk email, a ministry worker sent it on with the note: "The minister would appreciate it if you could take part."
That started the snowball. The message has now generated responses from more than 100 countries, including Uzbekistan.
Bruce Simpson, an internet commentator and opponent of spam (junk email), said: "It would have been prudent for Government departments to stay out of the loop.
"Such things are most definitely frowned upon by the anti-spam community.
"Imagine if just 100 other schools around the world repeated the experiment to seven levels," he said. "That would generate several billion emails - do we really want that?"
Man from the ministry triggers email avalanche
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