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Recently, I was sent another petition for me to add my name to about the treatment of women in Afghanistan. If you get sent one of these, please don't send it on -- it's become as bad as a virus

I believe it's quite genuine, and the issue is important and the injustice severe. The trouble is, the petition has got completely out of hand. It's been going round and round the world for a long time now.

Someone at Brandeis University in the USA initiated this petition. When I got it first, back in August 1999, I sympathized, ' signed' it, and, because with my name it had reached the magic number, sent it to Brandeis University as requested. I got a response from Brandeis, telling me that they'd become quite desperate about the floods of email responses coming in from all over the world.

I strongly suspect that by now Brandeis U has set up some automatic diversion system which deletes such emails as soon as they arrive, to prevent overload of their email system.

So the petition has become a pest. With the one redeeming quality that it raises the awareness of its readers about what's happening in Afghanistan -- which is important.

I compare it to a virus. I don't think I'm exaggerating - a virus is something that keeps on spreading and won't die and causes problems. All these things are true of this petition, even though the problems are minor (merely cluttering up the phone lines and people's In boxes) compared to a "real" virus.

So, to sum up, Web based petitions that are promoted by e-mail are usually an effective solution. The effective use of Web-based petitions is discussed on NetAction's Virtual Activist Training site, at: http://www.netaction.org/training/part3.html