I also got an email recently thanking me for my donation, David said he could not remember if he had previously thanked me via Facebook messenger which is how we would normally communicate, but he was sending the email in case he hadn’t.
I had one too. Was our Dave, far as I can tell. Used a berkeley.edu email address. But he can confirm that. @dave30th
Yes, that was the real me--not a Russian bot!! I had always wanted to do this, but usually I've run out of steam after a couple of dozen e-mails. This time I was determined to go through the whole list and make sure to thank everyone who donated. It didn't occur to me, given the individualized nature of the notes and that it came from my known e-mail address, that they might be viewed as spam from Berkeley. But certainly that makes sense in retrospect. I have nothing to do with the Berkeley automatic e-mailing system. In terms of Andy's point, I know many of the names of donors, and I know who some people are on here, and I asked a handful of people with the same names in e-mails or whatever if they were the same person. I certainly don't need to know or have the connection confirmed, but if someone donates with the e-mail address that includes a name like "wonko," it would seem odd to think I wouldn't possibly think it's the same as the "wonko" on here, and it seemed like a friendly gesture to indicate that I'm paying attention to the people I interact with. I certainly hope no one took it as intrusive or anything like that. Overall, I was really pleased and sometimes surprised with the many responses I got--touching, heartfelt and often full of detail about difficult experiences and challenges, whether as a patient or a carer.
