David Kristofferson (kristoff at net.bio.net) wrote:
:Bo.Servenius at wblab.lu.se (Bo Servenius) writes:
: >I hope you ABI guys get more involved on the networks an see all the
: >advantages of using it. With these means we the custumoer could
: >send you our bugrepports etc directly instead of having them filtered
: >throu your marketing or techsupport which many times might distort
: >the messages.
: Everyone please remember that there is a fine line that must be walked
: here.
This is not an easy issue to resolve, and is perhaps worth discussing.
The line may be so fine that it is hard to find even with the aid of an
electron microscope.
: People who endorse products should do so only if they have *no*
: financial connection, direct or indirect, with them and they should
: clearly say so in ther posting.
And what counts as a financial connection? Certainly those who own part
of the company. This seems obvious enough, but if you participate in a
pension plan (as most readers of this likely do, apart from students)
what if the company managing your pension funds has invested in the
manufacturer in question? If the manufacturer is well established, such an
event is likely and would by a simple application of the above preclude
many (most?) from commenting. If the net is broadened to include those
involved with the suppliers of the company, or those who work for such
companies or who have relatives working for such companies, those who
have broadly based mutual funds, ... , an even larger proportion of us
would not be able to comment favourably on a product. Certainly, there
is a direct financial relationship between anyone using the product and
the manufacturer unless the product used was stolen. This would preclude
anyone who knows anything about the product from commenting favourably
about it. ;-)
: People at companies may answer in a factual manner direct questions
: about their products but should stay out of the debates about which
: "product is better." Advertising hype should obviously be avoided.
What do you recommend if such a debate includes misinformation, or
obsolete information, about the product? If such information is not
corrected, both the company and potential users suffer harm. If it is
corrected, the people at the company may well get drawn into the debate.
I think we all understand what the objective is. No-one wants to be
swamped by electronic junk or 'advertising'. The experience of the
comp.os.os2.* and comp.os.windows.* groups is informative, and their
strategy for handling the problem is a useful compromise. One of the
things to be observed there was that plenty of bandwidth was consumed by
people inquiring about, and speculating on, the price and availability of
various products and their release dates. Some of this, particularly
information about where to get materials was included in the FAQ, but
some of this, particularly information related to new releases, could not
be handled in such a manner. Thus, a moderated newsgroup was created
specifically for product announcements. I have seen other newsgroups
where people have been badly flamed for responding to a query like 'what
can I use to do X' with information that a given product can do it and is
available at a specified cost. Such a response was treated as if it was
base advertising. However, if product announcements = advertizing, then
many people are denied information they are seeking, and it can be
observed that in the above mentioned newsgroups, the product
announcements are welcomed in the specified and moderated newsgroup
dedicated to such announcements and that this practice uses much less
bandwidth than the inquiry and speculation that occurs without it. I
don't think, from a network perspective, that email is an adequate
alternative since with an announcement, only one message is sent while
with email, there are a certain number of kBytes transmitted with each
inquiry and another for each response.
I would also observe that in the comp.os.os2.* newsgroups, IBM staff, and
staff from companies making apps for OS2, participate regularly helping
people fix problems that have arisen and pass feedback back to the
company, and this includes people directly involved in writing the code
used in OS/2 and related apps. Some of their responses would be seen as
advertising in some other newsgroups and yet they are among the most highly
valued and useful articles posted to the newsgroup and are NOT seen as
advertising by those using these OS/2 newsgroups.
This is not an easy issue to manage, and based on what I have seen, there
are no solutions, only compromises dependant on the identity of the
participating population.
Cheers,
R.E. Byers,
Department of Zoology,
National University of Singapore
zoorejb at leonis.nus.sg
