Re: Free database tools announcements - invitation to discussion

Daniel Morgan wrote:
> Please excuse my frankness ... but your laziness should not be used as
> an argument for someone spamming usenet groups. If you knew there were
> things there of value you would look. If you didn't then your loss.
Indeed I'm making an argument from convenience. I, and it appears a fair number of other posters to this group, would find it more convenient not to have to slog through want ads for jobs they don't want to find out about tools. Your argument is also about convenience, you don't want to see ads for software in c.d.o.tools. Neither of these is a higher moral ground, either position is based on local conventions or "house rules". I'm suggesting we change the house rules simply because I'd prefer them to be different.
>
> If you allow these notices then where would you draw the line? How about
> user group meetings? Seminars? Book announcements? eBay offerings? I am
> a person that generally believes the world is painted in shades of gray
> rather than in black and white. But the history of usenet proves that
> those groups that do not defend their turf are overrun by spammers.
If its for money, it goes in marketplace. That is a clear unambiguous [Quoted] rule. It would disallow book announcements and ebay offerings and most seminars. Since an active UG communtiy is helpful to a product I'd [Quoted] encourage UG meeting announcements. A marketplace is where things are bought and sold, telling people who want to sell stuff go to the marketplace is an easy rule to understand. Telling folks who want to GIVE THINGS AWAY they must go to the marketplace is confusing.
>
> If you don't want to see long-running discussions perhaps the solutions
> would be to just take 30 seconds each week to scan postings to
> c.d.o.marketplace. And to help fight spam.
Even if I look in c.d.o.marketplace for such items that won't stop [Quoted] people from posting announcements of free products to this group and the long, tedious threads that result therefrom. Your solution doesn't make [Quoted] those posts go away. If we could make this a moderated group and you [Quoted] the moderator I'd be perfectly willing to see all the announcements go away and then your advice would address the issue. What I'm saying is the convention that such announcements are OT is so routinely ignored
>
> Isn't going to happen as long as the majority of the regular
> contributors agree.
You can of course define "regular contributor" how you wish, but of the [Quoted] 6 different people that have posted to this discussion the opinions are 4-2 in favor of allowing postings of free tools.

>
> But once again you have avoided, as do the spammers, directly addressing
> the issue I raise. What is the harm to someone making an announcement
> in c.d.o.marketplace? How is it an imposition to them?
>
As FAQs for Oracle groups are not posted regularly and the charter to [Quoted] this group is, at best, ambiguous about whether such tool postings are OT, it is confusing to tool builders to carp at them for announcing their free tools. Nevertheless tool builders COULD post their [Quoted] announcements in only C.D.O.Marketplace with no inconvenience to THEM. [Quoted] What I'm concerned with is inconvenience to ME, both in terms of missing out on good tools and having to slog through long threads of "tool builder X is a SPAMMER". I honestly believe the signal/noise ratio of [Quoted] the group would go up if postings of availability of free tools were not followed by 2-20 posts about apologies and SPAMMING. Received on Tue Jun 22 2004 - 10:34:17 CEST