Re: Can we call off this advertising before it gets out of hand?

troy_at_cbme.unsw.EDU.AU (Troy Rollo) writes:

<in response to somebody posting>

>> I did this with it, and that, and the other", and Joe, a Borland programmer,
>> saying "Look, PDOX40 is way cool..... "
 

>Exactly. When you post to the net suggesting your own product you *are*
>advertising. No exceptions. If you don't believe that, I suggest you
>buy a good dictionary.

This is a simple distortion of the facts. One is "advertising" just about every time one posts anything to a public forum. One may not be advertising a product but one's expertise. One may not be soliciting money but just recognition as a "Paradox guru" or what have you. The dictionary is not the final arbiter in Usenet arguments.
>
>Even in the case where suggestions are solicited, the correct response
>by a vendor should be to *mail* the poster. A followup may be made by
>a third party, but any post by a vendor suggesting their product constitutes
>advertising. Again, if you don't believe that, get a good dictionary.

I checked the dictionary and it makes no mention of what a vendor should do with regard to followups. And simply because the poster of a response is an employee of Borland or Microsoft they are not precluded from posting personal opinions of products, the sale of which might benefit them. If this is the rule then anybody who works for the U.S. Military must not post their opinion on the U.S. in Somalia and nobody who currently attends say MIT should write "MIT is a good university". They stand to gain directly or indirectly from their opinion and persuading others to think the same way.

>So far, my list has 14 different vendors of database access tools.
>That's without really trying. I can think of abour half a dozen of the
>top of my head that I missed first time around. Imagine all of them
>posting responses to the networkfor every question about database
>access tools that we get here.

Imagine that everybody named Troy went to the same video store and asked for the same video tape on the same day. Perhaps a law ought to be passed to deal with the problem before it manifests itself.

Usenet is not your personal playground... oh, get a good dictionary if you don't believe it.

tom

"Bring on the vendors and get rid of the nose in the air types trying to save us from the evils of profit" Received on Sun Oct 10 1993 - 22:02:52 CET