"Advertising" on az.general?
HubMaster
this newsgroup. The announcement concerned the content and features of the
WebHub and made particular reference to a page on the WebHub dedicted to
the upcoming SuperBowl.
This posting prompted car...@trojan.neta.com (John Groseclose) to flood
our mailbox with a furious message about how we irratitated him with that
announcement.
We agree that blatant, unsolicitated advertising in newsgroups not
specifically dedicated to such activity is offensive.
We believe, however, that the WebHub is an informative and well-received
service for residents of Arizona's cyberspace and that announcements to
az.general are legitimate ways to keep people abreast of developments on
that service.
Are we mistaken? Was Groseclose's a knee-jerk reaction to an otherwise
prudent rule or did he hit the mark?
Curious,
Matthias
John Groseclose
HubM...@Rhinonet.com (HubMaster) wrote:
> Recently, we posted another announcement regarding Arizona's WebHub to
> this newsgroup. The announcement concerned the content and features of the
> WebHub and made particular reference to a page on the WebHub dedicted to
> the upcoming SuperBowl.
>
> This posting prompted car...@trojan.neta.com (John Groseclose) to flood
> our mailbox with a furious message about how we irratitated him with that
> announcement.
Strange that a single message could be considered flooding... Especially
since the message was about how to advertise on Usenet without irritating
people. The SuperBowl is an especially touchy subject with me right now
(I'm an ASU student, and I'm getting a little angry at their plans for
taking care of their paying students during this fiasco.)
> We agree that blatant, unsolicitated advertising in newsgroups not
> specifically dedicated to such activity is offensive.
That's nice to hear.
> We believe, however, that the WebHub is an informative and well-received
> service for residents of Arizona's cyberspace and that announcements to
> az.general are legitimate ways to keep people abreast of developments on
> that service.
Maybe you should newgroup another one... "az.announce?"
> Are we mistaken? Was Groseclose's a knee-jerk reaction to an otherwise
> prudent rule or did he hit the mark?
I'll admit it's a knee-jerk. I send the same file to every ad I catch for
the first time, regardless of group, quantity, etc... I believe it to be
the single best resource for anyone who's planning on doing any
advertising, anywhere on the Internet *OR* Usenet.
The file, BTW, was Joel Furr's FAQ on "How to Advertise on the Internet."
--
* Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail will cost $500/message under USC 47 *
* which can be found online at http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/47/*
* PGP Public Key available at http://www.neta.com/~caradoc *
* also available through finger for additional verification *
* Some info about the jg...@goodnet.com spam also on the WWW page *
HubMaster
(John Groseclose) wrote:
>Strange that a single message could be considered flooding... Especially
>since the message was about how to advertise on Usenet without irritating
>people.
You misinterpreted an innocent announcement as "advertisement." We
considered your unsolicited attached file about "Advertising on the
Internet" as "flooding our mailbox." Whose ax is duller?
The SuperBowl is an especially touchy subject with me right now
>(I'm an ASU student, and I'm getting a little angry at their plans for
>taking care of their paying students during this fiasco.)
You may indeed be touchy, since your anger over ASU's imposition of major
inconveniences on its students during the Super Bowl, however justified it
may be, is misplaced when directed at our announcement. The WebHub does
not endorse the Super Bowl nor are we affiliated with the Host Comittee in
any way. We merely put together a page of links that deal with varied
aspects of the upcoming Super Bowl. We list the links we find. We do not
censor. We do not impose our preferences. We maintain the WebHub and not
our personal WhimHub. If you cared to put together an Anti-SuperBowl or
Anti-ASU page we would list it as well. If you are annoyed by ASU's
pro-profit policy, we suggest you voice them to President Coor and do not
accuse us of "advertising" (ourselves or the Super Bowl).
>Maybe you should newgroup another one... "az.announce?"
Close to our point! Since such a newsgroup does not presently exist, we
exercised our judgement and posted our announcement to az.general. We
assumed that readers of az.general would be willing to differentiate
between public service announcements (such as ours about the WebHub) and
blatant commercial advertisements.
In fact, if would take your time to peruse the FAQ which you so liberally
distribute, you would be hard-pressed to come up with a rationale, based
on that FAQ, to object to our announcement or, in Furr's terms, "notice."
Nowhere does our announcement mention that we are "selling" a product or
service. Nowhere, through no rhetorical means whatsoever, did we try to
entice anyone to "buy" anything. Would you like to argue that the services
of Arizona's WebHub are NOT 'on-topic' in az.general? Can you reasonably
maintain the position that our announcement is analogous to the scenario
where "in walks some stranger who reads an ad for some business that has
nothing to do with the subject of the meeting?"
>I'll admit it's a knee-jerk.
QED
Matthias