Date:         Sun, 23 Feb 1997 10:34:43 -0800
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         natasha!mholser@Adobe.COM
Subject:      Re: BIG NEWS/Use of List/no VW content

> Every list I've been a member of actively stomps down on ANY commercial 
> enterprise trying to cash in on the purchasing power of the list. From 
> what I've seen, it's generally frowned upon in the on-line community.

It's kinda funny how quickly "tradition" creeps into the net these days.
Most of the early lists that I was on (like 8 to 10 years ago), were 
done by folks that had things like Osborne computers, or Gavilans, as an
extension of their "user groups".  But many of the early lists were up
*by* commercial accounts expressly for product announcements, updates, etc.,
before this stuff became more usable on the web.

Most of the news groups frowned upon commercial ads when they got to the "spam"
level, only.  Most still follow this practice.  Look at any of the marketplace
and forsale groups -- they are heavily infested with commercial concerns 
hawking their wares.

I personally don't mind Kyle and Ron posting their temporary good deals to
the list.  If they ever get to the "spam" level of posting their regular
business stuff, or every-week "sales", I'll complain to the list manager.

There was some complaint about the idea that these guys had access to the
membership list.  Odd idea -- I had assumed that just posting a "who"
request to the listserv software would return this info, but perhaps this
"feature" of the vanagon server was turned off.  Most lists freely give up
their membership lists -- you can usually ask for "who" and "info" and
some other things instead of just "subscribe" and "unsubscribe".  These are
able do be disallowed by the list manager, but are there by default.  It's
maybe a little sad that the net has grown to include so many folks that we
need to start being a bit paranoid about it.

I guess some of us still long for the old days of the net, before the web
and before PC's and AOL got in.  The price of admission used to be higher --
like access to a unix machine (I just retired my Sun 3/80, and soon will
retire this Sun SparcStation -- I'm getting a new Sun -- Yeah!).

The list manager can boot these guys off if they get to flagrant, and I
trust his judgment -- and Ron's and Kyles, and BusBoys. I'm glad these guys
are there -- they have the real expertise on this stuff that we all want 
access to.  We need to make it worthwhile for them to be members of the list
too.  Many of us don't know the front of a VW engine from the back, and are
only info consumers.  We need to provide incentive for the info producers
to remain reading all the posts -- there sure are a passel of posts on 
this list!

malcolm