On Mon, 11 Feb 2008 15:28:24 -0800, Dominic T. wrote:

Wow, you got a pair of brass ones. I honestly have no time or patience
for you or your snake oil. Your website is terrible, offers no
information beyond "the best tea in the world" which *must* be true
since you have never even visited any growers nor have you listed any
origin or really anything beyond ****-poor graphics and generic names.

Your "ordering system" is solely comprised of an Excel spreadsheet.
There's a thing called SSL, you may want to look into it.

You go ahead and send me a sample of your "best" tea (it can be very
small, 1 gaiwan's worth even) and I will pay for the actual shipping
costs happily. I would be the first person to shout from the rooftops of
its excellence regardless of your lack of tact in this newsgroup, your
disrespectful attitude, ignorance, and lack of web savvy. I'm 100%
straightforward and honest, and that is what I was to you as well. You
came here to astroturf this newsgroup with an advertisement, and I
called you on it. Not just me, but everyone here is no stranger to this
behavior as it happens quite frequently and is not the way to drum up
business.

Attacking me or anyone here is certainly the wrong way to turn your
initial faux pas into anything productive. You made a mistake, apologize
and move on. If you'd like to participate in this newsgroup and provide
insight, intelligent conversation, and to probably learn a ton about the
business you've chosen... go ahead, we'd be glad to learn more about
you, the real scoop on your product, and offer help and insight about
tea... not business, but tea. Business will naturally follow without
ads.

- Dominic

I realise that jumping into this sort of an argument is unlikely to help
anything, but I think that you are being entirely too harsh to the
original poster. The advertisement in question wasn't a mindless spam and,
even if you objected to it, their responses were apologetic and polite.
The way that you're behaving towards the original poster is, in my mind,
far more offensive than their posting of an advertisement here.

On top of that, as has been mentioned before, the FAQ and charter for this
group does _not_ specifically prohibit advertising except as follows:

"but this newsgroup should NOT be used for advertising herbal tea
products or discussing tea as anything other than a beverage."

If anything, this implies that advertising C. sinensis based teas /is/
allowed. If you are going to be this irate about messages like this, I
suggest that you make sure that the "official" FAQ reflects this. If, that
is, it really is "the will of the group".

I agree that untargeted spamming is undesirable, but I wouldn't lump what
appears to be a hand-written message from a small startup company in with
bulk commercial advertising. I agree that full-on advertising should be
restricted here, but I don't see any reason why someone representing a
company should be prevented from talking about their products here
provided that they don't hammer it home and flood the group.

As a reader of this group, although not a frequent or knowledgeable
poster, I'm finding it more offensive to read your responses than the
polite messages from the original poster. It's clear that you dislike this
advertising, but this is one person who has made a mistake and should be
treated with some basic respect. A simple, polite message asking them not
to advertise would be much better than the repeated and personal attacks
that you're currently flinging at them.

I'm not going to get into an argument, so I won't be replying to this
message, but I wanted to show (particularly the original poster) that
there are people here who don't agree with you, especially in terms of the
way you're expressing yourself. I'm not advocating free-for-all
advertising, I'm advocating treating other people with a bit of respect,
even if they've inadvertently broken the rules.

Joss