On May 16, 4:53 pm, pgwk > wrote:
> I'm puzzled.........
>
> What puzzles me is that all the brou-haha -- and over 50 messages --
> about the Art of Tea announcement of its second issue generated some
> pretty virulent attacks on commercial misuse of USENET, violation of
> charter, etc. The Steeping Pot's ad plus discount coupon offer seems a
> tad "commercial" but has generated no comparable response. Am I
> missing something about netiquette? Is there some personal background
> about The`Art of Tea? Is the Steeping Pot ploy approved of by the
> slammers of AoT?
I challenged the "violation of the Charter" thing because I felt the
Charter was being misquoted and/or misinterpreted. The challenge was
in the interest of being factual and really had nothing to do with my
opinion.
My "opinion" is as follows, this is only my opinion and it has nothing
to do with the Charter or USENET netiquette:
If a "contributing" poster to this group throws out an occasional
blurb I really don't mind. If someone throws out a blurb that is
*specifically* related to the topic of a given thread I don't mind,
often this type is very useful.
When someone who has never *contributed* throws out an ad I do mind. I
guess to me the real metric is the motivation of the person over time.
If their only motivation for posting is profit then I really don't
care what they have to say. On the other hand if they are truly
passionate about tea, and sometimes post solely in the interest of
sharing knowledge, then I think they earn the right to the occasional
blurb. In other words, those who contribute are welcome, those who do
contribute are not.
In most cases I do not respond to "blatant" ads from non-contributors
because to do so only gives them more buzz and bandwidth. I personally
didnt respond to the SP post because it was a blatant ad from someone
who has never contributed except with profit as a motive. To keep
their thread alive only rewards them and I choose not to do that. I
suspect that many old-timers feel the same way which is probably why
you didn't see a flurry of posts. Any buzz is good buzz etc.
The Art of Tea blurb was acceptable in my opinion. The SP ad was not.
Probably the only reason the AoT generated so much controversy was
because it was indeed something of interest to many members of the
group, but some contributors objected because they have an aversion to
anything even remotely commercial. Blatant ads seldom generate that
much buzz. Actually, I now applaud AoT for their efforts, even though
I had reservations early on, I sincerely believe they will improve and
refine their publication over time. To have such a resource in English
is fantastic, I hope more publishers will follow this example. On the
other hand, shops like SP are a dime a dozen, if they are depending on
Adagio for their tea they have nothing of interest to me. If I want
Adagio tea, I will simply go to Adagio........
Mike
http://www.pu-erh.net