Dear Bill, dear all. I know that many people here would like to see adverts or annoucements of free products on the list. Many others don't. Bill wrote "freebies are a good thing for readers on this list as long as it it not overly done."
The problem is to find the right the balance, to decide if the announcement is a commercial product or not. The easiest answer to these questions I have found so far is to refuse any commercial advert or annoucement of demos on the mailing list(*). On the other hand, I provide the members of ai-geostats with a NEWS section on the AI-GEOSTATS web pages (www.ai-geostats.org) where companies can introduce themselves, announce the release of the new products, in fact everything they want which could be interesting for the members of ai-geostats... I strongly believe that this is not only the easiest way to manage the mailing list but also that it is the best compromise for anyone. I therefore will not change the policy of a very successful mailing list which is 6 years old and has almost 800 subscribers coming from around 100 countries. Thank you all for your understanding. Best regards Gregoire (*) accepted annoucements are those related to free products: these are products that are freely distributed without any restriction and that are not a demonstration version of a commercial product. See i.e. Geoeas, Gstat, ... William V Harper <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Gregoire et al, > > I know this has been a reoccurring discussion and ultimately you make the final call. I also realize that I am not an unbiased lurker on this list. However, it seems to me that freebies are a good thing for > readers on this list as long as it it not overly done. > > Posters to this list can ask or explain anything about particular GIS packages, GSLIB, etc. Good. Why not let us share knowledge on other packages especially if they are free (or make announcements about > software that will be given away free even in limited quantities)? > > Most of us do not want this list to become a commercial advertising zone. But sharing knowledge should (in my opinion) allow mention of various free learning tools/software/books/literature. I (& perhaps > numerous others) do not have the time to look at other software listings you may have & would rather focus our limited time on this list. > > Thanks for letting me get this off my chest. It has been bothering me for awhile. > > Bill Harper > > Gregoire Dubois wrote: > > > I decided long time ago not to moderate the list directly (I mean not > > filtering the mails before they arrive on the list) since I'm not available > > 24h/24h and don't want to have subscribers waiting days before seeing their > > requests/replies distributed to all. Because one has to be subscribed to the > > list in order to be allowed to send messages, the list is partly protected > > from spamming. This seems to work quite OK so far and I don't want to change > > it at the moment. > > -- > William V. Harper, Mathematical Sciences, Otterbein College > Towers Hall 136, One Otterbein College > Westerville, OH 43081-2006 USA 614-823-1417 Fax: 614-823-3201 > Faculty page: http://www.otterbein.edu/home/fac/WLLVHRPR/ > For the best in geostatistics: http://geoecosse.hypermart.net/ > Future features: http://www.wvharper.com - currently points to above geostatistics site > > > > -- > * To post a message to the list, send it to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > * As a general service to the users, please remember to post a summary of any useful responses to your questions. > * To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with no subject and "unsubscribe ai-geostats" followed by "end" on the next line in the message body. DO NOT SEND Subscribe/Unsubscribe requests to the list > * Support to the list is provided at http://www.ai-geostats.org -- * To post a message to the list, send it to [EMAIL PROTECTED] * As a general service to the users, please remember to post a summary of any useful responses to your questions. * To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with no subject and "unsubscribe ai-geostats" followed by "end" on the next line in the message body. DO NOT SEND Subscribe/Unsubscribe requests to the list * Support to the list is provided at http://www.ai-geostats.org
