Dear all,
I hope the following will clarify a bit my position for what concerns
the management of the list and answer some of the questions sent
recently.
AI-GEOSTATS will be 6 years old in April and the way I�m
managing it is the result of the experience I could gain during all
this time. The decision to forbid commercial announcements on the list
has been taken within the first year by the subscribers themselves (those
who were subscribed to the list at this time will remember the hard
discussions we had).
However, many agreed that commercial announcements do often
provide useful information. I therefore decided to set up the web pages
(www.ai-geostats.org) 4 years ago where I described around 80 (!) software
(commercial and free) and the news topic allows companies to announce their
latest developments.
I also wrote few FAQ�s, one on what to use if you are a beginner in geostats
and another one on the use of GIS for spatial statistics. Of course they
reflect my own experience only and I couldn�t test many commercial software
because of their cost, even if few companies kindly offered me a free version
for testing. Two other FAQ�s, written by Tom Mueller and Syed Abdul Rahman
Shibli have been also developed to help newcomers and software users. Even if
I got many positive comments about these FAQ�s and the web pages I developed,
many mails sent to the list show that the web pages have not been consulted at
all. The frequent mails about kriging and ESRI�s product is an example of a
topic that has been often discussed (the archives of the mail are there as
well to help people to avoid keeping on asking the same questions) but which
keeps on coming again on the list. The FAQ and the web pages are made for you,
and often with your help and improving them is only possible with your
feedback.
AI-GEOSTATS is a mailing list with more than 600 subscribers coming from
around 100 countries. It is a critical size and I saw many mailing lists
collapsing because of people insulting each other, or simply because of the
too many mails that were inadequate (many of you must have experienced mailing
lists where one mail on two was �unsubscribe�).
All this to say that a good mailing list is based on �good� subscribers. This
means people who think twice before sending a mail, people who would not make
sarcastic jokes or comment the English of a non native English speaker, people
who would check briefly if their question has not been asked 100 times.
These are a few of the rules I ask to respect and the way the list is running
is a proof of the health of the mailing list.
To go back to the problem of mentioning software. I still believe that the
current rules should be applied as strictly as possible. I did receive
complaints about previous �commercial announcements� and I had to play the
cop. It is an unpleasant task for me but it has to be done. The reason why I
want to keep this rules are very simple:
1) Practically, if each time someone asks �what software should I use to
make a semivariogram� one gets replies from all the software developers
that have been writing something that does it, we would be drowning under
boring emails. This does not happen because the rules are usually respected.
The web pages provides a search tool that should help the user to find what he
is looking for. One should ask the members of ai-geostats for advice ONLY if
one can�t find the tool one is looking for. I have described, and often
tested, all possible software used for spatial statistics and never refused to
describe new products on the web pages unless these had nothing to do with the
topics we discuss on the mailing list. This to say that the list of software
is nearly exhaustive.
2) Promoting demos: a demo is usually a free software that is illustrating the
functionalities of a commercial package and has therefore certain limitations:
many tools do not work (one cannot save, print the work done with the demo
version and few even do not allow the user to test it on its own data). These
demos might be suitable for teaching but not for research. Again, I believe
the subscribers will
not accept to have hundreds of mails promoting their demos for teaching
purposes.
3) AI-GEOSTATS is a .org domain and should remain free and be independent
from any company. I have been sometimes criticised for favouring or promoting
the work of certain people only and this is clearly the last thing I want to
hear.
The work done these last years on ai-geostats has cost me a fortune in time
and money and I�m not sure the subscribers would have been pleased to
have AI-GEOSTATS owned by a private company. Or should I have accepted
a nice proposal a mining company has made me three years ago ?
I hope you will now better understand my position and accept the way the list
is working, with its imperfections. There is, I�m afraid, no way to tailor the
list to everyone�s needs unless I work full time on it.
I hope this will close the discussion.
Thank you for your understanding
Gregoire
PS. further comments should be sent to me unless you really want to have
the list discussing this issue.
Gregoire Dubois
Institute of Mineralogy and Petrography
Dept. of Earth Sciences
University of Lausanne
Switzerland
http://www.ai-geostats.org
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