You have done the right thing. Don't worry.
Cheers!
Pairat Sanguansai
Department of Mining and Materials Engineering
Faculty of Engineering
Prince of Songkla University
Hat Yai, Songkhla 90110
THAILAND
On 13 Feb 2001, Gregoire Dubois wrote:
> 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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>
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