"Paul Tomblin" wrote in message
...
In a previous article, "Jay Honeck" said:
In general, is it OK to recommend an aviation product (that I have
found
very helpful) in a newsgroup?

There is a rec.aviation.products newsgroup specifically for that
purpose.

True, but it depends on the product. The .product group doesn't get
a lot
of traffic, and -- if it's something we all could use -- why not bring
it up
here?

With that attitude, why have newsgroups at all? Why not just have one
called "misc" and have everybody post there? That way everybody will
see
it.

Generally the best way to go about this in the .piloting group is to
pose it
as a question, like "What do you guys think of 'x' product?"

Oh yeah, there's nothing I like better than some guy who
coincidentally
has the same name as the president of a company posting from that
company's domain name saying "I just discovered foo and I think it's
great". Of all the dozens of newsgroups I read, the piloting groups
are
the *most* prone to that sort of dishonesty, and I don't know why.

As long as there's Usenet there will be those who come aboard to push
product and/or agenda. It goes with the program as they say.
First of all, the post from this IP obviously isn't in that category at
all. This poster not only sent a post first asking the group if what he
wanted to do was protocol, he stated as well that the product was free.
Instead of taking this issue on here with this poster, I would actually
commend this IP's actions as exactly what Usenet needs to clean it
up......more posters just like this one!
It's fine if you want to tell the world how you personally feel about
people who use Usenet for commercial purposes. Just be advised that most
of us out here who have been on Usenet for any degree of time already
know how things work.
In the end, you won't stop commercial posters by telling the world how
you feel about it. You can't make up rules and regulations for Usenet
either. Usenet isn't organized enough for all that. Usenet is like a mob
with no leader that's comprised of every form of humanity imaginable.
The intellect out here runs the gamut from Mensa through complete moron.
Fortunately on the aviation groups, because of the high degree of
expertise and knowledge required to sustain one's self out here, we have
a large percentage of fairly intelligent people. I think they handle
commercial poster quite well really.
It's the group individually who must handle the commercial poster, and
no amount of bitching or preaching about protocols will do it.
In the end, those who post on aviation groups with a commercial agenda
are dealt with by the group. After a few posts, it becomes apparent
what's going on and people just leave that poster alone. He dies on the
vine as they say.
Bottom line on this issue;
You can't stop commercial posting up front with protocol. The people you
reach on Usenet by issuing protocol would already know it's bad form
through natural intelligence :-)
You stop it by ignoring it as it's recognized by the group for what it
is. It's THAT simple!
Just my rambling opinions on the matter of course :-)
Dudley Henriques
International Fighter Pilots Fellowship
Commercial Pilot/CFI Retired
for private email; make necessary changes between ( )
dhenriques(at)(delete all this)earthlink(dot)net