[MUD-Dev] Re: ADMIN: Advertising on MUD-Dev

[J C Lawrence]

On Sat, 08 Aug 1998 17:40:15 -0700 
Mike Sellers<mike at bignetwork.com> wrote:

> At 10:38 AM 8/8/98 -0700, J C Lawrence wrote:
>> I was hoping to avoid this particular corner of the 'net world, but
>> that seems not to be.  ...  We now have list members who are using
>> various free email services, and in particular email services which
>> append or prepend avertising to all messages sent thru them (eg
>> yahoo).  ...

...deletia...

> I'm going to take what appears at this point to be the minority
> opinion, and ask what the fuss is about?  Is the space the ads take
> up in email or on disk really that big of a deal?  Is storage really
> _that_ expensive?  I find it hard to believe.  And isn't this list
> already "adulterating" posts by appending "MUD-Dev: Advancing an
> unrealised future." to every post -- and archiving those bytes with
> every post?

I'm old fashioned.

> From what you've said, I suspect that your concern stems from the
> now-quaint notion that commerce has no place on the Net, that the
> Internet was made to be free, dammit (ignoring all the tax and
> commercial dollars poured into making that way initially, of
> course).  

No, I'm even more old fashioned than that.  My simple resentment is
that I, my systems and my services, would be used to advertise and
support an entity without express consent or personal action or
representation by me.  I, at a very personal level, resent that, and
resent even more the implication that I would be expected to not feel
this way as a matter of course.  This is the same reason that I won't
wear clothes that bear logos or maker-labels in ways or areas they
can't be removed.  I don't wear jeans that have logo stiching on the
rear pockets, shirts with printing or embroidered logos, etc.  I have
no interest in acting as an advertising staging post.

In part this is also a function of my view of this list.  While the
list hosts members with commercial affiliations such as yourself, and
entertains discussions founded in the concerns of the commercial
world, II view the list itself and the list character and
concentration as specifically a-commercial (and a-hobbiest FWLIW).
This is a venue for professional discourse in the sense of
"professional" as it relates to skill, rationality, exactitude, and
active unending interest.  Or, if you are familiar with the archetype,
"amateur" in the sense of the ever honoured British Amateur.

I said I was old fashioned.  I'm also aware that such considerations
are no longer as common as they were 40 or 50 years ago, thus the
original post.

> Further, I get a whiff of techno-elitism in the comments I've read
> so far: e.g., people who have free email can't really be all that
> interested in playing or creating MUDs (demonstrably false), or
> people who can't be bothered to pay $20/month for non-advert email
> don't really have a place here.

Aye, but that's a view I can hardly see as critical in this decision.
Give an individual something they can either select for or against and
it can be hard to get them not to excercise that option.  Seeing that
free email users are already 'net society tainted, it weights the die
cast against them.

> Ultimately, I'd say that decisions on posting privileges should be
> made by considering only the potential content that the individual
> brings to the list.  So long as adverts are not egregious, why make
> them the focus, the filter of whether someone has a voice here or
> not?  

In essence I agree, and those are the general criteria I use for
granting posting authority.

> Perhaps next you might exclude those who could potentially espouse
> unpopular political or religious beliefs?  Suppose I wanted to start
> a discussion of designing a ChristianMUD or BuddhaMUD or LimbaughMUD
> -- would that be get my postings bounced too?

So far I have refused posting authority to (I think) two individuals.
The reason I refused posting authority in both cases was the same:
self-serving ignorance.  (Intellectual elitism?  Damned right)

> Now, you may say that I'm making too big of a deal about this, and
> that is exactly my point.  Adverts in email are at this point a
> reality every bit as much as @s and list-servs, and they're not
> going away.  There's no reason to make a big deal out of their
> presence by excluding those who use free email simply for that
> reason.

Every free email service I've checked into (and this has been quite a
while and I haven't checked into Yahoo's or Excite's services) has
allowed the option of turning off adverts on an account for an extra
(usually minimal) fee (~$15/year is the number I recall).  Is that an
unreasonable barrier to entry for a decided minority of potential list
participents?

> Why not go ahead and extend posting privileges to those with free
> email who might ask, if you would have done so anyway -- with the
> proviso that you reserve the right to prune the ads from their mail,
> refuse their posts, and/or revoke their privileges if, in your
> judgement, the adverts become too onerous.  

Mostly because this requires me to actively monitor another criteria
for list posts, and to consider it in my ongoing management of the
list.  The goal is to reduce the number and complexity of the factors
I already weigh with this list, not to add another.  While I realise
that black/white rules are rarely uniformly applicable, I like to
attempt them rather than to abandon hope.

Or to put it another way: I don't like being the man with the big
stick.  However, I am, and someone needs to be, and I can't get rid of
the job without damaging the goals I am trying to accomplish with the
list.  But, what I can do is to actively minimise the opportunities
for me to think about pulling out the big stick to remind people I
have it.  

In an ideal world and with an ideal list I'd never have to type,
"Writing as List Owner...".

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
----------(*)                              Internet: coder at ibm.net
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...