[CLUE-Talk] Marketing to CLUE Members

[Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier]

On Fri, 2003-03-14 at 17:00, El Presidente de CLUE wrote:
> On Friday 14 March 2003 03:53 pm, Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier wrote:
> 
> >
> > My suggestion is this: A member, like Rick, may post a specific
> > announcement to the clue-talk list no more than once per year for a
> > non-Linux related commercial announcement to invite people to "opt in"
> > or whatever. Any member is limited to an arbitrary number of such posts
> > within a twelve-month period, say three.
> 
> Zonker,
> 
> IMHO, this is not an acceptable option.  Who is going to keep track of this 
> number?  Where do we draw the line?  Suppose I run a porn shop, would it be 
> ok for me to send three messages to CLUE-Talk for 'hot, young girls'?  I 
> don't think so.

Well, probably not. I was just throwing it out there as an idea that
wasn't "absolutely no e-mail that might be commercial" because I don't
want to ban things like "hey, anyone want to buy a video card I don't
use anymore" or "hey, I'm opening a new ISP and I'd like to let everyone
know they're welcome to sign up and I'll give them a discount." When not
abused, there's nothing wrong with that kind of thing -- at least in my
opinion. 

> It's a slippery-slope which we have not had occasion to formally address 
> because it hasn't happened (to my knowledge) in the 5 years I have been on 
> the admin board.

Well, I remember a spam/deceptive e-mail that was sent to the lists a
while back where someone basically spammed the list claiming they'd
found a nifty new computer shop that supported Linux but it turned out
to be the owner of the shop who sent the e-mail... but that's the only
incident that I can recall. 

> > But, you raise a good point... we do need to put up a policy, and
> > pronto. We can't just assume there's an unspoken policy that everyone
> > will absorb through some kind of netiquette osmosis. 
> 
> I agree.  Even though we have links to NetEtiquette on the CLUE Resources 
> page.  The fact is that the lists do not explicitly state 'no commercial or 
> unsolicited offers'.  This will change in the next few days.

Good deal.

Zonker
-- 
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier
jzb at dissociatedpress.net
Aim: zonkerjoe
http://www.dissociatedpress.net