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From: gam@amdahl.UUCP (gam)
Newsgroups: net.followup,net.jobs,net.news
Subject: Re: Headhunters in net.jobs
Message-ID: <1116@amdahl.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 9-Feb-85 02:05:13 EST
Article-I.D.: amdahl.1116
Posted: Sat Feb  9 02:05:13 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 11-Feb-85 03:56:39 EST
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> Go ahead. Make rules. But I also suggest you look for ways of turning
> rules into policies. Without a rule maker or a rule enforcer, a rule is a
> very lonely thing.

True.  A method of enforcement is that the site become "non-gratia",
and other sites may cut-off news to/from that site.  Yes, I
generally don't like those things, but by "rule" I meant some
specific guideline by which a site may be cut off from netnews
-- to my knowledge no such rule has ever been made.

I have further decided that if it is OK for AA Personnel to
post what clearly amounts to an ad for that company as long as
they pay for it then we are opening a big can of worms.

Usenet, as an advertising medium, would be QUITE valuable (look
at the various markets:  techie, Trekkie, yuppie, college, nerd...)
and if the price you have for using this medium is whatever
it costs you to timeshare -- well, I think that's underpriced.

You're going to see a BUNCH of ads flood this
network, because it's gonna cost them $1 of t/s time to post their
70-line ad to a network that reaches ~1500 sites (??? users).

What if Bob's Big Boy gets a 68000 work station?  Are we going to
tolerate articles in net.misc on the Burger of the Week?
What if Oleophone Records wants to post its record catalog to
net.music?  Admittedly, these are silly examples, but the idea
is that, given access to Usenet, using the Net for advertising
is so cheap that ANY company would exploit it as much as would
be allowed.

The reason such exploitation has not been seen so far is because I think
almost all Usenet sites are fairly responsible in their collective
use.  And if they weren't so responsible you'd see them cut
off the net fast.  Is this not so?

Perhaps AA and "The Solution" would voluntarily avoid posting such
ads if they understood how some of us object to this practice?
-- 
Gordon A. Moffett		...!{ihnp4,hplabs,sun}!amdahl!gam