[11789] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: In the matter of adverti
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Martin L. Schoffstall)
Tue Apr 19 22:35:14 1994
Date: Tue, 19 Apr 1994 17:53:30 +0000
From: "Martin L. Schoffstall" <schoff@us.psi.com>
To: WALTHOWE@delphi.com, tenney@netcom.com
Cc: com-priv@psi.com, stevec@aol.com
Walt,
I think Delphi has done a great job when compared with what others have done.
Add your visually impared capabilities for Delphi and who can complain.
I'd like to suggest another step.
While there are complaints about the "users" of the various on-line services,
I think there are bigger complaints about the "operators" of the on-line
service.
Basically, given all their resources, they provide no community service at
all. UUNET provides lots of cool anon ftp capabilities, others provide NTP
servers, veronica servers, etc, for the Internet community for free.
Neither AOL nor Delphi institutionally are providing anything to the
Internet community that is essentially "free". Some people think that
this is capital W Wrong. Minimally it is anti-volunteerism.
Countries/cultures whatever are also held together by volunteer supported
"institutions" whether this be your church, your little-league, RIF,
boyscouts, or your local swiss-yodeling-league.
Marty
> As one of providers who are channeling many new people onto the
> Internet and into newsgroups, I agree completely that we (Delphi--and
> AOL, and others to come, large and small) have a responsibility to
> educate our new users. And we do try to reach our new users with
> instructions on netiquette in various ways. For example, we provide two
> newsreaders on Delphi--nn and a much simpler menu based one. The
> newcomers almost all start with the simpler one, and they can't reach
> newsgroups without seeing a "READ BEFORE POSTING TO ANY NEWSGROUP!"
> file. This file explains the basic netiquette and the reasons behind it
> in easy to read terms. We also put the basic newcomer FAQs on the menu,
> and we are constantly reinforcing the need for proper etiquette in
> local message forums where newcomers ask and receive help on using the
> Internet and newsgroups. If everyone read and followed the guidance,
> there would be few problems. And most users do just that. But there is
> always a percentage of headstrong users who won't read anything put in
> front of them until they get in trouble. And there are others who
> understand perfectly well what you are telling them, but just don't
> care.
>
> I won't try to suggest that we are doing everything that could be done
> to reach the new users, because there is always room for improvement.
> But I do say that we care and we are aware of the problems, and we are
> trying our best to see that our customers behave responsibly.
>
> O-O-
> J ) Walt Howe
> ( ) Internet SIG Manager
> ()) Delphi Internet Services Corp.
