[12188] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Internet Company Commercial Market Newsgroups -- FAQ
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Brad Templeton)
Mon May 9 02:42:26 1994
To: raisch@internet.com, psi.com@looking.clarinet.com
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.85.9405062251.A6686-0100000@hmmm>
Date: Sun, 8 May 94 21:20:07 PDT
From: Brad Templeton <brad@looking.clarinet.com>
You've got the history of biz wrong, Rob. It was created to be
almost exactly what you've said market will be, except unmoderated.
Perhaps it failed in that for that difference, and this moderated
experiment will succeed. Today, biz still contains groups just like
market, largely unused, and some company specific groups like the
ones you described in the FAQ.
I'm not in support of either. I want to read information sorted
first by topic, and secondly by type. (ie. first I want to know if
it's about computers, then I want to know if it's an ad or a comment.)
The right place for ads on the net is in the appropriate groups, with
the development of a tag system to mark them for later selection.
That I would want to read nothing but ads of all sorts is silly. I do
want to see ads related to my topics of interest.
My opposition comes from the fact that because of the quick de facto
standardization of USENET, the market groups will make the proper
answer far harder to implement. They'll cause people to say, use
the 'market' groups, or to think that people who do it the right way
are doing it so as to avoid paying TIC some money.
If ads are subsidizing something, like my newspaper, I will read them
scattershot, or at least tolerate them. If they are not, I want only
to see the ads that matter to me.
