[Sigia-l] Spamming this list

[Trenouth, John]

Looks like I've caused a bit of trouble here.  I'll try to clarify
(hopeful without stirring up even more trouble).

Ziya was right when he said that we are all promoting and exchanging
ideas here.  And I agree that this is the whole point of these lists.
But when promoting ideas becomes promoting commercial products we start
getting into dicey territory.  And when all the posts from a member
begin to contribute little more then "buy my meme-book" then it becomes
spam.    

The term "spam" started with a lawyer who posted thousands of
immigration services ads across Usenet.  It was so called after Monty
Python's famous "spam" skit where every menu item had spam, because
every newsgroup seemed to have the same green card ad.  

Spam isn't just in the perception of the beholder.  The Breidbart Index
measures newsgroup spam in terms of cross posting and multiposting.
Multiposting refers to a single author repeating the same message, and
only that same message, over and over again.  The Breidbart Index give
more weight to multiposting than to crossposting in terms of determining
what is spam and what is not.  Posts that achieve a score over 20 are
automatically deleted from news servers using the index.  This index can
also be combined with content filters to identify advertising.

Yes the Ambient Findability book and topic are highly relevant to this
community.  And the "buy my meme-book" message was a valuable
contribution the first time it was posted months ago.  However, relevant
subject matter of the promoted commercial product is absolutely *not*
the issue (maybe the green card ads really were valuable to some Usenet
users).   The multiposting of the same limited commercial "buy my
meme-book" message over the past few months as the author's *only*
contribution is the issue--its practically the definition of newsgroup
spam.

(Comparisons between promoting books and promoting conference events are
specious.  Conferences usually have the side benefit of strengthening
communities, like this one, while books generally speaking do not.)

What would this list be like if everyone with something relevant to sell
decided that their only contributions would be commercial promotion?

If I'm way off base here I apologize and I'll shut up.  But I'll also
keep you all in mind when I write my relevant book :)
  

-- john trenouth