Re: Product review postings (was Administrivia)

From: Gwendolynn ferch Elydyr (gwen@reptiles.org)
Date: Tue Jul 08 2003 - 14:07:29 EDT


On Tue, 8 Jul 2003, Alfred Huger wrote:
> So while I need to balance the needs of the poster I cant forget that
> someone on the other side is being impacted at the same time. I know from
> experience that having an anonymous party review your product can be
> harmful to sales. Also from experience Ive seen this all too often abused
> by people with an axe to grind or with a commercial agenda. People seem to
> think that their anonymity should be guaranteed to them by some unwritten
> rule of the Internet. I think there is merit in that, for some things. But
> I do think its situational and you need to be accountable for your actions
> when affecting the livelihood of others. I like the idea of rating the
> credibility of posters (although I imagine setting criteria will be
> thorny) but I still am leery about purely anonymous posters.

Why? You see and moderate every post before it gets to the list, and have
the option to refuse posts, or request that a post be rephrased before
allowing it on the list.

If I were being uncharitable, I'd have to say that a paraphrase of
your views on accountability would be:

        People should be identifiable so vendors have somebody to sue,
        other than me, or my company.

What about vendors being accountable for producing shoddy goods? How
do we distinguish between "This product doesn't run at 100Mbit" being
a valid criticism, or critical damage to a vendor (despite being
true). This seems like another version of "any disclosure is bad".

There's a difference between polite frank and open discussion, and
newspeak.

cheers!
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