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Pastimes : Silicon Investor, DATEK, and broken promises -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom_ who wrote (40)	6/21/1999 10:49:00 PM
From: SI Brad	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 72

Please take this as another "valid concerns" letter, from a member who cares, and who very much appreciates what you have created and have worked to maintain. But who doesn't feel therefore proscribed from submitting honestly-felt feedback. Your valid concerns are being taken :) I am pleased that SI/GNET has responded publicly to the concerns of various members about the advertising issue. I am disappointed in several aspects of those responses. I'll address these below from my perspective. In the main, I feel the responses can be made more full and forthright. (I am not referring to Russell's response. It appears, to me, he walked unwittingly into a hornet's nest.) Yes, Russ's comment was misunderstood by some. He is, as you can imagine, an extremely busy person, and was being sincere in his response. The words "bombard" and "solicitation" have been ignored, or danced around. I can understand the avoidance, because the Datek link is so obviously a solicitation to visit Datek, and the crux of this whole matter is the "promise" (your word, not mine) that "We will not bombard you with...forms of solicitation." The Datek link is a form of solicitation. We could argue all day as to whether it constitutes "bombardment". I consider it a solicitation, but one that does not, in its current color, bombard the viewer. Your position is that one small advertisement, repeated on every single member message page, is not a "bombardment." I hope you can see how reasonable people could very, very strongly disagree with that. I honestly find it hard to believe, in its current color :) , that a reasonable person would disagree. I do see how a reasonable person would see it as a bad omen of things to come. I hope you can see how a reasonable engineer who spends much of his life surfing and caring for SI could consider it not to be a nuisance. You state, positively: "No banners. No bombardment." No mention of solicitations. I hereby reaffirm my statement that SI will not bombard its paying and grandfathered members with solicitations. By bombard, I mean a sufficient number of banners and solicitations that, in my [I hope] reasonable opinion, would annoy and distract a reasonable member from enjoying SI. I am concerned about possible plans to place "button" ads on the member message pages, in the top area where the Datek link is placed. Jeff chose to insert a reference to "button" ads in one of his reply posts. He didn't have to, but he did. And then you post saying that the space above the member's message boards is fair game for "tasteful" ads. The impression is left that button ads are an actively considered option. However, when I asked directly about buttons ads, silence. And you state "No banners. No bombardment." No mention of buttons. Yes, by our comments we are leaving open the door to place a small number of buttons and/or links that will not, in our opinion, result in the opinion of a significant number of members believing that we are bombarding them. If we seem to "dance" in our comments, it's not because we expect to put buttons (i.e. small graphical advertisements) on the pages. We just haven't discussed it enough with everyone who would make that decision to feel comfortable in making additional commitments. The Green Slime dominated the screen (I must assume purposefully so) because of its color; the eye could not help but go to it; it ignited the firestorm-reaction on the Welcome to SI thread. It's been changed, good, but I'm not sure it is at all appropriate to describe it as an "unintrusive" ad. Actually, Bryan chose the initial color somewhat arbitrarily to match the Datek green. It was quickly changed after realizing (with the help of SI members!) that it was an intrusive clash with the SI color scheme. I mention all this for the following reason. SI members have a legal right, IMO, only to hold SI/GNET to is what is posted on the homepage: "As a full member ($60 semi-annually), you can...Elect to permanently turn off advertising banners." That being the case, it comes down, again in my opinion, to a matter of ethics. My hope is that you folks will act in the future in the spirit of your previous acts and statements, which I believe to be that you will strive to minimize the intrusions of advertising on the splendid vehicle for conversation between members that you have created. We will. Brad