On 15 Feb 97 Eric Engelmann said to All...
 EE> I certainly can understand the community's reluctance, and yet many
 EE> people do benefit by appropriate product announcements. I generally
 EE> suggest that commercial announcements be emailed to the moderator who
 EE> can decide to post or dump them.
It certainly would appear that we are spitting in the wind if we try to
turn back the tide of advertising.  Our competitor (and often common
carrier) the Web is just loaded with the stuff.
On the other hand, we must recognize that all that Web advertising has been
paid for, and we should not be in the business of provideing free
advertising at a cost to our much-appreciated sysops.
So how is EE going to pay ?  We could ask him to make a cash contribution
to the sysop at his entry-point to fido for each commercial posting he
makes, but that would benefit only a few.  So how about this ...
1.  EE be restricted to two postings per year.
2.  He must "pay" for each posting by also posting, at the same time, a
UUENCODED version of some small, useful, and new item from his latest
CD-ROM.  That way, everyone benefits from his commercial presence here,
whether they buy or not.  And we get to sample the quality of his wares.  If
he posts something useless, we assume his whole disk is useless.  But if he
posts something good, people may buy his disk.
I'm wondering if we even have the right to hold this discussion.  Are
commercial postings here not prohibited under the over-riding general FIDO
rules ?
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