advertising on the list

From: Curt Lang (Eos Systems  Inc.)
To: RP-ML
Date: Tuesday, July 12, 1994
Subject: advertising on the list
     Regarding the recent posting by Paul Lasman describing his company and services and the subsequent complaint from Mike Branciforte regarding this message:
     Policy on the appropriate use of the list is a matter for the moderator, who I hope will comment.  I personally found Mr. Lasman's message informative and useful and I plan to contact him in the future.  I think Mr. Branciforte's view of what is suitable is too narrow.  The practice of mass postings ("spamming") to all lists and newsgroups of messages that have no relevance to the interests of the various groups is inappropriate, but Mr. Lasman's message was clearly on the topic of the list and was informative.
     To Mr. Lasman I suggest that in the future you consider writing a brief notice summarizing what your company does (no more than one screen) and offering to send private e- mail to those who express interest; post it only to lists and groups that you know will find it relevant.  Many people will respond, and to them you can send a long, detailed data sheet.  I have done this several times with information about our reverse-modeling products and have received more than 300 pleased and interested queries and only one flame!
     These days commercial product development and knowledge of service resources is as relevant as academic research and is particularly so in our growing field of 3D-input/3D-CAD/3D- output.
Regards,
=== Curt Lang, Eos Systems Inc.