Author: Bruce Moreland
Date: 09:11:13 07/29/01
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On July 29, 2001 at 09:56:14, José de Jesús García Ruvalcaba wrote: >I agree that Frank's post is not commercial in any way but commercial posts are >explicitly banned. I quote from the CCC charter: > 4.Are not flagrant commercial exhortations A sign that says "excessive speed prohibited" means that you can't go too fast, but it doesn't mean that the road is closed. If someone wants to say that the road is closed, they should take the old sign out and put a "road closed" sign there, rather than trying to re-define "excessive" to mean anything in "excess" of zero. American Heritage Dictionary of English: Flagrant: "Conspicuously bad, offensive, or reprehensible". Exhortation: "A speech or discourse that encourages, incites, or earnestly advises." The charter could have said, "4. Are not commercial", but it did not. Instead, it added these two very strong words. These words don't condemn the idea of commercial posts, they make commercial posts more possible. Another moderator tried to argue that a pointer to an eBay auction constituted a "flagrant exhortation", but that is clearly a distortion of the intent and meaning of those words. It seems obvious that a pointer to an eBay auction is not any sort of exhortation, and certainly not a flagrant one. Is it disturbing? Maybe, if people do it all the time, and certainly, if they start auctioning stuff that isn't even on-topic. But it is clearly not against the charter. I didn't write the charter, but I was there when it was written, and I had a voice in its acceptance. Some of the people involved had commercial interests, and wanted to be able to annouce products here. I believe that I remember that there was feeling amongst some others that they did not mind such announcements and wanted to see them. I believe that the intent was to avoid posts that made outrageous claims about products, in order to avoid an advertising war. I think it is also reasonable to say that we would have liked to avoid advertising campaigns where people post multiple ads. If this group doesn't want any sort of commercial post, that's a fine thing for the group to want, and if most of the people want it, I don't see why we shouldn't ban all commercial posts. But I object to attempts to interpret the language in the charter as an outright ban. It was not intended to be an outright ban, and the words are clear enough that it cannot be interpreted as an outright ban. bruce
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