From: Marty Bigos (BIGOS@Darwin.Stanford.EDU)
Date: Fri Apr 07 1995 - 12:39:45 EST
I'd like to add my few cents to the discussion of openly commercial participation on the flow discussion group. First, I think that one needs to distinguish between participation and sponsorship. As long as the Internet is subsidized, those that run this group from Purdue exercise effective control. So if a company doesn't like what is said about their product, they have no immediate recourse except to defend it publicly - they can't threaten (explicitly or implicitly) to withdraw funding, something which happens all the time on "commercial" media. However, if the funding status of the Internet changes, then these considerations could become more relevant. Second, I think we need to distinguish between the passive roles we are forced to play by commercial media, and the active roles that are possible in this discussion group. If a commercial company makes a claim that one thinks is outrageous or doesn't match their experience, it is quite easy to post those concerns. If the claims cannot be backed up by suitable data, then I think the message will be clear to all who follow this discussion group. In fact, I would imagine that the marketing folks would be very careful as to what is claimed on this group for that very reason - they would be in a media where there would be direct feedback and questioning. Loss of control of their own marketing strategy would not be a good thing for a company. However, this would depend on the participants in this group not being passive but having a skeptical and inquisitive attitude, something which we in the sciences should have anyway. Thirdly, I think such participation would lead to further discussion on specific instrument design, and how instruments are benchmarked, topics of interest to me and probably other participants in this group. And lastly, I would appreciate having access to the claims and experiences with instrumentation that I have AND don't have, as an easy way of keeping current with the field. Of course there are questions of netiquette, such as labeling product announcements as such, so participants can skip them if so desired. However, I have confidence that such things would not be problematical. -Marty Bigos Stanford Shared FACS Facility
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