| Would it be so bad for RSI and VNI to respond to the newsgroup? [message #4297] |
Tue, 16 May 1995 00:00  |
grunes
Messages: 68
Registered: September 1993
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Subject: Would it be so bad for RSI and VNI to respond to the newsgroup?
In e-mail correcting my latest post, a person at Visual Numerics
(VNI, provider of PV-WAVE) mentioned that it was company policy
not to reply directly to the news group, and this was also
Research Systems (RSI, provider of IDL) policy. This is to provide
a "hands-off" approach to the news groups.
(I said that the free trial version--i.e. the evaluation version--
did not allow one to do certain things, which it did in fact allow.
The VNI representative e-mailed me, saying that within the evaluation
period, the trial version functioned identically to the true version.
I had confused their trial version with that of IDL, which does not
impose a trial period limit, but which does impose those restrictions.)
In particular, VNI and RSI e-mail corrections and information to
the poster, but leave it to that person's discretion whether or not
to forward the correction to the news group.
This surprises me. Many companies take advantage of USENET responses
to "sneak" in advertisements for their products. This is especially
the case when misinformation has been provided.
I appreciate that they might not wish to post to USENET too much,
because we wouldn't want to be saturated with endless flame wars
between VNI and RSI, or announcements of every minor new feature.
Corrections and responses to the point don't need to do that.
I also appreciate that they could waste a lot of time on USENET.
But making personal e-mail responses wastes just as much of their
time, and does not reach as many people.
I also notice on some other language newsgroups that some companies
(like DEC) frequently respond to postings by indicating that
their product DOES have a specific feature.
--------------------------THE QUESTION----------------------------
I am curious: Do most people agree that it would be appropriate for
VNI and RSI to respond directly to comp.lang.idl-pvwave?
Or to other newsgroups like sci.image.processing, where people
frequently post questions asking for software packages that can
do that which IDL and PV-WAVE can do?
------------------------------------------------------------ -------------
(Opinions are mine alone.)
Mitchell R Grunes (grunes@nrlvax.nrl.navy.mil)
Allied-Signal Technical Services
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