My interpretation is that you are an idealist. You want to see this
newsgroup free from "spam". That is fine. I'm sure many people would
agree.
But you're not sure that most would, apparently?
You don't want to see large numbers of irrelevant posts. Also fine.
However, the action you take is to make more posts that are more
irrelevant that the one you objected about:
That is a common enough rebuttal on the part of people posting commercial
advertising, or otherwise violating newsgroup etiquette. "If you don't
want off-topic posts, why do you post so many off-topic posts?"
As common as it is, it's also completely faulty logic. It fails to
recognize the investment in the future, to attempt to keep the newsgroup
better *in the long run*.
Just as you completely fail to see the long-term benefits in rejecting
commercial advertising in the newsgroup, you also fail to see the
long-term benefit in accepting a short-term off-topic digression to try to
combat commercial advertising in the newsgroup.
Besides, inasmuch as the posts *are* about this newsgroup, they are
decidedly on-topic, in a meta-topic sort of way.
The logical conclusion is that your objection was never on the grounds of
relevance but, rather, it was because Robert's post was commercial.
I've said all along that it's commercial advertising to which I object.
Commercial advertising is not relevant to this newsgroup, and has no place
here. I fail to see the logic through which you arrived at your
conclusion, but the conclusion is in fact correct: a large part of my
objection is because Robert's post is commercial in nature (well, that and
the fact that it's not about C#).
I infer that you would not have been offended had Robert drawn your
attention to a free e-book on a related language and asked for your
opinion.
That's quite a stretch. This newsgroup really is about programming
questions in C#. Frankly, when I first started using this newsgroup, I
found it a bit distracting that in fact it's used in large part to ask
questions not specific to C#, but rather to the .NET Framework. But at
least that disparity has some logical justification, since practically
everyone using C# is writing to the .NET Framework. I've given up and
gone "with the flow", since it's clear that's the wide-spread, commonly
accepted convention of this newsgroup.
But this isn't a book club. At the very least, posts about a "free
e-book" should be limited to books about C# (this being a C# programming
newsgroup). Even in that case though, I just don't see the relevance. It
would be one thing for someone to post a brief notice "hey, I saw this
great free e-book about C# that's useful". It's entirely another for
someone to intend to start a discussion about the e-book, or for someone
to post about their own e-book while at the same time advertising a paid
subscription to a related service.
Exceptions to the "posts about C# and .NET programming questions"
boundaries of the newsgroup should be very narrow, and carefuly
considered. Commercial advertising definitely falls outside that charter,
as does a variety of other things even when they are nominally related to
C# or .NET.
Pete
