[RP TownTalk] Patch wants to know about you're upcoming celebrations.

[Dwight Holmes]

Interesting points, Lou, and you obviously know much more about this
than I do. I wasn't saying it is or isn't 'treasure' for *me* - just
that it no doubt may be of interest to some while not to others, such
is the nature of stuff that passes through our inboxes, those of us
who choose to participate in cyberspace at any rate. I use the ignore
and the delete options freely, and always invite others to do the
same. It is - for me- so much easier than consternating, getting
worked up over something that can be ignored or deleted with extreme
ease.  Now real spam - let me tell you about that. I have the pleasure
- not treasure - of sifting through the dozens and dozens of daily
spam messages that come through the towntalk mailbox filters into the
moderator's to-do list. fortunately it snags what it does; if even 10%
of this stuff got through to the regular distribution we would all
unsubscribe faster than you can say "THE BANK OF NIGERIA WANTS TO MAKE
YOU A MILLIONAIRE".

As for the for-profit question, I too was groomed in the days when
Usenet was king and the Prime Directive was 'thou shalt not pursue for
profit endeavors on the [publicly funded and administered] Internet.'
oh, those were the days, before Google, Yahoo, Bing, Wetpaint Wikis,
etc.

We've had Gazette reporters use TownTalk to seek out information and
informed persons on certain topics in the past. I don't recall this
being an issue of concern. Likely it's a question of balance and
moderation. Most things in excess will eventually produce a protest or
backlash of some kind, appropriately so.  The Gazette no longer gets
delivered to our door. I do miss it. If the Patch or any other such
communication service can accomplish both - providing a service by
communicating things of local news and interest, I say more power to
them.

On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 10:56 PM, Lou King <lking at knob.com> wrote:
> Except Dwight in this case the "treasure", patch.com or the "service", is
> owned and operated by a for-profit organization, Patch Media Corporation.
> (See www.http://patch.com/terms)
>
> The clutter and where they are trolling for content to increase their value
> is a resource owned and operated by Riverdale Park. I do not believe the
> town has chosen to endorse Patch Media Corp. nor open themselves to also
> allowing other for-profit social networks to use the town's (our) resources.
> For example see Washington Post "Facebook's quest to grow revenues apace
> with membership"
> http://voices.washingtonpost.com/posttech/2010/07/facebooks_quest_to_grow_revenu.html
>
> You may think it is treasure, I think it is an illegal use of public
> resources by a for-profit organization that is not even based in our
> community.  In some circles the post by patch.com employees could be
> considered "comment spam" who's primary purpose is to get their name on our
> server so when spiders go through our content for indexing they see the
> references to patch and that raises patch's ranking by the search engines.
> (reference most SEO text).
>
> And lastly, under what value system is a request for information a
> "treasure"? They have provided no information - just a thinly veiled add for
> their "service" i.e. clutter in a public space.
>
> Lou
> O< ascii ribbon campaign - stop HTML mail - www.asciiribbon.org
>
> Dwight Holmes wrote, On 7/26/2010 6:27 PM:
>>
>> One person's clutter is another's treasure - no? :)
>>
>> On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 7:07 PM, Lou King<lking at knob.com>  wrote:
>>>
>>> Riverdale Town Talk sure is getting cluttered. Not with information or
>>> opinions from locals but request for information to fill yet another
>>> stream
>>> of clutter on the internet.
>>>
>>> Lou
>>> O<  ascii ribbon campaign - stop HTML mail - www.asciiribbon.org
>>>
>>> Sonia Dasgupta wrote, On 7/26/2010 4:47 PM:
>>>>
>>>> Patch wants to know about Riverdale Park's upcoming celebrations!
>>>
>>> ____________________
>>
>>
>>
>
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Baseball is back in DC!