What is a 'commercial' post?

[Marco_Bleeker]

  An example.
  You may have seen my msg about 2 or 3 weeks ago: digitized plant pictures 
on offer. I put the word 'free' in as well, just reassure some people. So I 
distribute some free JPG's, but on everyone is my email address: it is a sort 
of advertisement as well. You never know, someone might actually want to pay 
copyrights...

   Would anyone consider this msg 'commercial' ?   Just to let you know: I 
only had positive reactions, about 60 people thanking me and ordering 
the free pictures and species lists - no negative reaction at all.  Two 
WWW/FTP sites were spontaneously offered to house my files, and are now being 
set up, as a result. It seems the whole thing was an undivided success (only a 
bit slow on the financial bit :-)).

   This is what I am afraid for: a moderator in all his wisdom could decide 
that a msg like mine does not go through, and nobody knows what he or she is 
missing.  And I don't have pockets full of money - a special 'for.sale' 
newsgroup sounds a bit like: let me see, where shall I loose my money today.  
This would not be a newsgroup to normaly read every day, and a msg like mine 
would not have had this great effect.

  Once upon a time before that (now for something completely different), I 
just felt the urge to tell the world what a magnificent piece of software I 
just had discovered.  I was honestly just a very content end-user, but what I 
did was a sort of advertisement. Part of the story was, that the program was 
very affordable, and I want to support that too.  Was this a 'commercial' msg, 
in the sence of not appropriate in a discussion newsgroup ?  Again, I only had 
positive reactions, no negatives at all.

   Point is also, that it is actually possible that commercial messages are 
interesting. I do not see the reason behind all this fuss. Normally, in any 
newsgroup, there are only a few msg's you read, or that are close enough to 
your own interests and knowhow, to make them interesting. The large majority 
of all msg's are overkill for each individual reader. But might be interesting 
for someone else. The same goes for commercial msg's. You trash 90 % anyway, 
so a few commercials won't matter much. But I would not like to miss the one 
that could be interesting !

  Bye, Marco