On Tue, 1 Aug 2000 15:44:17 +0800, Nic Sanctum, nic@THERSS.COM.HK, wrote: >Any post that even hints it could spark a flame war is curtailed >not only by moderators but by other *list members*. A person that >persists in antagonizing others is summarily kicked off the list. > >Again some of you may counter this and say, "Hey! We're adults, we >don't want or need policing on our list." This is not policing. It is >ensuring that a strong corporate identity is maintained throughout all >levels of the company and yes, this includes mailing lists. Hey Nic, I belong to two software lists that are run essentially independently of the software companies (Nisus and Wavemetrics' Igor Pro). I don't think it's necessary to think of the list as a corporate arm; a strong presence by company members is enough. On the Igor list, any time a complaint or problem comes up it is immediately addressed by a Wavemetrics employee (usually within an hour, never in my memory more than a day). This prevents long, speculative, and possibly harmful threads by getting the company position and the facts out in the open without the need for moderating the list. The shortcomings of the program are there for all to see, but confidence in the company is boosted because it's clear that they are on top of it. In contrast, Jerzy's lackluster monitoring of this list has done nothing for my confidence in Nisus. When he chooses to respond, it's usually much more than a day after the thread was started. It doesn't seem like any other Nisus employee monitors this list at all, although the NE programmer probably could have curtailed the negative threads rather quickly after the release by explaining the problems instead of letting us speculate about them. One difference that really sticks out in my mind: A new version of Igor is scheduled for release soon (probably on about the same schedule as NW6). From the get go, there has been no secrecy about the features that will be included in Igor 4. When it was in pre-beta testing, the testers regularly responded to feature requests on the list that they either were or were not yet included in the new version. When the subject of native OSX came up Wavemetrics immediately responded with their estimate of the programming time required and that, unfortunately it wasn't going to happen yet. When the version went into beta, all owners of the current version were invited to be testers. The only requirement was a valid serial number. I haven't got a clue what's coming up in NW6; it doesn't seem like anyone on this list has even seen a beta version, if they have they've been sworn to secrecy; Nisus can't bring itself to make a single straightforward statement about what features will or won't be included; and with their last released product (NE) they were singularly ineffective at explaining how to use it both in the manual and on this list. Ben P.S. anyone out there who does data analysis or graphing, no matter how complex or simple, should check out http://www.wavemetrics.com. Sorry for the ad. -- Benjamin Cramer Geological Sciences, Rutgers University Wright Geological Laboratory 610 Taylor Road Piscataway, NJ 08854 ph: (732)445-0688 / fax: (732)445-3374
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