i think you're missing the point here. there are company's that are willing to give significant discounts to user groups. i've been researching the options that are available to us for getting reduced pricing on gear, books and swag in general. these "organizations", as you refer to them, want to make sure that these groups are legitimate and that they really are open groups and not just little fiefdoms of people looking for a cheap rate. they're not looking to spam the mailing lists. out of curiosity - what metrics are applied to people who make subscription submissions? this is more of a rhetorical question than anything else. i'm not accusing bob, et al of anything i'm just saying that even with a manual process there's nothing to preclude the subscription of devious . i suggest we open it up and deal with problems on an a priori basis. in my experience the administration of such a model is far less than the administration of the current model and leads to a more open dialog. when last we saw our hero (Friday, May 31, 2002), Ben Lutgens was madly tapping out: > On Fri, May 31, 2002 at 01:52:00PM -0500, steve ulrich wrote: > > > >my concern here is that there are some organizations that want to > >make sure that we have an open and interactive user group that is > >really flourishing. in turn they will give us good discounts on > >things and help us to interface with other user groups that may be > >doing the same thing. > > Discounts! What? I've never ever seen any evidence of this on any > list I've been on. Who cares what "Organizations" think. The list is > for users of the technology to discuss things, not proliferate thier > damnable spam. > > There's nothing non-open about the list, the archives are publicly > visible, and anyone can subscribe. It's just a check to make sure > those corporations who support spam as a viable advertising medium > can't load our mailboxen with useless unsolicited email. -- steve ulrich sulrich at botwerks.org PGP: 8D0B 0EE9 E700 A6CF ABA7 AE5F 4FD4 07C9 133B FAFC -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 232 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/tcwug-list/attachments/20020531/fd52a954/attachment.pgp