No, the Steeping Pot's ad deserves slamming even more. And yes, I think this sort of thing is kind of offensive and I won't buy from companies that do this sort of thing.
It's one thing to hang out on Usenet and answer questions and have a reference to the web site in your .signature... it's quite a different thing to post messages pointing people at catalougues and advertising flyers. Very bad form.
--scott
A brief intro is different than an advertisement.
--scott
Possibly because someone got annoyed enough about the Agape posting to issue a forged cancel on it, so it didn't propagate too far to begin with.
--scott
Very sorry to everyone - I missed that in the shuffle. That's really embarassing. I still think the ad was intrusive, and having been reading RFDT for about a year, I've come to find the chipper tone of some of our occasional advertisers very grating. Having said that, I don't object to commercial posting as long as it fits Mike's guidelines, and I should add that I've found my primary suppliers mainly through RFDT. If one of the regular posters started selling tea or wrote a book or an article I would want to know about it, and I would assume that they would let us know without being pushy, as I think the Art of Tea person did. I strongly object to shilling, stealing, and the practice of some vendors (teacuppa.com springs to mind) of chiming in to unrelated discussions with pitches for their product.
Thank you for your comments. I didn't realize it was something that so many would take offense to. Live and learn I guess.
The only reason I hadn't participated before is b/c I didn't know this group existed. As a consumer, I'm new to groups in general. I'm a member now, and fully plan on being involved without the intention of pushing my products. I figured the posting was harmless b/c I didn't try to trick anyone into reading it with a fake subject line - it was simply an announcement.
If you have any questions or any further comments about my posting, please send them directly to me. I don't see the need to continue bashing me for one mistake. I had to ill intent, and I am very sorry.
Desirea
On May 17, 3:03 pm, The Steeping Pot wrote: [...]
I, for one, can accept this. I look forward to your participation in our threads. Please forgive us if we seem overly aggressive, but many good newsgroups have been ruined because commercial posts took over the group. As you can see, we wont allow that to happen here. Many of us are quite protective of our passion. Again, we welcome your participation.....
Mike
Thank you for your comments. I didn't realize it was something that so many would take offense to. Live and learn I guess.
The only reason I hadn't participated before is b/c I didn't know this group existed. As a consumer, I'm new to groups in general. I'm a member now, and fully plan on being involved without the intention of pushing my products. I figured the posting was harmless b/c I didn't try to trick anyone into reading it with a fake subject line - it was simply an announcement.
If you have any questions or any further comments about my posting, please send them directly to me. I don't see the need to continue bashing me for one mistake. I had no ill intent, and I am very sorry.
Desirea
Desirae, I think, most people in this group understand your lack of bad intentions from your honest reactions. As Mike states, there is a lurking danger of commercial posts destroying usefulness of a group through spamming. RFDT always had commercial posts in some form or another, but the amount is fortunatly very minimal. I second Scott Dorsey's opinion to put a website reference and possibly shop name in your signature and participate in the group as an active member. While this is not an obstrusive advertisement, people in this group will probably check out your site if they feel you have a genuine interest and some knowledge about tea. So, don't be scared off by this group, people are just protective as Mike stated above.
Plagiarism is a despicable offense. Try spell and grammar checking your site, as well. Had you bothered to actually read some of the recent posts on this board you could have known what a hot topic self-promotion is recently. It is actually inconceivable to me, as a writer, that Adagio would permit such a competetive "rip-off". As Mike points out, (paraphrased) "why shop with you for Adagio Teas when you can shop at Adagio?". "Tea-Mail Yahoo Groups" which is more geared to recipes and tea parties and allows advertising one Wednesday a month is probably more to your liking and your audience and may give you greater support than you'll find here. You see, you didn't post as a consumer. You posted to advertise. You say you want to take an honest approach and yet you do not credit Adagio for their marketting work that you stole for your web site. Frankly, I think it's Adagio that deserves an apology and a check, for that matter, since they did so much of your work for you. And, if, as you say, you're not in it for the money, why have a tea business web site or post about it here, at all? I must agree with Scott - VERY bad form.
Shen
This is a quote from Christine (aka "Xine"), an Adagio representative:
"When other companies- especially smaller ones- use our images, we don't view it as a copyright issues, but rather a form of flattery. It is costly to get really good pictures of your product if you don't have a photographer, graphic designer, etc or any of that experience.
They're stepping their bounds if the perspective customer believes that they are ordering directly from the Adagio site or in cases when they believe that they are getting Adagio teas through a reseller but get something else of lower quality, or something else."
So, they seem to be okay with this. I personally think Adagio is taking this a bit too lightly, but it's not my call. I think people who see your site and recognize some things as copied from Adagio's site will think less of your integrity as a vendor, which is perhaps the most important thing to have in the tea business. So I think, for your sake, it would be better to come up with your own descriptions. I also thought it was odd that you have some items with greatly exaggerated list prices, which are conveniently crossed out and replaced by your discount prices, which are the same prices Adagio offers.
-Brent
It's more google's fault than yours. Google dumps users onto Usenet without explaining to them what it is, in fact they seem to go out of their way to make it look like it's some kind of proprietary web board thing that they run, when in fact it predates Google's existence by nearly two decades and runs on 70,000 cooperative servers around the world.
If you had started reading news with a conventional newsreader, it would have first dropped you into the news.announce.newusers group and forced you to read the introductory material there before allowing you to do anything else. Google does not do this, but that doesn't mean you can't do it yourself on your own initiative.
Because Usenet is run by so many different folks on their own servers all over the world, commercial use is strongly discouraged because all of the various folks running servers would be subsidizing your advertising. Google sadly not only does not explain this but doesn't explain the background behind it.
--scott
No need to apologize and no need to be embarassed. I wish I had a nickle for every time I missed something and responded out of left field. I just wanted to be fair to the company. Philosphically, Mike expressed my feelngs far better than I could.
Michael
I had no idea about any of this. I simply thought it was part of Google Groups. I'll definitely read more into this. Thank you!
Desirea
Thank you - I really appreciate your comments. I have already made some of your suggested changes. I'm not sure what to do about the descriptions though since the descriptions are also used on my labels. I don't expect people who shop at Adagio to purchase tea from me - it simply wouldn't make sense. I'm far too small to compete. As I grow, I hope to offer a wider variety of teas that adagio does not offer. They are just my preferred vendor, so I started with them. I did get permission from Adagio before I started to use their descriptions and images, since I didn't want to break any laws in the process of starting my company.
Desirea
Scott,
It's true that Google gives you free run of the Usenet groups. However, there is a "This is a Usenet group - learn more" link in the upper right hand corner, right under "about this group" and "edit my subscription". Short of forcing new users to read it (which isn't a bad idea), google does provide the necessary information in a prominent location.
I guess not everyone is like me (lucky for them ;-). I lurked for months on this and other groups before making my first post. I believe I learned a lot about Usenet etiquette in general and the personalities involved in this group in particular. "Look before you leap", I suppose.
Alan
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