Re: [cobalt-users] List Impropriety? (long)

["Steve Werby" <steve-lists@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"Jay Fesco" <jay@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Again, SUN offers certified, non-warranty-breaking help for a fee.  If I
> want that, I'll go to them.  I AM looking for cooperative, free help here,
> just as we all are.

I suspect that list members' motivations for participating on this list are
quite varied.  I offer myself as an example.  I joined this list in 1999 to
learn more about my blue box.  At the time my business was primarily focused
on hosting service.  After I got up to speed I gained the knowledge to help
other list members and stayed active in order to give back to the community
and learn from the experiences of other list members and to interact with
some sharp, insightful, friendly people.  One day a list member sought me
out to ask if I could perform work on his blue box for a fee.  As it was a
relatively complex job, there were no publicly available instructions and it
was going to take several hours to complete I accepted the job.  By that
point I had already decided to change the focus of my business from hosting
services to web programming, server administration and consulting services.
That was nearly two years ago.  Through word of mouth, referrals and
unsolicited requests from those who have read my posts on the Cobalt lists I
have gotten a fair amount of business administering blue boxes.  When
someone seeks me out to do something I'll often tell them how to do it or
point them to instructions or resources that will allow them to do so on
their own if it's something I sense they can do.  If that's not the case I'm
glad to accept their business.  I make no apologies for that.  In general
I'm able to assist my clients at a much lower firm cost and with better
results than their alternatives because I don't have the overhead of Sun and
I use the blue boxes daily as an admin and as a developer so I understand my
clients' needs better than the average tech support person.  Just because I
feel like I offer a useful, competetive service doesn't justify me spamming
the list or pumping my services at every opportunity.  In fact, that woudl
probably be extremely bad for business in the long run as it would no doubt
damage my reputation and in a knowlege-based business one has little more
than their knowledge and their reputation.  Back to my point - I am quite
sure there are others on this list with mult-faceted motivations.  IMO, the
motivation of a list member is irrelevant so long as the list member's
actions do not jeopardize the integrity and effectiveness of the list.

> NONE of us could afford the tech support info that is
> provided here every day.

That's a very good point.  This list and others like it are excellent
sources of information.  It's impossible to put a value on this list.

> If a straight-forward procedure or concept exists
> to fix a problem (as was the case for my most recent issue) then that
should
> be posted.  I lose respect for people when they tell me something is 'too
> complicated for you to do, let me do it for a fee', then I find out that
> it's a non-rocket-surgery 10 step process to fix the problem.

Clearly it's a poor tactic to offer someone unsolicited paid assistance
while misleading them about the difficulty of what's involved.  Obviously
you found an unsolicited handwritten email to be intrusive, but if others
didn't offer viable solutions at no cost and the alternatives were more
costly perhaps you would have felt differently.  I am well aware that the
ends doesn't justify the means, but IMO when compared to UCBE and spamming
on-list I find unsolicited handwritten emails to be more tolerable by
several magnitudes.  I'm not saying that it's right and obviously I did not
see the email that was sent to you, but this is definitely a topic that I'll
be thinking about at more length and I'm interested in what others think.

> OK - I think I understand.  ALL of the responses to my original query are
> that it's fine for people to solicit work based on problems posted by
> others.  The problem with this scenario is that if this works enough times
> for the really skilled folks here, they will STOP posting solutions and
> START selling them.  Imagine if Dan or Carrie quit answering questions and
> just started offering to fix them for $50 (or whatever).  Where would we
be?
> I'd be missing about 50 'fixes' to problems that I SHOULD be able to
repair
> myself.

I disagree with this argument.  Clearly some individuals in a position to
sell services they used to offer for free will stop offering assistance for
free to avoid cutting into their available time to generate revenue and to
avoid cannibalizing their paid services, but I don't believe the majority
would go down that path to the extent you suggest.  I've posted over 800
messages to cobalt-users since I was first paid to do work on a blue box.  I
don't post as frequently as I'd like to, but that's because I'm involved in
more mailing lists than I was 2 years ago and there are more list members
with expertise than there were 2 years ago.  A search of the archives will
probably reveal that a small percentage (5%?) mention a service of mine in
passing and within context.  I don't even mention my services in my sig,
though I may someday and I don't think there's anything wrong with doing so
as long as the sig is short.  Others are more blatant and probably irritate
people more than I do, but if they're happy with themselves, can sleep at
night and can pay their bills I really don't fault them.  Life's too short
to worry about what they do as I have little to gain by worrying about it.
There are many other list members who sell services in dedicated hosting,
colocation, server administration, programming, design, development,
software packages, etc. for which a fair percentage of the cobalt-users
members are potential customers.  The ways and frequency with which they
promote themselves is quite varied, but many of them are valuable
contributors to the list.  Thankfully most who promote themselves on-list do
so within their sigs, within the context of the question they're replying to
and in general do so in ways that are more accepted.  I know it's not apples
to apple, but there are other lists, such as list-managers, where nearly
everyone is extremely competent at what they do and nearly everyone earns a
living doing the same thing, yet the list members are willing to help each
other and exchange ideas.  Yours is an interesting argument.  One could also
make the argument that if list members who spend significant time
contributing to the list don't reap any indirect financial rewards from
their participation that they're likely to abandon the list completely in
favor of another forum that can generate them a better ROI so they can pay
their bills.  I know that several prominent list members who were regulars
on this list over the last 2 years have stopped participating for just that
reason.  Anyway, it's something to think about.  And thanks for giving me a
new topic to ponder.

--
Steve Werby
President, Befriend Internet Services LLC
http://www.befriend.com/