Building the "World's Largest Portal" with XML

[Tyler Baker]

Tim Bray wrote:

> At 10:31 AM 6/17/99 -0400, Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:
> >At 8:55 AM -0400 6/17/99, Jeff Langdon wrote:
> >>Did anybody else get this annoying solicitation?
> >I got it too. Given the way it was worded, I thought it was a more specific
> >solicitaion from somebody who'd read my book but I guess not. I'll dump it
>
> Actually, I think it would be OK for recruiters just to post straight
> to xml-dev.  I find these things interesting if only as barometers of the
> market temperature, and lord knows we need an occasional break from
> namespace URI theology.  Also somebody might get an interesting job. -Tim

Really it depends on the nature of the solicitation I think.  General spam postings saying we
have general positions related to "The Internet" serve very little use here.  I think early on
in a technology's development, job postings are a good thing because it gets the ball rolling
for all of the early adopters of a technology.  Later on when a technology matures and their
is high demand for that particular skillset, then postings like the one from MetaSeatch Inc.
are nothing more than offensive spam that takes advantage of the high number of qualified
developers on this list.  There is a line that is sometimes hard to gauge but nevertheless
there is a line.  Right now I think that even though XML is far from its potential in terms of
use on the web and in other domains it is inappropriate for recruiters to post to a list like
this.

One idea would be to openly solicit recruiters to post to XML-DEV for a fee to help pay for
the list maintenance expenses.  I am not sure how big this list is at the moment, but sending
out all that mail has some cost.  For the small price of reading (or at least downloading) a
few advertisements from recruiters a week, the list could help pay for itself.

Personally, I would not mind spam if I got paid everytime I had to read it or even hit the
delete button.  Some network marketing programs such as AllAdvantage seem to be experimenting
with this approach so I guess maybe if their business efforts are successful then we would see
less spam on lists like these (and in our mailbox) without being compensated beforehand.  In
watching public TV we pay by letting our minds of mush subliminally digest the marketing
messages of commercials, so why not have a public list be paid for by a few sanctioned
commercials a week?

Oh well it is just an idea for the list maintainer (I forget who actually runs the entire show
here), so I hope this does not spawn an entire "What to do about SPAM" thread.

Tyler


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