NYCPHP Meetup

[inforequest]

Chris Shiflett wrote:

>> ...Did you read the email? Seriously, I can't imagine that the 
>> "commercial"
>> bit in the charter was intended to address some growing problem with
>> people not knowing we have a separate jobs list. If this were an email
>> from someone using the list as an advertising platform, then I would 
>> agree
>> that it is a misuse of the list, and I also think the poster would know
>> that intuitively.
>>
>> Anyway, sorry for being the bad guy, but I felt something needed to be
>> said. I perceived a bit of a "holier than thou" attitude being projected
>> toward someone using us to locate PHP talent, and I don't want to be a
>> part of that. I *want* people to use NYPHP's resources to find PHP 
>> talent,
>> and I appreciate those who do. It makes our group stronger and more
>> valuable to the members and to the community.
>>
>> Chris
>>
>> =====
>> Chris Shiflett - http://shiflett.org/
>>
>> PHP Security - O'Reilly
>>     Coming Fall 2004
>> HTTP Developer's Handbook - Sams
>>     http://httphandbook.org/
>> PHP Community Site
>>     http://phpcommunity.org/
>
> ...Letting someone know that we have a jobs list is great, and that's all


Well, I acknowledge that Chris and I tend to disagree on commercialism 
of free resources like this talk list.

Back in the late eighties when newsgroups first started getting spammed 
by people with 10 line signatures, the general agreement was that 3 
lines is enough to sign your post. Anything more is spam. Even though 
the Internet is no longer non-commercial, I still agree with that 
sentiment. How many lines of hyperlinks to external resources do we 
really need on every post to bleed the signal to noise ratio of the 
list? Do we need board approval to spam this list in the sig?

I admit I am on the outer edge, but I also don't write off commercial 
posts as "job opportunities". Case in point is this one. A job 
opportunity post is "I have PHP jobs available. Requirements are A,B, 
and C. Click here for more....."   A commercial post is "My company does 
X and Y, is a leader in the field, is growing and very successful, etc 
etc etc and has jobs "....  Most people in the marketing business know 
the value of such a post with external links, placed on a quality 
PHP-oriented webpage or list,  for PR and marketing purposes (in 
addition to back-linking and search engine relevance). Internet 
marketing 101 espouses the importance of such PR. Wiki-spam, guestbook 
spam, blog comment spam.... it's all trying to do the same thing.

My apologies to Michael who posted the original job *advertisement*. I 
never doubted his intentions, but he has sparked the discussion so may 
feel a bit persecuted. He's also a self-proclaimed SEO person, so I 
expect he understands very well the value of such exposure.

Someone has to protect resources that are intended to be free, and 
intended to be high signal to noise, and NOT intended to be marketing 
vehicles for commercial enterprises (including book authors). I suggest 
it get done through a sensitive board of directors and off-line mods, 
like Hans K was doing voluntarily with his free time between 3 and 3:30 
am or whatever. Do we sell less PHP books? yeah, probably. Do we risk 
losing some opportunity to promote PHP via such spam? yeah... but that's 
the job of the Board of Directors, isn't it? I bet NYPHP's Board of 
Directors will do a wonderful job of approving what is good and limiting 
what is questionable, if they are granted that opportunity. I doubt 
anyone is more qualified than they are. They provide a jobs list, and 
apparently would tolerate a jobs post that didn't appear to take 
advantage of the commercial potential of the list.

Now by atempting to prevent over commercialization and spamming of the 
list do we lose the participants who make NTPHP's lists such a valuable 
resource? I guess that is up to those people, who have to decide for 
themselves if participation in the list, sans any direct commercial 
benefit, is still worthwhile to them. I couldn't tell you that one. I 
highlight, however, that we also risk losing the same people when the 
list becomes low signal to noise, or overly spammed. In my experience 
the lurking experts are at least as valuable as the high-profile ones, 
but sadly they are also the first to leave when the list gets too noisy.

Finally, I am just a participant in NYPHP and this list, like everybody 
else. I have no agenda, and don't represent the board of NYPHP or 
anything like that. So while I know I am not wrong in my understanding 
of how people commercialize these resources, I may be wrong about how 
NYPHP desires to handle these issues. Like most of you, I have simply 
contributed my piece.

-=john andrews