Quote:
Originally Posted by MaggieScratch
But the time to point that out was last year when this thread began. Hindsight is 20/20, as they say, but I respectfully point out that you're doing a disservice to the membership and those interested in ebook readers by letting any resentment of forum behavior (I'm not just talking about Astak, either) fester so that it affects your editorial policy. I run a couple of forums and blogs myself, and deal with marketing people all the time, and I know it is difficult to be consistent sometimes when you're annoyed with someone's behavior.
I think it's a shame that the media doesn't seem to realize that only the Kindle and Sony exist when speaking of ebook readers. When people ask me about my ebook reader (a Cybook Gen3), I send them to this site to learn about ALL the different devices so they can make a really informed decision about what will work best for them. The knowledge of this community is so deep--it's really a great tool for someone having to make a difficult decision to spend a lot of money on a device. I know it helped me back in the day, and continues to help me. I also think competition is good for ebooks and ebook devices!
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We are always really glad to see representatives of the ebook industry participating on MobileRead and interacting with the community. We welcome their presence here and you can see that Robertb also received a friendly welcome when he started this thread. However it's one thing to participate in discussions in a reasonable way and give helpful information when people ask ; it's another thing to try to discredit competitors by posting misinformation and spreading FUD about them, and posting in multiple threads about competing devices to advertise your product.
We have not been confronted by this situation in the past, although we have many representatives from various companies participating here. Now we've realised we need to create some guidelines to better define what is appropriate for commercial posts and what is not. We are working on that. It is not a question of being resentful of forum behaviour ; MobileRead is growing and as the community grows we need sometimes to work on the structure in ways which were not necessary before. We are always doing our best to keep this community as open and welcoming to everyone as it has been, and also to make sure we continue to be the best place to find accurate, up to date and impartial information about *all* ebooks and devices available.