"Ken Fortenberry" wrote in message:

Well, you could call it a commercial I guess, but I'd call it an
endorsement. It's the honest, unbiased endorsement that makes this
place such a valuable resource.

and...

It's far better to let other people praise your product than to
do it yourself.


Its not a perfect world Ken. I appreciate your efforts in attempting to
make it so, but this tiny little laboratory of ROFB is such a restricted
environment that it is hardly worth your time and effort. I have never seen
a newsgroup with such limited membership. When I subscribed to
alt.food.wine, we had hundreds if not thousands of contributors from around
the world. I know it is hard to imagine considering the group topic, but
the wine ng got so damned stuffy it was hard to breathe in there. We got
overrun with finger-pointers, net narcs, and blowhards. The one thing I
like about this group is its seeming lack of insufferable little twits. I
hope we don't go the way of the winos.

As far as the inventors and product guys on this ng go, from my perspective
they are taking an incredibly dangerous position by having their stuff in
front of a group of very talented and experienced bassers. Let's say Chris
gets some of Randy's crystal sticks and tells the rest of us they suck.
Randy gets his fanny spanked in front of a fairly discriminating group.
There are easier ways to advertise and with much less risk of losing face.

Perhaps a moderated group is what you are looking for. Rec.guns has a very
active ng with humdreds of contributors and one of the best moderators I
have ever seen. Anyone here wish to spend a significant portion of their
life reviewing and approving messages?

One of the problems with usenet is it has been overtaken by other
technologies. In my humble opinion, it is a dying format. I can go on
BassHoles and get all kinds of semi-moderated information on fishing,
techniques, lures, etc. Ted Young is a fantastic contributor over there and
has almost completed his migration there from the ESPN groups where he still
occasionally holds court. Want to get an instructional on how to spool up
briad? Go to ESPN or BassHoles and do a search or view a sticky. We don't
have the ability to do much more than hold short conversations about things,
and those conversations usually have a very short lifespan.

So again in mvho, I look forward to seeing what the few contibutors on this
group have to say and have no problem with what I have read to date.