More Balance

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freakalad

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#27782 6-Nov-2008 16:57

I've been "reprimanded" for suggesting that this forum is biased, promotes or is otherwise involved in financial gain from "certain commercial vendors".
To this effect, I would ask that more balance information be posted, both for & against commercial & non-commercial vendors.

Case in point:
There are now dedicated areas for "borrowed" technologies like sharepoint, home server, and singing the praises of "dubious offerings" like BizSpark ("if it sound too good to be true..."), yet there has been little news on the Intrepid Ibex launch, and vendor-independent security principals does not get the prominent exposure that could be deemed responsible.

I am loathe to put my stock into any single technology (yes, even GNU/Linux), as trends are fleeting, and users must be made aware that they have alternatives & rights.

I can appreciate that maintaining the "moral integrity" of the site is a monumental task, but I would argue that public discourse should be encourage to promote vibrant and challenging debate, on all topics

FLOSS'er, aspiring Maker

freitasm

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#176375 6-Nov-2008 19:14

freakalad: I've been "reprimanded" for suggesting that this forum is biased, promotes or is otherwise involved in financial gain from "certain commercial vendors".

There we go again. You were not reprimanded. You were warned because suggesting a link between the opinions expressed in this site and financial gain is almost libel.

freakalad: To this effect, I would ask that more balance information be posted, both for & against commercial & non-commercial vendors.

Case in point:
There are now dedicated areas for "borrowed" technologies like sharepoint, home server, and singing the praises of "dubious offerings" like BizSpark ("if it sound too good to be true..."), yet there has been little news on the Intrepid Ibex launch, and vendor-independent security principals does not get the prominent exposure that could be deemed responsible.

We also have forums for Linux, OpenMoko, Android. Truth be told: people don't use those forums if they don't want to. Or in another words: the audience we have doesn't seem to be interested in. You are welcome to use those forums to discuss topics of interest - I don't see this happening.

freakalad: ... and singing the praises of "dubious offerings" like BizSpark ("if it sound too good to be true..."), yet there has been little news on the Intrepid Ibex launch.

That was in the news section, not forums. It's just reporting a new offering. There's no "singing the praises" as you say. Why not mention the Ubuntu release? Seriously I have about 400 RSS feeds and I check thousands of entries every day. Canonical doesn't make it any easier for me - they don't offer a RSS feed and I don't go around visiting websites every single day. If they want exposure then either contact me or enable some pull technology such as RSS. If I have in front of my eyes I might as well post about it.

freakalad: I would argue that public discourse should be encourage to promote vibrant and challenging debate, on all topics

Agreed. There's nothing preventing people from posting about these topics in the forums. There's a general dislike of people posting about "My philosophy/technology is better than yours" because this kind of posts tend to be a) trollish b) abusive and don't go anywhere.

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zocster

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#176392 6-Nov-2008 20:15

May be I am missing something, Geekzone is the most unbiased tech forum there is! Look at this thread no one is complaining about it being single minded IMHO.

So ... can't really say that I agree.

Edit: information wise may be, but that's what the forum is for. MF is a Microsoft Valued Professional I can see why he would lean towards such vendor.

freitasm

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#176395 6-Nov-2008 20:33

zocster: Edit: information wise may be, but that's what the forum is for. MF is a Microsoft Valued Professional I can see why he would lean towards such vendor.

I generally use what works, and like many other MVPs we don't have ties to the company. The award is for community work, not for marketing efforts.

Many Windows Mobile MVPs have Nokia and Apple iPhones. And most of them have Macbook laptops. It doesn't mean we're a group of Microsoft paid mouths.

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tonyhughes

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#176396 6-Nov-2008 20:38

freakalad: I've been "reprimanded" for suggesting that this forum is biased, promotes or is otherwise involved in financial gain from "certain commercial vendors".
To this effect, I would ask that more balance information be posted, both for & against commercial & non-commercial vendors.

Case in point:
There are now dedicated areas for "borrowed" technologies like sharepoint, home server, and singing the praises of "dubious offerings" like BizSpark ("if it sound too good to be true..."), yet there has been little news on the Intrepid Ibex launch, and vendor-independent security principals does not get the prominent exposure that could be deemed responsible.

I am loathe to put my stock into any single technology (yes, even GNU/Linux), as trends are fleeting, and users must be made aware that they have alternatives & rights.

I can appreciate that maintaining the "moral integrity" of the site is a monumental task, but I would argue that public discourse should be encourage to promote vibrant and challenging debate, on all topics

WTF?

Random.

Search for "Vista" on Geekzone.
Search for "Ubuntu" on Geekzone.

You will find Vistas market share of desktops compared to Ubuntu estimates does not reflect in conversations here - in fact Ubuntu had nearly 50% the number of search results as Vista did.

That leads me to believe that the open source OS in question gets proportionally MORE coverage in the forums.

In the Geekzone userbase there are lots of open source users, developers, fans, interested parties, techos, fanbois, zealots and whatever other category you might find.

If you want some balance for FOSS, introduce yourself to Foobar... the dude is rabidly pro-FOSS, but in a likeable way.

The forums that get created are in response to need - if someone talks loads about a particular technology, even if its a commerical product, it tends to get its own forum, simply to keep the site organised as it grows.

But there is no point having say, and Ubuntu forum AND a RHEL AND a Debian AND a Mandriva forum etc, because the users here just are not talking about those things very much.

Much of Geekzone is user generated content. If its tech-related, legitimate, and intelligible, then you are generally not going to find any objection to discussions about it.

Mauricio blogs a lot about Windows technologies, because thats what he uses.

Other bloggers here blog about Mac, Linux, Home Theatre PCs, Mobile Phones etc etc.

Dive in, and discuss what you want. If its interesting, you wont be talking to yourself for long.

zocster

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#176398 6-Nov-2008 20:41

freitasm:
zocster: Edit: information wise may be, but that's what the forum is for. MF is a Microsoft Valued Professional I can see why he would lean towards such vendor.

I generally use what works, and like many other MVPs we don't have ties to the company. The award is for community work, not for marketing efforts.

Many Windows Mobile MVPs have Nokia and Apple iPhones. And most of them have Macbook laptops. It doesn't mean we're a group of Microsoft paid mouths.

Lol didn't see anywhere I mentioned it was a paid effort

freitasm

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#176400 6-Nov-2008 20:43

No, but just to make it clear....

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marmel

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#176409 6-Nov-2008 21:22

This is one of the most democratic forums I am involved in with little interjection from the moderators unless threads become abusive.

Have a good read through the forums and you will see that if something is interesting it will get talked about.

If you want to see unabashed democracy at it's best have a stroll through the telco forums at the moment......

JoeBloggs

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#176451 6-Nov-2008 23:31

I find this forum very impartial. Mauricio and the moderators do a great job within the bounds of the law. I didn't see your post unfortunately. while I don't feel being warned for asking questions is appropriate, perhaps you should have PM'd Mauricio instead - or phrased your question differently. Stating the forum is biassed is a tall claim without proof. Furthermore this isn't your turf to diss. Dig it homie?