From: Gary Duncanson (gary.duncanson@googlemail.com)
Date: Thu Apr 10 2008 - 17:01:08 ART
Paul,
Some good points there and well thought out (as usual).
My 2 cents on this is while Im not adverse to subscribing at cost if it comes
to down to it, I do wonder if some posters may be more inclinded to overpost
on the mailing list about their vendor woes if they are 'forced' to pay to
subscribe to groupstudy?
Thoughts?
Regards
Gary
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Cosgrove" <paul.cosgrove@heanet.ie>
To: "Scott Morris" <smorris@ipexpert.com>
Cc: "'Alexei Monastyrnyi'" <alexeim@orcsoftware.com>;
<ccielab@groupstudy.com>; "'Capt.Spock'" <capt.spock@gmail.com>; "'Paul
Borghese'" <pborghese@groupstudy.com>
Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2008 2:37 PM
Subject: Re: Changes to GroupStudy
> The popularity of the list is no doubt closely related to the quality of
> the posts. The various vendors have added a lot with this. If
> questions do not result in good answers, or if better answers can be
> found elsewhere, then the benefits of the list decrease accordingly.
> Charging vendors (or others) to use groupstudy is something which could
> encourage a drift away to other lists, e.g. the vendor specific ones.
>
> Unless voluntary, a vendor fee based model would require classification
> of users as vendor/non vendor, which may not be as easy. People join
> the list as individuals rather than company representatives. They also
> seem to use the list as individuals so direct advertisements are,
> thankfully, a rarity. Employees of a vendor may well wish to use the
> list even if their employer decides that they do not wish to pay/donate.
> Producing and enforcing changes in the existing open policy would be a
> thankless task which could have unintended negative effects. Wouldn't
> affect me, but personally I'm glad to see Paul has chosen to maintain
> the open model.
>
> The current practice of allowing sponsoring companies to be mentioned
> within email footers seems a good way to support Paul's work. He
> mentioned in one of his emails that he has received a little support via
> paypal, and perhaps the method for donating could be explained in the
> emails regarding sponsors.
>
> All that said, if in the future is turns out that a voluntary scheme is
> unable to fund the required resources, then I suppose he will have to
> review things again.
>
> Paul.
>
> Scott Morris wrote:
>> I think the sponsorship model will hold things a little, as we generally
>> aren't allowed to "advertise". We cannot control what individuals say
>> however, so you all are always welcome to talk about whichever
>> workbook/class/instructor you feel like.
>>
>> That's not advertising though. ;)
>>
>> Scott
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of
>> Alexei Monastyrnyi
>> Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2008 3:46 AM
>> To: ccielab@groupstudy.com
>> Cc: Capt.Spock; Paul Borghese
>> Subject: Re: Changes to GroupStudy
>>
>> Guys,
>> with this vendor-independent list still advertising de-facto all the
>> workbooks, CODs and stuff (no offense), I would expect vendors to share
the
>> burden of 400$/month or whatever it may grow to in the future. With more
>> than four of them out here it is less than 100 bucks per month for now,
>> which is nothing. I understand that many of their finest instructors are
>> contributing a lot to this list which is HIGHLY appreciated. But still it
>> sounds logical to me to help out one more way since it has grown for 10
>> years from pennies and hobbies to one of the best CCIE study lists
actually
>> supporting their business.
>>
>> Just a thought,
>> A.
>>
>> Capt.Spock said the following on 4/10/2008 4:51 AM:
>>> Paul, If I were u I would have $2/mo subscription on assumption of 200
>>> users with support level as of today.
>>>
>>> That amnt is little for many of us but good enough for your great
service.
>>> No need for charity.
>>>
>>> Bye
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Apr 9, 2008 at 2:19 PM, Paul Borghese
>>> <pborghese@groupstudy.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> I have been somewhat neutral towards the paypal button idea. In a
>>>> perfect world I would be able to receive enough donations to pay to run
>> the site.
>>>> But in the entire 10 years I have been running GroupStudy, I have
>>>> only received $275 in donations. But then again, I have not been
>>>> encouraging donations.
>>>>
>>>> The issue is, on average I receive 20+ e-mail messages a day from
>>>> people that have some e-mail issue they seem incapable of figuring
>>>> out for themselves. If I were to answer each e-mail I would have to
>>>> quit my day job and just spend all day every day working on
>>>> GroupStudy. So most messages simply go unanswered (unless I have an
>>>> unusually light schedule which is rare).
>>>>
>>>> OK, so now the same guy who does not understand how e-mail operates
>>>> sends in a $10 donation which does not even begin to cover the
>>>> $400/month bill.
>>>> Now
>>>> he is expecting service for his donation, which I can not provide.
>>>>
>>>> I have been thinking in the past of having a gold membership with
>>>> additional benefits, but rejected the idea as I think it will kill
>>>> the open characteristic of GroupStudy.
>>>>
>>>> By the way, I am also in discussion with some vendors to get them to
>>>> sell products to our list members at a substantial discount. With
>>>> our buying power we are able to get substantial discounts off list
>>>> price. I will be announcing that program in a few weeks.
>>>>
>>>> Take care,
>>>>
>>>> Paul Borghese
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: ccie az [mailto:ccieaz@googlemail.com]
>>>> Sent: Wednesday, April 09, 2008 1:31 PM
>>>> To: Paul Borghese
>>>> Cc: ccielab@groupstudy.com
>>>> Subject: Re: Changes to GroupStudy
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for all the work you put into keeping group study going Paul.
>>>> I know we all appreciate it.
>>>>
>>>> I think someone before mentioned adding a Paypal donate button to the
>>>> site. Could this be a option to help with the support costs?
>>>>
>>>> Az
>>>>
>>>> 2008/4/9 Paul Borghese <pborghese@groupstudy.com>:
>>>>
>>>>> I have made a few changes with GroupStudy.
>>>>>
>>>>> 1. I am working on filtering postmaster messages from appearing on
>>>>> the
>>>>>
>>>> list. We block over 500 spam messages/day from appearing on the list
>>>> and
>>>> I need to investigate how the postmaster messages are getting
>>>> through. The filters will hopefully lessen their intrusion
>>>>
>>>>> 2. I have implemented Sender Policy Framework to help eliminate
>>>>>
>>>> spammers
>>>> use of the domain. I would like to thank Zack Tennant for his
>>>> suggestion/help
>>>>
>>>>> 3. A few weeks ago, I implemented automatic removal of e-mail
>>>>> accounts
>>>>>
>>>> that have delivery issues. Yahoo is the #1 culprit of non-delivery
>>>> of messages. If you are receiving the list messages from a Yahoo
>>>> account, you are in danger of being unsubscribed. When you
>>>> subscribed to the list, the welcome letter warned you against using
>>>> Yahoo and Hotmail accounts as those services only deliver about half
>>>> of the messages posted on the list. We simply can not keep them
>>>> queued on GroupStudy until Yahoo decides to allow delivery. I highly
>>>> recommend you switch to Google Mail. Mention my name and they will
>>>> give you the gmail account for free :-) .
>>>>
>>>>> 4. GroupStudy has been in existence for over 10 years now. It cost
>>>>> me
>>>>>
>>>> over $400/month to run GroupStudy, with very little outside support.
>>>> We need additional bandwidth/servers etc. and I simply can not
>>>> continue to flip the bill. Therefore I will be offering sponsorships
>>>> for the list. The sponsorship will consist of a welcome letter at
>>>> the beginning of the month welcoming the sponsor and a small two line
>>>> footer on each outgoing message.
>>>> Certification Science (my employer) has agreed to sponsor us for the
>>>> month of April. If you know of other companies that may be
>>>> interested in sponsoring for future months, please have them send me a
>> private e-mail.
>>>> I
>>>> am trying to make the sponsorship as non-intrusive as possible.
>>>>
>>>>> Take care,
>>>>>
>>>>> Paul Borghese
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> ____________________________________________________________________
>>>>> ___ Subscription information may be found at:
>>>>> http://www.groupstudy.com/list/CCIELab.html
>>>>>
>>>> Pass the CCIE in six weeks, Guaranteed!
>>>> http://www.certscience.com/CCIE
>>>>
>>>> _____________________________________________________________________
>>>> __ Subscription information may be found at:
>>>> http://www.groupstudy.com/list/CCIELab.html
>>>>
>>>
>>> Pass the CCIE in six weeks, Guaranteed!
>>> http://www.certscience.com/CCIE
>>> ______________________________________________________________________
>>> _ Subscription information may be found at:
>>> http://www.groupstudy.com/list/CCIELab.html
>>
>>
>> Pass the CCIE in six weeks, Guaranteed!
>> http://www.certscience.com/CCIE
>> _______________________________________________________________________
>> Subscription information may be found at:
>> http://www.groupstudy.com/list/CCIELab.html
>>
>>
>> Pass the CCIE in six weeks, Guaranteed!
>> http://www.certscience.com/CCIE
>> _______________________________________________________________________
>> Subscription information may be found at:
>> http://www.groupstudy.com/list/CCIELab.html
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
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