Subject: Re: whooping crane viewing
Date: Aug 16 12:00:39 1995
From: Stuart MacKay - stuart.mackay at mccaw.com


Raymond Korpi wrote:

> But there are those of us out here who don't get all the newsletters
> (heck, I just joined PAS last Thursday after three years in the area; OFO
> was first, and WOS is next) and
> who might want to know if a Seattle Audubon trip is going to a particular
> place that we keep reading about.

High profile groups such as Audubon already have a means of distributing
information about their activites, ie newsletters. Posting to tweeters
potentially reaches non-Audubon members, who would be interested both from an
ornithological point of view and possibly joining Audubon as a result.

This raises the question of whether organisations can exploit email to raise
the profile of their activites and recruit members, contributions, etc. If
this is the case then the forum must be open to ALL groups - some mainstream,
some not - it's only fair. Maybe timber companies could "advertise" all the
wonderful things they are doing to preserve wildlife.

Tweeters is supposed to be for the benefit of its subscribers. A lot of
information about trips etc could be posted to the great benefit of readers.
If I was running a group/organisation I'd be on tweeters/OBOL/BirdChat etc
giving announcements and trying to recruit members directly or indirectly - it
is easy, cheap, direct and effective.

Maybe if there is financial gain by an organisation, they would have to pay
to advertise ? Perhaps contributing to a needy cause.

Maybe the rules should follow general usenet groups - as long as it is
tasteful and decent then there is no problem. However most forums have special
announce and marketplace groups where postings do not interfere with the
normal discussions.

> The point of posting the trips on OBOL
> was for exactly that purpose: to let other people across the state know
> what's going on and give people an opportunity to share their trips. The
> problem here then becomes, what is local, as Stuart MacKay noted, given
> the regional coverage of Tweeters--it reaches a far, more wide-ranging
> audience than OBOL, for example (this is conjecture, but by people's
> geographic signatures, one can make an assumption). I'd like to see
> someone post Seattle Audubon's trips, for example; If they were going to
> places like Grays Harbor, I'd be VERY tempted to go so I can learn to
> navigate my way around such places.

It is a difficult situation - the door is either firmly shut or wide open. If
the OBOL guidelines work for them, why not adopt them here.

Stuart
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Stuart MacKay AT&T Wireless Services
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ph. (206) 702-5151 Bellevue, WA
fax (206) 702-5451 98007

stuart.mackay at mccaw.com
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