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From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.groups
Subject: Re: A rehash (but yet important) of an old issue.
Message-ID: <8482@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 25-Aug-87 13:41:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: utzoo.8482
Posted: Tue Aug 25 13:41:23 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 25-Aug-87 13:41:23 EDT
References: <7130@e.ms.uky.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 29

> I am having a problem getting responses to queries about the
> availability of programs to meet need X...

The real, underlying problem is simply that the people who might be able
to answer such questions are not reading them, for whatever reason.  If
it was because they were ignorant of the existence of comp.sources.wanted,
then moving the traffic to some more obtrusive location might solve the
problem.  HOWEVER, by far the most probable reason why they are not reading
the questions is because they don't WANT to read them.  Moving the requests
to a more conspicuous location will only annoy said people and make them
find another way of filtering out what they consider trash.  It will NOT
make your requests more visible, except very temporarily!  This is a dumb
idea and should not be done.

And WHY don't people want to read such requests?  Probably because there
are a lot of them, they aren't very interesting, they seldom ask for what
a particular reader can supply, one doesn't get paid to read them, and life
is too short already.  Unfortunately for the posters, these are legitimate
and convincing reasons.

Let's be blunt:  the only way you are going to convince people to read the
steady stream of requests in comp.sources.wanted is to reward them for it.
Some people may read it out of sheer altruism, but that only goes so far.
One might suspect that software companies already keep an eye on the group,
but that may not be much help depending on what you're after.  I see no
genuine solution that doesn't involve you paying for the advice you get.
-- 
"There's a lot more to do in space   |  Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
than sending people to Mars." --Bova | {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,utai}!utzoo!henry