On Tue, Jun 12, 2001 at 05:45:26AM -0700, Dave Ulmer wrote: > > Well, I sure learned a lesson about the WWW, it is certainly a breeding > ground for Tyrants and their Cronies. I wonder how this power of the
i tend to think of this as a 'feature' of the web rather than a 'bug'.
the thing is: no matter what you say or do on your web site, every person on the planet is free to make their own and say and do whatever they want on it.
i noticed Jeremy was trying to push the conversation away from the mailing list and to his web forums some time ago which frustrated me. i do not like web forums (purely aesthetic, i'm sure). i also do not like not knowing who is 'moderating' my conversation - i'm much more inclined to participate in a forum where there is no moderation (excepting to remove illegal or improper (as in, software piracy) posts), or where i'm very familiar with the moderator and know that my views won't be censored simply because they dissent. but i digress.
the problem here is that geocaching is not represented widely enough on the web. there is one 'de-facto' site which leaves way too much power to one person (or group). you see these things happen (microsoft) in other places in the computer world. it's not that microsoft intends to develop an inferior product - there's just no competition to keep them trying to lure people into using their product, or add innovation to it. it's the same (sort-of) with geocaching - there's no reason for anyone to be careful about censorship because basically there's one web site and that's that. if you don't like that site, or the forums, you're pretty much screwed, beacuse nobody has bothered creating a site that can compete (probably because geocaching.com is so feature-rich, was obviously time-consuming to put together, does have the prime domain name, and obviously has all of the data). don't get me wrong, i really do like geocaching.com a lot - even if the data isn't available how i'd like it to be (csv, xml). it certainly is one of the more pleasant web sites to visit. the issues that i have are largely with the way that geocaching is architectured - and there will always be issues with that since it's a volunteer game (and web site).
i'm not trying to vilify anyone here. i'm just advocating that competition is healthy in the business world, and i think it would be healthy here. after all, you are here, discussing geocaching (uncensored, i might add), and this list is certainly competition to the web forums.
-- dreams and belief have gone; time, life itself goes on