Personally, I wouldn't mind the "This FAQ brought to you by" part
at all; the only thing that would be annoying would be extra
paragraphs of marketing hype, as above.
I've never been convinced by public television's claim to be free
from advertising, as blurbs like "This program brought to you by
Mobil Corporation" are certainly a form of advertising, which
e.g. Mobil expects you to see and be influenced by, and without
which Mobil wouldn't be nearly so generous in its sponsorship.
What's clear, however, is that such one-sentence, simply
declarative, sponsorship messages are about the least imaginably
intrusive sort of unsolicited, in-your-face advertising there is,
and I think they'd be equally unintrusive in the context of
network information resources.
I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong with crediting
the resources behind FAQ list maintenance; otherwise, we'd all be
posting FAQ lists through anonymizing servers.
I agree with previous messages, however, that in the case of
information in which the sponsor has a vested interest, such
sponsorship becomes much more troublesome, as it can't help but
influence the information content. (To continue the public
television analogy, it's fine for Mobil to sponsor Sesame Street,
but we'd wonder about a PBS analysis of national energy policies
if sponsored by Mobil.)
Steve Summit
scs@eskimo.com
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