1) the independent author, working for a publisher of general books.
This person may be an expert, and gets paid by the number of books
he/she sells.
2) the academic author (for lack of a better term) who must publish but
ends up paying part of the cost in order to spread the word about the
subject. Often part of the cost is defrayed by the employer as part of
the overall job. (Prof. Zapmple is in my history department and so I
will help him publish her book on European settlements in Madagascar in
the 1700s so that other researchers can use it)
3) the company that publishes information on a topic so that the users
will be more knowledgeable and so more likely to continue using it. For
example Kodak at one time published a library of books that sold for 50
cents or so, that must have cost several dollars to each to produce.
These "tried" to be "open" but of course did not mention Agfa or Fuji
Products... REd Rose Flour used to publish cook-books with were in a
similar vein. ( cooking a steak is in the book, even though it does not
use much flour)
4) Books produced by a company to explain their theories of life and why
you need their product. The health food industry is famous for this.
There are also magazines that have several models.
5) LOts of ads, little content, much of it favorable to the
advertisers. (Skin Diver. Peterson's Photographic)
6) Lots of ads, content not bowing to advertisers (fortune) (although
There is a case to be made that the content is not antagonistic to the
advertisers in aggregate- I.e. we may pan Microsoft, but will not
preach anything other than the market system)
7) No ads, aloof from the market . Some political magazines, and
Consumers reports.
Naturally there is a broad spectrum in between.
Traditional FAQ files have previously been almost strictly in category
2. At the time that RTFM started up, that was the only model that was
acceptable for the net. Conveniently most sites were universities where
the model is not only accepted but expected.
The rules IMHO should be that a reader is aware of any bias that the
maintainer brings to the FAQ. The more "sponsorship" their is the less
the author is perceived to be unbiased. Major newspapers deal with this
with an editorial board that is chartered to keep the advertisements out
of the news room. (some papers don't let the editorial staff see the
ads until the paper is out) OF course there are some sections that are
all adds, and slanted features, but they tend to be separate sections
set in different type.
This comes back to the discussion the other week. When someone is
looking for a "health" FAQ, Colgate may have some very well researched
on how and why to take care of your mouth. IT may be intertwined with
using a certain brand of toothpaste however. It may be much more
accurate in other facts than a document created by a well-meaning person
who does not have the luxury of writing and researching full time. The
consumer (should) know that the colgate FAQ will be written with the
interest of a large company in the back of the authors mind, and (if the
user is media aware [a big if] ) they will adjust for that possibility.
I think where the worry is comes down to FAQs that appear to be
unbiased. I see something posted by fred@aome.state.edu and assume that
it is an unbiased academic paper - when in fact it may be paid for by
the national association for the advancement of toothpaste sales. 8->
Thus I would prefer to see as a minimum all potential conflicts declared
in all FAQs. And it would be better if payments were explained as
well.
-- Charles MacDonald Stittsville Ontario ...Just beyond the fringe My homepage is at http://www.achilles.net/~cmacd/ CANDU Nuclear Power - The Answer to the Carbon Cycle
[
Usenet Hypertext FAQ Archive |
Search Mail Archive |
Authors |
Usenet
]
[
1993 |
1994 |
1995 |
1996 |
1997
]
© Copyright The Internet FAQ Consortium, 1997
All rights reserved