[meteorite-list] Advertisements (wasTHIS IS NOT THE IMCA list. TAKE IT ELSEWHERE)

From: Martin Altmann <altmann_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2008 15:23:06 +0100
Message-ID: <002601c95f89$d1712020$177f2a59_at_name86d88d87e2>

Hi Uwe et al.

The beef of meteoritics as science and as hobby are the stones.
For more than 200 years meteorite studies and meteorite collecting is based
on private initiatives, collectors, hunters and dealers bringing up new
stones and irons.

Therefore the introducing of new finds and new meteorites or already known,
but rare or remarkable specimens, is a natural part of this list and that
this happens with a more or less commercial background is natural too,
because it is neither a solely academic, neither a sole collector's list,
but THE universal forum for meteorites.

Note, that on the list many of the most interesting and scientifically most
important meteorites, desert finds, new main masses, new falls of the last
decade had their premiere on this list here, where you are sitting in the
first row! And often it happened in form of an "AD".

Check the archives, how man data, news, interesting information these ads
delivered and how often fruitful discussions unfolded after such
advertisements.

I - half as old as the mountains, remember the days, where there wasn't any
internet yet. The collectors (and often the scientists too) couldn't keep up
with new recoveries and neither with the offers of material for their
collections else, than to visit the 2-3 shows per year, where meteorites
were offered or to exchange letters ect.
(How glad they would have been, id something like this list would have
existed including the offers coming in here).

But also nowadays I have the impression many members do indeed appreciate
the advertisements. Often they get the material first-hand here, with new
material also they are the first to choose, the contact to the seller is
completely different than e.g. on ebay and additionally they can discuss the
offered material with like-minded people
And finally they save a lot of time.
Not all have the time or are in the mood, to spend hours and days in front
of the ebay-pages, browsing the thousands of auctions of for them not so
interesting material, waiting until a piece fitting in their collection or
for their purposes comes swimming by and to have to stay awake at night or
having the obligation being at home, when the auction will end.
Nor do all having the time to browse all the dealers' pages, and checking
them regularly for updates.

Admittedly the technical standard of the list is outdated, in our times such
a format is a dinosaur.
And so what? New and modern doesn't mean automatically better.
The list is wonderful simple and works perfectly - people like it,
And as always: tribute to the chief Art!

If you prefer a more modern structured and more fancy designed forum,
you do have some alternatives. There are 2 fora in USA, 1 in France and 1
for Germany/Austria/Switzerland. (but the best music still plays here!).

Of course I can understand that members feel molested by commercial ads,
but they have possibilities to avoid to get them on their disks.
You can choose, whether you get only a digest of the postings here, you can
keep your computer completely free of list-mails in reading the postings
online in the archives or - because almost all members are so civilized to
enclose "AD" or "SALE" in the title of their advertisements, you can
automatically sort them out in virtue of these catchwords into a separate
folder of your email-program.

Haven't checked the archives, but I guess the Ads count in for a bearable
10-15% of all posts.
And as Al mentioned already, all agreed to the limitation of max. 1 Ad per
nose and week - and all members are disciplined enough to follow that rule.

Better to say: almost all. Only one among a thousand members has for many
years now difficulties to understand this rule. Chicago-Steve - but it is
much better with him now. In November he posted just once more 8 ads, in Oct
11, in Sep 10 - in his best times he used 5-10 Ads per week.
He's tolerated to have this privilege, singleing him out of all the other
1000+ members, not so because of his achievements he had done to the
meteoritic world, but rather he seems to have been adopted as a mascot of
the meteorite-mailing-list (else I can't explain, why he hadn't been thrown
off yet).

So all in all, I think, it's o.k.

Best!
Martin


----- Original Message -----
From: <m42protosun at aol.com>
To: <star_wars_collector at yahoo.com>; <Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Tuesday, December 16, 2008 1:14 AM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] THIS IS NOT THE IMCA list. TAKE IT ELSEWHERE



Greg and List,
I agree. Many dealers udse this list as advertisment.
In my mind too this is not the sense of such a list.
Uwe (spell ew ve)
Received on Tue 16 Dec 2008 09:23:06 AM PST