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[News] AmigaRing status updateANN.lu
Posted on 24-Nov-2002 23:24 GMT by Mike Bouma14 comments
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I have written a small update about the current status of AmigaRing, which also includes a small letter to the Amiga community, within which I try to express my believes and hopes on how I believe the Amiga community could function more effectively. Feedback will be most welcomed. Local copy:

Dear Amiga community,

There are several things I would like bring to your attention:

Regarding AmigaRing:

Most members have now successfully registered their information with the new Webring system. If you haven't done so already, then please contact me, so I can help you with adding your information correctly. Imporant is that you should never use a fake or incorrect email address. Your email address will stay hidden for everyone including me, but if your email address is incorrectly registered with the Webring service, I will not be able to contact you through the internal Webring mailing system.

Also I took the time to inspect all the websites of AmigaRing members, this to evaluate if all member websites conform to all given criteria. Currently we have a 100% webring integrity. To ensure the highest amount of visibility of both AmigaRing itself and its members, I am paying Webring to enable us to receive the best possible search results and also allowing specific Amiga community targeted advertisement oppertunities within AmigaRing, with banners up to 728 x 90 on all Hub pages. In addition I will allow maximumly 3 members to feature their websites within AmigaRing more prominently. Contact me if you are interested.

Regarding the Amiga community:

I would like to make some requests to all webmasters and members of the Amiga community. Many things have changed over the last few years and finally several Amiga community projects are coming to fruition, therefor I would like to ask you to keep your websites up to date or to delete obsolete content and add redirections to other better maintained websites. Also over the years many website locations have changed, so please update your weblinks as well. This to allow new interested individuals to find relevant and up to date information as effectively as possible.

Another important request is geared towards supporters of these rival projects. Although competition and rational and constructive criticism should in my opinion be applauded, I believe it is truly in our best interest to stay objective, non-hostile and keeping misinformation or flamewars to a minimum. Many recent Amiga shows and trade-fairs have shown that rival projects can live peacefully next to eachother, there even are many overlapping efforts between some projects and also good relationships between developers supporting different Amiga community projects. Please show some respect for eachother and don't bindly judge situations or issues, for which most people simply don't have any access to insider information or just hear one side of the story from a 3rd party.

I am looking forward to seeing many of you at the upcoming big German Amiga fair, which is going to be held on the 7th and 8th of December 2002 at the Eurogress in Aachen. :-) Finally, I have written several OSNews articles these last couple of months, covering different Amiga community projects, your feedback on those articles will be welcomed:

Recent OSNews topics:

2002-07-15 - A Closer Look at the New Amiga Systems (Article)
2002-11-01 - AmigaOne Motherboards with G3/G4 CPUs Now on Sale (News item)
2002-11-22 - New AmigaOS4 Screenshots (News Item)

2002-08-19 - Classic AmigaOS Emulation - A Guide for WinUAE (Article)
2002-10-08 - A Closer Look at MorphOS on the PEGASOS (Article)
2002-11-05 - First WoASE Show Reports and Highlights (Show roundup)

Sincerely, Mike Bouma.
AmigaRing http://www.stormloader.com/amiga
List of all comments to this article
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Comment 1mahen25-Nov-2002 14:09 GMT
Comment 2Christophe Decanini25-Nov-2002 14:48 GMT
Comment 3Mike Bouma25-Nov-2002 15:29 GMT
Comment 4Christophe Decanini25-Nov-2002 15:43 GMT
Comment 5Christophe Decanini25-Nov-2002 16:39 GMT
Comment 6Anonymous25-Nov-2002 16:58 GMT
Comment 7Christophe Decanini25-Nov-2002 17:01 GMT
Comment 8Mike Bouma25-Nov-2002 17:13 GMT
Comment 9Christophe Decanini25-Nov-2002 17:28 GMT
Comment 10Mike Bouma25-Nov-2002 17:57 GMT
AmigaRing status update : Comment 11 of 14ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 25-Nov-2002 18:35 GMT
In reply to Comment 9 (Christophe Decanini):
Hmmm, yes, off the top of my head I can actually point out many many more examples of Hermans commenting in public on the products, actions, plans, competence, employees and whatnot of other companies, than giving useful information about his own company's product.
OTOH I can't, OTTOMH, recall that I've seen e.g. BB/Thendic/Genesi ever comment in a similar fashion on Hyperion or its employees, products etc. Yeah, that Google search term sponsoring of "ben hermans" was childish/flattering/amusing (depending on how you look at it) but I don't see any outright berating of competitors.
In any case I don't think it's a good idea to write allegedly unbiased technical articles for tech news sites based only on what's really nothing but hearsay. Yes, it's from the horse's mouth so to speak, at least when it's about the horse's product, but that does not equal objectivity.
Company X, to article author: "Our product Y will be really really great, buy our stuff, company Z sucks".
Article: "Y will be really really great, buy their stuff, and Z sucks".
Such an article would be of no interest to the readership, it's no different from reading some PR on the company site, and would gain no credibility in the eyes of the reader over that company PR. Add your own thoughts, cut through the marketing fluff, discuss pros and cons, and FFS get info from several mutually independent sources and treat the info with equal skepticism!
N.B. I'm not trying to diss your articles in particular, Mike. After that "buy a T-shirt" article on OSNews, I'm happy to see the vast improvement since then, and I find them more and more informative and interesting. I'm merely objecting to some of the "general advice" or whatever I should call it that you give out here.
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#12 Mike Bouma
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List of all comments to this article (continued)
Comment 12Mike Bouma25-Nov-2002 18:54 GMT
Comment 13Asemoon25-Nov-2002 21:00 GMT
Comment 14Mike Bouma25-Nov-2002 21:14 GMT
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