Re: Just curious . . . .

> Why do all the parents have to go through the help desk?

> Are they not allowed to post directly from their own home computers like
> the rest of us? Or are their home computers routed through Linda Cristas
> before going on line?

That was my question. It was Roadie's question as well. The IP came from a home address of Pac Bell, in a town that is not the LC headquarters. In fact, it's about 50 miles away.

When I pinged and tracerouted, it didn't appear to hit a corporate firewall. The firewall it hit was different from the LC homepages and from all other computers associated with LC. That group of connections wasn't owned under the LC name, in fact.

You will also find it interesting to google on some of the phrases in the ...replies. (I say "replies" because I nuked off six copies of the same message that were posted as "replies" to other messages here.)

> That skirts around really scarey control issues. Mind control - computer
> control - does the Linda Cristas help desk have a "forum post
> police?"

They might. We have seen other companies that have very bad reputations have their gang of apologists attempt to overcome a board with "positive postings" and hype. We've also seen threats and similar tactics from companies with poor reputations.

Note that there are literally millions of companies that do NOT have this kind of policing, including Disney and a lot of the MLMs (I don't care for them and have much negative to say about them, but there's a fair number of them that don't have a Forum Police Patrol.)

The companies I have seen with the FPP attempts generally have both sock puppets and apologist crowds. (I am not saying LC is one... I am merely talking about the ones like the last set of ... people... who tried sueing Lesley for the same sort of thing and got their hindquarters handed to them along with a very large bill for annoying the judge and abusing the time of several lawyers.) These companies generally have reputations and credentials that won't stand up to scrutiny.

Let me give an example of this: companies that claim to have an association with a magazine when the only real association was that one of their members placed an article with the company. I sold short stories to Baen Press some 10 years ago for a book anthology -- but it would be an outright lie for me to claim that I was associated with Baen on the grounds of selling them 4 short stories.

Companies with ForumPatrolPolice and SockPuppetHerds usually have someone with ... inflated ... credentials on their staff. I saw someone who bought a PhD from a diploma mill try to use that as his credential. Another I encountered said they had a glowing testimonial from a recently deceased scientist.

You can certainly have gripes against real companies and companies that are legit and wonderful. IRobot, for instance, has some griped out consumers (their robot vacum cleaners (I have one and just LOVE it) have a high rate of failure. But they do replace the ones under warranty, and Rosie III is now in my living room, sucking up dirt and doing her job.) However, even with those issues, you don't see IRobot employees prowling all the forums (I know, because I'm on those too) and posting defensively about their company and so forth.

Nor do the hordes of us satisfied robot owners run around and post "have you tried one of those robot things?" messages and then follow them later with "Why yes I have! I love it!" or post a message about "I would like to clear up some stuff..." and come in 3 minutes later with "I see you couldn't sleep either. I would like to add to what you say."

Food for thought.