[kw-pm] [kwlug disc.] from the LUG book contact at o'reilly

Daniel R. Allen da at coder.com
Sat Jul 26 17:52:30 CDT 2003


On Sat, 26 Jul 2003, Simon Law wrote:

> On Sat, Jul 26, 2003 at 10:32:51AM -0400, Daniel R. Allen wrote:
> > I expect we might have a different result if we published an unfavourable
> > review on slashdot.
>
>         Yeah, but I'd rather have the reputation of being an honest
> reviewer, than one that could be bought by free (and potentially bad)
> books.

Absolutely.  I didn't mean to give the impression that I was suggesting
otherwise.  One's reputation for integrity and honesty, and that of our
group, is worth more than free books.

My sentence above ought to have a slightly rueful smiley after it.  When I
wrote it, I meant to gently tease Lloyd, who was a good enough sport to
write the negative review for the O'Reilly XML book which, frankly,
deserved a negative review.

As for Robert's question, "what if it was an absolute dog of a book", I
would say there is nothing dishonourable about only publishing the review
locally, and not on Slashdot.  My comment was only about *where* the
review was published, not at all about watering down the contents.

If somebody in the group wanted to publish a really negative oreilly
review on slashdot (for a book they got for review), I'd suggest we
discuss it as a group and come to a general agreement.  Sure, there might
be a book so bad we need to warn the world.  But this is a hypothetical
case, and I don't think it's necessarily worth hashing over until that
really awful book comes up!

Cheers,
-Daniel

> Simon








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