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Announcing Consumer Democracy (r): Beta Testers Wanted
Question:
Your stuff would look a lot more professional if you remove the stupid (r) after each occurence of Consumer Democracy. If that’s supposed to be a registration mark it: 1. Isn’t very nicely portrayed 2. Is only required the first time your trademark appears. 3. Third, you seem to use it interchangabley with [TM] on your web page (equally silly, with HTML you can get the CORRECT symbol). If you don’t have registration on the trademark you really ought not to be pretending you do. Second, your terms and coniditions are rediculous. You SPAM these newsgroups and then you insist that your users that you are relying upon for your future treat this whole thing like it was some sort of trade secret? Come back when you’re serious.
Response:
Announcing Consumer Democracy (r): Beta Testers Wanted Come rave or complain about a product! You are invited to review a product or two that you have personal experience with. It only takes a few seconds. http://www.consudem.com/cdem A good way to make products get better is to tell others about the ones you love and the ones you have had problems with–calmly, fairly and objectively, in a way that helps others. This is an opportunity to become an early participant in Consumer Democracy (r). We believe that some of our most popular contributors may become well known, and could find unexpected opportunities open up to them. We invite you to review products you like and ones you don’t. A simple review can be completed in a few seconds, or you may want to write longer ones to see if you earn top ratings from other users.. FEATURES: o Everyone can list products of interest o Everyone can review products they use o Everyone can express their opinions freely o Everyone can vote on just about everything o Everything is ranked most popular on top o Popular messages are retained indefinitely o Quality information rises to the top o Every one can post questions and referenda and watch the answers collect o Everyone is asked to spend a few seconds answering brief questions so the answers can be pooled. This gives consumers access to product information that isn’t available anywhere else for free. Imagine you are going out to make an important purchase tonight. What kind of information would you like to have? That’s the kind of information you should put in your review. But wait! Consumer Democracy (r) is a new idea. The site is in beta test and we are looking for thoughtful folks to participate in our beta test. We need users to enter mini reviews and also to offer us suggestions on how we can improve the site. If you would like to be one of the first to participate check out: http://www.consudem.com/cdem Please use moderate language and balance your positive and negative opinions. Everyone respects fairness. WHAT TO EXPECT: o We sometimes send hand composed email messages to users thanking them for their suggestions and asking for clarification and further ways that we might improve. o We ask for your email address and send you a message confirming it. This prevents one individual from using another’s email address. o Our site creates "cookies" on your hard drive. This is a standard and widespread means of storing information that makes the site easier for you to use. When you come back to the site, for example, logging in again is simplified. Each user can decide not to accept cookies. o We are not copying your posted messages onto our site. Instead we offer a place where you yourself can enter your messages if you would like others to have access to them. If a particular newsgroup develops a consensus that they would like us to automatically incorporate postings we do have that capability, but we would consider it presumptuous to do so without grass roots support. o We love the newsgroups and would never try to change them. It is our hope we might be part of making them even more popular. There really can be no substitute for that kind of interactive, lively, thoughtful experience. Consumer Democracy (r) is a place where users may want to place messages that they feel may have more lasting value but should not be thought of as a replacement. ANSWERS TO SPECIFIC QUESTIONS Q: Who does the reviews? A: Our main idea is that what users most want to know is what kind of experience other users are having with products. Users create reviews themselves so the answer is "of the people, by the people, for the people". We would like to provide a service to users who want to share information about products Q: How do you ensure the impartiality of the reviews? A: Every user who wants to can contribute a review–they only take a few seconds to complete. This enables us to show the overall voting patterns, averages, etc. Also, users can vote on how helpful each other’s reviews are. Q: Why does it download cookies to my machine? A: We are just storing the standard cookies as many sites do.. We can create better software for users by doing this. The best information on cookies might be found by consulting the extensive write-ups and discussion elsewhere so you can learn from an independent source what they entail. Q: Why don’t you publish a few sample reviews? A: We are just getting started and don’t in fact know yet which reviews are worthy. In CD the users themselves decide what is good and what is not good. We expect some contributors to achieve quite a reputation, and it could be a good suggestion publish samples. We just aren’t there yet. It’s pioneer time for us. Q: Are we in the business of spamming new members? A: Definitely not. We send personal email to answer specific questions and acknowledge problems. We would like everyone to know that we *do* send an automatic mail message to new users asking them to confirm that they would like their enrollment will be permanent. Q: How will we make money to support the site? Will there be advertisements? A: We don’t know all the answers to these questions. We do have an unshakable commitment to not allowing companies to influence the information on the site. ("Promises to Users" http://www.consudem.com/cdem) The information provided by users would have little value if manufacturers could introduce their bias. Also, we really can’t imagine how it would ever make sense to ask everyday users to pay fees so we are not considering that. We imagine that companies whose products are very popular may want to place advertisements, but for us the most important thing is the usability and helpfulness of the site, so we would not want the placement of ads to adversely affect that. We have invested our own savings and time because we believe Consumer Democracy is a very important thing. Should we use advertising to fund improvements and extensions that users will inevitably request? We have already done the work to bring the site up (and to offer several releases of new features) and we own five machines to run the site, so we have time to answer these questions. A lot will depend on how users want this site to evolve. Q: Are reviewers going to be paid? A: You will see in our site that users have the opportunity to vote on the helpfulness of reviews. The main idea behind the site is that consumers can help each other by sharing information. We are interested in introducing a system in which the most popular reviewers are handsomely rewarded, but are not in a position to announce this at the present time. Reviewers are currently not paid other than by the appreciation of other users who they have helped. . Q: What kind of reviews are we looking for? Detailed ones based on long-term use, or short overviews based on general impressions? A: Many types of reviews are welcome provided that the reviewer has significant personal experience with the product. We believe very short reviews that can be completed in less than a minute are very valuable since they give considerable perspective when provided by many users. Q: Can a single review tell the whole story on a product? A: While it is our philosophy never to underestimate what a single individual can do, we believe the answer is generally no. An objective picture can emerge from multiple reviews of the same product. Q: Can Consumer Democracy (r) be as fast-moving, colorful, witty or fun as many of the newsgroups? A: Probably not. CD is intended to move a little bit slower than the newsgroups. We are hopeful that some of the same witty individuals will participate, but view CD as a repository of messages that might have a longer life. We like to think it might be just as interesting, but don’t really see how it could develop the tongue-in-cheek repartee that brings the newsgroups to life day after day. Q: Is part of the philosophy to split newsgroups into smaller pieces? A: We never thought of ourselves as splintering off part of a newsgroup since we don’t really think we have the same function. It is true that Consumer Democracy (r) does split each product category into many subcategories to organize review information but that is not related to splitting up a newsgroup community. Our dream was that the newsgroups would go on as they always had but some postings would refer to messages that had been placed in Consumer Democracy (r) where they would be more accessible over the long term. We will see if users find CD useful in that way. Q Why is there a user agreement at Consumer Democracy since there aren’t any in the newsgroups? A The main factor is that Consumer Democracy (r) is a central web site, rather than a distributed posting mechanism. There are many reasons that have been frequently discussed since the Internet became popular. Such agreements are common and can be found on many sites. A number of books on the Internet can explain
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