Head First ?

[Rangarajan Suresh]

Hi,
I dont find any rational behind the double standard being followed by ranch.
Kathy and Bert bates write stories about their upcoming book. They can even find volunteers to help complete their book.(Ofcourse, I dont find anything wrong with it). But, some Pradeep can not invite people to give comments on an article he has written(thatz relevant too).
I am surprised to see this because, I have found that Javaranch is otherwise a really nice community.

[Valentin Crettaz]

What do you mean by "double standard"?
Javaranch is an open community where everybody is free to contribute or not. If Kathy and Bert want to give some insights about their book and make people benefit from it before it goes on the shelves, they are free to do so.
If Pradeep Chopra wants to allow people to give comments about one of his article on the EJB certification, he is also free to do so.
My apologies if I missed your point, but I do not really see what you want to express. Please enlighten us
Moreover, I hope you don't mind if I move this to the Javaranch forum since this post is not really relevant to the EJB certification.
[ September 10, 2003: Message edited by: Valentin Crettaz ]

[Cindy Glass]

Of course that depends on how you look at it. I moved the post that you are referring to to Blatant Advertising. Notice that I did NOT delete the original post. So the end result is that
1) The post with the link to his article is now in TWO places offering more exposure.
2) The post gets moved to the top of the list TWICE in the "Today's active Topics" list, which means that more people will see it.
Folks are free to comment on his article in Blatant Advertising. To make this easier, I went back and added a link to the moved topic in the original.
Kathy and Bert have had announcements about their book in Blatant Advertising.
Actually, if the article were a book instead, I might have moved it to the "Bunkhouse Porch" forum instead, but right now we do not have a similar forum for articles.
I am not sure what book related discussions that you are referring to that Kathy and Bert have had in one of the technical forums, but if it WAS book related, and not answering a question, then is SHOULD get moved to the "Bunkhouse Porch". Let me know which ones that you are talking about and I will move them.

[Rangarajan Suresh]

Fine.
Hey, I dont want to make too much fuss about it.(Dont need my 15 mins of fame )
Anyway, Just to enlighten Valentin:
http://www.coderanch.com/forums/
http://www.coderanch.com/t/157784/java-EJB-SCBCD/certification/Kathy-Book
http://www.coderanch.com/t/157632/java-EJB-SCBCD/certification/Kathy-book-SCBCD
The above topics contain a fairly open advertisement of the HeadFirst EJB book. So does Pradeeps thread on his article. Both of them help people preparing for the SCBCD, though it might be in varying degrees. Hope thats plain enough.
Retiring with that.

[Cindy Glass]

OK, I moved the first one to the Bunkhouse Porch. But just like Pradeeps, I left it in the original forum.
The other two were just questions asked by other users. They were not Kathy and Bert promoting their book or their site.
Folks have questions and discussions about Whizlabs stuff sometimes also. For the most part we just leave that be.
This is not really rigidly adhered to. My life is too short to make it a point to be diligent about enforcing some of this stuff. On the other hand we DO want to try to keep the forums from being cluttered with folks trying to get attention for their personal products - so we make judgement calls.
It is possible that we are more lenient towards folks that have contributed more to the Ranch, than folks who just show up to promote their product. However, that is not necessarily our intent.

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by Cindy Glass:
It is possible that we are more lenient towards folks that have contributed more to the Ranch, than folks who just show up to promote their product. However, that is not necessarily our intent.

Well, actually it is our intent. If you are a regular contributor and you have something to promote we are far more likely to ignore it than if you are someone we don't know and has never contributed to the ranch. It's call giving mutual benefit. You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. And that is not a double standard.