George Mason University has bought a Vocabula Review site license

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Fri, Nov 05, 2010 at 11:42:58AM -0400, Laurence Horn wrote:
> At 3:17 PM +0000 11/5/10, Michael Quinion wrote:
>>  > George Mason University has bought a Vocabula Review site license.
>>
>> What relevance, other than commercial puffery, does this have to do with
>> the ADS? Does the Society now allow advertising on this list?
>>
> I don't think "allow" really applies here, since the list is
> unmoderated.  I believe Mr. Fiske is the only offender (albeit a
> regular one) of the implicit ban on commercial puffery.

Actually, I believe we have agreed in the past that an
occasional message announcing language-related things for sale
(whether books, online sources, etc.), especially those
produced by a listmember, was acceptable for this list. The
fact that Mr. Fiske does not otherwise contribute to the list,
and that his views are opposed to those of most list members,
might be the main issue here.

Since the quantity of such messages is not overwhelming (and
they could be easily filtered out), and, as is usual, all
recent such messages have already been overwhelmed by this
very discussion about them, I'd say that we should just accept
the occasional one and move on.

Jesse Sheidlower
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