General discussion

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  • #2187173

    About the Carrot being offered for member profile updating…

    Locked

    by zetacon4 ·

    Am I the only person who finds the offer of iPod minis totally un-interesting as a gimick?
    I’m personally NOT updating my profile during this period so I am not entered in the drawing.
    May I suggest offering something of interest and value to programmers and developers such as great books or other resource material to help us with our work? I don’t want an iPod if given one! Not everybody thinks this stuff is the hottest thing since sliced bread!
    Thank you for letting me air my opinion. I’m waiting for those amazing and very interesting comments to follow!

All Comments

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    • #3239964

      Carrot

      by black panther ·

      In reply to About the Carrot being offered for member profile updating…

      I was happy to do it for nothing – not sure if they would send an ipod to Australia.

    • #3239939

      Am I the only person …

      by stress junkie ·

      In reply to About the Carrot being offered for member profile updating…

      … that sees a connection between too many businesses, LIKE TR, collecting more personal information than they need and the loss of personal privacy.(My keyboard shift keys are starting to fail on certain keys like the question mark.)

      The discussion forum just yesterday had a discussion started entitled “Your Privacy Has Been Violated”.
      http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-6230-0.html?forumID=88&threadID=173065&start=0

      I’m sick to death of businesses with no need to know my identity asking me my name, phone number, address, favorite color, hobbies, how many sheets of toilet paper I use, etc. when I want to do business with them. Pretty soon people will be asking for your personal information when you want to buy a hamburger. Why do you think McDonald’s and Wendy’s restaurants are now accepting credit cards. It’s so that they can collect personal information on their customers. Why do you think that CVS and other retailers have “customer care cards” that offer you a few cents off of your purchases. It’s so that they can track what you buy and when you buy it.

      TR doesn’t need to know my home and business phone numbers and if you read the TR policy on the use of this information it clearly states that TR will share that information with THEIR customers, i.e. advertisers.

      I made a similar post some months ago in the feedback forum. Nobody commented. Apparently people are perfectly happy to have TR sell their personal information to anyone with a few dollars. Is it any wonder that identify theft is the leading crime growth category.

      So go ahead and give out all of your personal information to TR and to Sears and to JiffyLube, but don’t piss and moan when publicly accessible databases contain a complete profile of your entire life. Information aggregators like Lexis Nexis already know more about you than do the members of your own family and that information is for sale.

      • #3240879

        Well they didn’t get my address

        by tony hopkinson ·

        In reply to Am I the only person …

        or phone even though I did fill in the profile. If I win something and they want to mail it. I’ll post it back. If it’s an iPod thay can stuff it, I prefer my suppositories to be of a smaller dimension.

        Why didn’t they make it something useful like a memory sticks or a USB drive ?

      • #3240817

        meh

        by jmgarvin ·

        In reply to Am I the only person …

        I give my business address and email. I let the corporate lawyers take care of it 😉

      • #3242312

        Member profiles

        by smorty71 ·

        In reply to Am I the only person …

        The reason we have built these member profile pages (believe it or not) is to provide a service to our members.

        The basic idea is that your member profile data is helpful to you and to other members of the TR community. They can see what you’re interested in, what technologies you are using and what you’ve said previously in the forum. A lot of our members wanted to be able to qualify who they are talking to.

        For the member who maintains their profile, we are building a lot of new products and services that use that info to improve the site experience.

        For example, if you create a Contacts list of other members you like, we can show you all the Post from your Contacts. This is designed to improve the efficiency of finding the posts from people you have identified as important.

        Also, we are expanding the tagging features so that when you click on a member’s interest, you can see other members who are also interested in that topic as well as discussion threads or technical Q&A questions or blog posts that share the same tag. Again, it’s about making the site more efficient by relating more things together in one place.

        In the future, we are planning on adding lots of other features that are based on the very minimal profile data (interests, technologies implemented) we collect. The idea is that the site and its features should be smart enough to figure out what things you might like based on what you’ve told us about yourself. I personally hate sites that expect the member to “build” their personalized view from scratch.

        So, we on the Community team have no evil intentions in regard to your profile data. In fact, our philosophy within our team has been to not ask for any information that doesn’t improve the user experience.

        I hope that addresses some of your concerns.
        sm

        • #3242254

          Party line … no surprises here

          by stress junkie ·

          In reply to Member profiles

          I have confused the issue by talking about two things in this one discussion. I’m sorry about that.

          The main point that I was trying to make overall in this discussion is the way more and more businesses want to collect information about their customers and the obvious correlation with the increase in identity theft. In that respect I have included TR as one of many businesses doing the same thing.

          I took the opportunity to make a second point about TR specifically. This probably obscured the meaning of my entire post. The second objection that I have, specific to TR, is that the last time that I tried to download a white paper I was confronted with a personal data form which showed that I would have to provide my home and business phone numbers and my street address in order to download the white paper.

          Getting back to my main point in this discussion, any business collecting information about their customers will say that they are doing that in order to provide better service to them.

          As a computer support technician/engineer/consultant/whatever privacy and security issues are very much a part of the scope of my professional concerns. That is true about almost all TR members. Yet TR members appear to be as happy as any ignorant Ma and Pa Kettle to give over their personal information to whoever is asking for it. To me that says that even professionals whose job is focused in part on security and privacy don’t understand or don’t care about the problems associated with doing this. If any group should be expected to object to being asked for private information it should be computer support professionals. Yet this does not appear to be the case.

        • #3242165

          Ah, I see

          by smorty71 ·

          In reply to Party line … no surprises here

          I thought you were referring to the Community features (Discussions, Tech Q&A, member profiles).

          The white paper directory does have a different requirement for access than what we do here in the Community features. And because I don’t know all of the ins and outs of their policies, I will refrain from speculating.

          I still believe that asking for what things you’re interested in and what technologies you’re using is very different from obtaining personally identifiable info.

          I know you may not believe me; however, our Community team is focusing on using your profile data (interests, technologies and contacts) to build more useful features.

          sm

        • #3241562

          There is a limit to what you give

          by jdclyde ·

          In reply to Party line … no surprises here

          Now I haven’t seen where they ask for SS numbers, banks I do business with and the like.

          Suppling name and WORK phone number is hardly a major security risk. Much less of a risk than when taking the family out for dinner and pay with a credit card which people do all the time.

          If they ask for information you don’t want to give, LIE like everyone else does.

          I think your just stressing, you junkie. (I kill myself sometimes!)

        • #3242122

          Profiles mysterious change

          by j.lupo ·

          In reply to Member profiles

          Today my profile changed and my current technologies section was empty. I don’t know why it happend and I re-entered data. I guess that is one way to remove someone from the sweepstate/contest. 🙁 Not that I believe it was deliberate. 😉

      • #3240241

        Stereo shop

        by gralfus ·

        In reply to Am I the only person …

        I went to a stereo shop to buy some CDs, and they wanted my name and address, which I declined to give them. So no sale. Totally ridiculous. Store policy overrode the store making money. I will never shop at that chain again.

        And then there are the websites that make me sign up just to get news (not even a place I can post). I finally decided to sacrifice a gmail account specifically for these sorts of pages. The only reason they would want an email account is to sell it to a spammer.

        • #3240226

          I usually just say …

          by stress junkie ·

          In reply to Stereo shop

          “I’m paying cash so you don’t need to know anything else about me.” It’s amazing how often these people get upset. It’s as if they think that we owe them this information.

    • #3240704

      How about TechProGuild Membership to TR instead?

      by hockeyist ·

      In reply to About the Carrot being offered for member profile updating…

      Win/Win. Makes sense to me. Promoting their own site instead of supporting Apple’s almost redundant technology.

    • #3240684

      Restricted to USA

      by bernardhaston ·

      In reply to About the Carrot being offered for member profile updating…

      Why is it that this carrot is only available to US citizens?
      I checked the rules before updating my profile and have now decided not to bother since I am excluded from winning any prize.

      • #3242068

        Because iPod has top secret NSA encryption technology

        by why me worry? ·

        In reply to Restricted to USA

        that cannot be exported outside the U.S.

        they are afraid of iPod technology being turned into military radar jammers and bombs that can be used against us by the “evildoers”

    • #3240665

      Have you no children, young adults..

      by bhunsinger ·

      In reply to About the Carrot being offered for member profile updating…

      or pawnshops in your life? I’ll take it cause I don’t own any mp3 player, but with the orgy of graduations around the corner…

    • #3242378

      They are trying at least

      by jdclyde ·

      In reply to About the Carrot being offered for member profile updating…

      and then you choose to be rude about it.

      While it is fair that this is not a product of interest to you, a simple “no thank you” would work.

      Don’t piss on everyone elses parade just because you don’t think they are giving out enough FREE stuff on a web site that you use FREE.

      They are doing a lot, and to top that they have to put up with Oz on a daily basis. Cut them some slack.

      Have a nice day.

      • #3242329

        ROFL

        by cg it ·

        In reply to They are trying at least

        Oz does make reading the discussion board worthwhile though ROFL.

      • #3240255

        Second jdclyde

        by jmgarvin ·

        In reply to They are trying at least

        It is FREE stuff on a FREE site where we can get FREE information for FREE.

        I’m glad they are giving away stuff. Hell, I’d give away my first born for a free iPod.

      • #3240165

        jdclyde: Hear Hear!

        by softcorp.us ·

        In reply to They are trying at least

        I agree with jdclyde.

        Children: “No thank you” is the appropriate response here and best expressed in silence.

        Of course you have to be careful about who you give information to online. But, you know who the bad guys are and TechRepublic is not one of them. Putting information in your TR profile is completely voluntary and you can remain completely anonymous if you want. So what is with all of the grousing?

        TR’s privacy policy is completely fine and above board (see snip at the bottom of my post). TR does not sell your personal information.

        I have noticed that only about 4 out of 10 people asking questions in Q&A ever bother to acknowledge and rate the answers they get from generous strangers. About the same ratio of people in the U.S. care enough to vote consistently. So, this rudeness is consistent and expected, but always disappointing.

        You guys are barking up the wrong tree! Try to find a way to make a positive contribution.

        —–Steve

        ——————–

        From TR’s privacy policy:

        BEGIN SNIP

        Personally identifiable information
        We will make your personally identifiable information available to other companies or people when:

        * We have your consent to share the information;

        * We have engaged companies to work with us or on our behalf to provide a product or service that you have requested, such as opt-in e-mail announcements;

        * You use cobranded services. When you use a cobranded service within our network of sites, you grant us permission to pass your registration information back to that service partner. Their use of your information is subject to their applicable privacy policies;

        * We respond to subpoenas, court orders, or legal process; or we believe that your actions violate applicable laws, CNET Networks’ Terms of Use, or any usage guidelines for specific products or services, or threaten the rights, property, or safety of our company, our users, or others.

        END SNIP

    • #3242305

      It was our first sweepstakes

      by smorty71 ·

      In reply to About the Carrot being offered for member profile updating…

      This was our first attempt at doing a sweepstakes that our members might find appealing. The iPods were the first prize we decided to try. They are definitely not the only one we plan to offer.

      By doing this sweepstakes, we’ve learned a lot about what we can do legally in terms of awarding prizes. We originally approached it from the goodwill side only (we want to reward our members, so let’s give them some prizes) and didn’t consider things like signed releases for prize winners and geographic limitations.

      We’ve also learned that our members want a variety of incentives including books, gift certificates, computer hardware, software and, yes, even more iPods.

      Based on this experience, we are going to take a look at what prizes we offer and how we offer them. It has been eye-opening for us; however, we still think it is important to reward our members with cool stuff.

      If anyone else has suggestions on the types of prizes you would like to see offered, please let us know.

      sm

      • #3242117

        International ones

        by tony hopkinson ·

        In reply to It was our first sweepstakes

        unless you are planning techrepublic.com.co.uk !

        • #3242045

          International?

          by montgomery gator ·

          In reply to International ones

          I am not sure I understand. Is there a restriction on using iPods outside of the USA? Well, if we are going to have international prizes, I would like to have about ?1000, or the equivalent in Euros, or Yen. 🙂

    • #3242069

      Screw iPod, give me lifetime supply of Jolt Cola and Cheetos

      by why me worry? ·

      In reply to About the Carrot being offered for member profile updating…

      the de-facto food of every IT professional

      I can be bribed with those things, like creating your system account quicker, or magically erasing the web browser history log from your PC so that your boss won’t know you were checking out Teensluts.com during business hours

    • #3242065

      Will Ed McMahon announce the winner?

      by why me worry? ·

      In reply to About the Carrot being offered for member profile updating…

      or will TR spam everyone with the personal info of the winner?

    • #3240239

      An iPod isn’t going to make me update my profile

      by av . ·

      In reply to About the Carrot being offered for member profile updating…

      I like your idea about books. Maybe a selection of different ones. How about stuff for Network or Exchange Administrators too.

      Honestly though, I don’t know if any gift would really motivate me to update my profile. I have to do that in my own time.

    • #3240134

      thinking outside the pod

      by wordworker ·

      In reply to About the Carrot being offered for member profile updating…

      See you’re just not in touch with the real IT world! It’s a Win-appl’-ux world out there and this sweepstakes is pushing the envelope of clever irony. I’m hoping they’ll give away a PC running KDI and Debian, Slackware or Red-Hat next.

      • #3239394

        Are you in touch with real IT, sucka?

        by Shawn Morton ·

        In reply to thinking outside the pod

        A subscription to PC World doesn’t count! If you don’t want the damn iPod, then don’t enter the damn sweepstakes. We don’t need to hear your jibba jabba about irony. TR has always been good to me and I won’t tolerate your playa hatin’!

        Mr. T, Fool!

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