st: New StataCorp blog

[wgould@stata.com (William Gould, StataCorp LP)]

StataCorp has just put up a new blog called N.E.C. -- Not Elsewhere
Classified -- at http://blog.stata.com.  We are telling Statalist 
first. 

I have two goals in writing this posting, 

    1.  To convince you to take a look, and to convince you to look
        again over the next week as the blog develops.

    2.  To reassure the members of Statalist that the blog is not 
        intended to compete with Statalist, that it will not reduce 
        StataCorp partricipation on Statalist, and that it might
        even be useful to the list.  If the blog does have a 
        negative impact on Statalist, we will change the blog.

The purpose of N.E.C. is to keep users up-to-date about all things
Stata.  This includes product announcements from StataCorp, product
announcements from others such as interesting new computers, service
announcements such as on-site and public training by StataCorp or by
others, timely tips and comments, and news and advice releated to the
use of Stata.  Having written that, and knowing our plans, this sounds 
more mundane than we intend the blog to be.

The articles appearing in the blog will be individually signed.
Nearly everyone at StataCorp will be participating: people from
development, technical services, sales, and marketing.  N.E.C. is
intended to be useful, will be informal, and might be entertaining.

There are other fine blogs about Stata, and we will maintain a blog roll
on the right side of N.E.C. so that you can find them.  There will
also be Links to Others.  You can find resources for learning Stata,
resources for adding new features to Stata, Stata examples and
datasets, along with sites that provide utilities and services to
enhance the use of Stata.

There will also be a section on Statistical as opposed to Stata
resources, which will take you to the other statistical software
providers, statistical book publishers, statistical journals, and
statistical organizations.

N.E.C. is just getting started, but we intend to write articles that
would not be appropriate for Statalist, such as Mutli-processor
computers and Stata, or a survey of large computers for running Stata.


The Blog and Statalist
----------------------

One reason we do not expect the blog to compete with Statalist 
is that we have turned off comments.  Our attitude right now 
is that the appropriate place for discussion is Statalist and
if that results in inappropriate postings on Statalist, we will 
turn comments on.

While it is true that the StataCorp technical staff participates on
Statalist, if you look carefully, you will find that our praticipation
is mostly in joining in to already started discussions, and responding
when called on to do so.  We seldom start discussions and that's
intentional.  Statalist is a place for us to listen, to explain, and
to contribute, not to dominate either in the choice of topics or the
discussion on them.  We have plenty of opportunity to dominate by our
choice of features to implement, and how we implement and document them.

Nonetheless, sometimes we would like to start a discussion.  The blog
is a place we can do that.  We hope that sometimes members of
Statalist will pick up and carry the disucssion forward, but that will
be the choice of the members.  If the discussion is carried forward,
we will of course participate.

We will also use the blog to promote Statalist, usually by pointing 
to a completed thread in the archives that we think should interest 
others.  In the process, some of those others will discover Statalist 
and decide to join.

Anyway, the blog is up:  http://blog.stata.com.  

It's just an infant right now, but it will grow quickly.  If you have
comments on the blog and they are appropriate for Statalist, by all
means post them.  And, just as always, Statalist members can write
to me directly.

-- Bill
wgould@stata.com
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