Discussion of VE forum RULES

[RichConley]

This to me is controversial ... I can see people posting negatively about sponsors in their own personal forums ... but starting a thread on a pet store like Patnaudes where they have no knowledge of this site is in no way beneficial unless someone tips them off of it, not that they would care anyway, same as Petco. Can you see the point here.


To me education is describing the difference of what an ill fish looks like or what a healthy system looks as apposed to what is unhealthy, so they can determine for themselves. And besides one's common sense should dictate that if there are no postive feedback or no sponsorship then its risky business, which one should always assume when buying online.

The problem with the no positive feedback= bad store is that sometimes there are new stores, sometimes there are stores that not many people have been to, etc.

The thing is, I had never heard of Patnaudes. I dont care if that thread hurts their business, as long as the thread is factual. If it saves some hapless newbie from buying something they can't handle, then it has served its purpose.

"Sponsors" are one thing and "Vendors" are another,

I completely, and utterly disagree with you on that one. Sponsors must be treated exactly the same as all other vendors. Their sponsorship agreement does not include us covering up for any poor practices they have. Their sponsorship includes certain specific rights, and being protected when they commit wrongs is not one of them.

Can I ask a question to the BOD: Would Petco ever be considered/allowed to be a sponsor of this forum/organization, I should hope not.

There are no provisions in the charter that give us the right to exclude sponsors by their husbandry habits. They are sponsors. They pay the bills for the right to advertise on the board. As it is, we have accumulated a larger number of sponsors, and we may in the future change this.

Im sure we are all guilty of this since when do we see a post in the frag swap thread asking the buyer what his tank specs are before the coral is sold. But we all would chastisize a vendor for keeping them in a system that is equivelent to it.

Vendors and buyers have different responsibilities.
Its okay for me to take my truck offroading. Its not okay for the dealer to take it offroading before he sells it to me.

To open a forum to allow people to critisize ones business (bread and Butter) on the fact that they dont smile enough, and relate it to customer service is beyond me. I would rather a vendor/sponsor not smile at me and sell me an item that is healthy and works appropriately, then not smile and burn me.

I agree with you on that one.

IMO the intentions of the VE forum is good .... but I think its not working appropriately ... based on controversial threads like this... time to live with it cause its here to stay ... Im hoping that this thread was created to obtain ideas on how to improve on the rules of this controversial forum so improvements can be made, and not wasting our breathe.

The problem is that people STILL aren't reading the rules. They go in and start spouting off what they heard from someone else, or start yelling that they got hosed, etc.

I'm tempted to ask that there be no use of adjectives or adverbs in that forums. I think that would solve a lot of the issues.

 

[Chuck Spyropulos]

The Facts

I agree that both positive and negative posts should be factual.

I believe everything they write, both positive and negative is all first hand experience. They do the testing. Secondly, the negative is stated in a factual manner. There is no slander, personal attacks, unfounded statements.

Amazingly, those are the rules for our forum as well.

 

[RichConley]

Im hoping that this thread was created to obtain ideas on how to improve on the rules of this controversial forum so improvements can be made, and not wasting our breathe.

The thing is, until people start actually following the rules that are there, improving the rules doesnt make a difference.


Chuck's post above says he agrees that both positive and negative comments shoudl need to be factual. Thats covered by the rules. People just can't seem to follow them.

 

[Chuck Spyropulos]

E-Bay

Again, I think if you sell or buy things on E-Bay (or through the BRS Selling Forums), and you provide a good product and/or a good service, then the rating system is self regulating. You will get lots of good posts and maybe one or two "retalliations" or whatever and you would tend not to lose customers because of the few inaccurate or retalliative negative posts.

My opnion of the ebay system is that is is severely flawed.Being a buyer and seller on ebay i have been it the position myself where you do not want to post negative feedback on somebody for fear of retaliation that would damage my own 100% feedback rating.

 

[Liam]

I'm not sure i was clear enough

Again, I think if you sell or buy things on E-Bay (or through the BRS Selling Forums), and you provide a good product and/or a good service, then the rating system is self regulating. You will get lots of good posts and maybe one or two "retalliations" or whatever and you would tend not to lose customers because of the few inaccurate or retalliative negative posts.

what i meant was,i have not posted negative feedback on others when really they deserved it.I did not give them negative because i was worried they may retaliate with some nastiness just out of spite.My own buying /selling practices don't come into the flaw i am describing

 

[RichConley]

Chuck, the problem doesnt really change anything when its normal users.

The ebay issue comes into play when you're dealing with a power seller. I've got a positive feedback rating of 60 I think. I have like 85 positive feedback (from 62 users) and 2 negative, so 60, with about 96%. Me getting 1 negative seriously affects my rating. A guy who has 42000 feedback gets one negative, and he doesnt care. So I buy something, pay on time, wait 6 weeks for product, leave a negative, and he responds by negativing me.

Hes still at 99.9999999%. I drop from 96 to about 93. I come out looking much worse than him on the transaction, and thats a problem.

I almost feel like ebay should implement something so that if someone negative feedbacks, the other user loses the ability to post a counted negative feedback. If the first user posts positive, the second can post whatever they want.

The problem now, is the power sellers WILL NOT leave feedback until you do, and if you leave negative, you get negative. Its basically extortion.

 

[delta]

Personally I think that the forum is the responsibility of joe fitz and the moderators end of story on this. So in an effort to allow us an online community to share information a general knowlege amongst a few jokes and what not there needs to be rules, part of every society anyway. Seeing as they take the responsibility makes it just natural that they make a basic set of rules as to protect themselves and keep things civil. Your not going to let someone come in your house(you own it pay for it care for it) and behave in a manner unacceptable to you would you?

Now as members of this forum we have a right to share info\knowledge joke and variuos other things like venus for frag swaps and group buys. Now all we have to do is follow the guidlines called rules and this is how simple it is.
But they take it a step further and allowing us input on those rules. However not whether or not the forum should exist as I am sure you could pose a reason every forum needed to be closed.

Personally the rules make sense IMHO and if you read between the lines the forum is easy to read if you don't get caught up in the slinging. However this is easier if posts are only about the actual facts.
Another thing is you cannot judge the forum based on the disregard for respect of another person/business you have to blame the people who make the posts not the people who try and defuse the flame, insult etc. Too often people forget there is another person on the other end, have a bad day or make a general comment and someone takes it personal in this some what make believe venus. Although it is very real.
The mods have to choose what is under the rules and not but they are the responsible ones. We are responsible for no more than the actions we take within our posting. I believe our responsibility to be a bigger problem than the rules here and whether the mods should moderate less or more. Although alot wont look at themselves and say "sorry I shouldn't have gone there" (general statment)

IMHO I feel the rules for this forum and site are well within reasonable boundries and dont recall a post\thread that has been moderated outside of those rules.

 

[lactrain]

Quote:
Originally Posted by lactrain
"Sponsors" are one thing and "Vendors" are another,

I completely, and utterly disagree with you on that one. Sponsors must be treated exactly the same as all other vendors. Their sponsorship agreement does not include us covering up for any poor practices they have. Their sponsorship includes certain specific rights, and being protected when they commit wrongs is not one of them.

Quote:
Originally Posted by lactrain

Can I ask a question to the BOD: Would Petco ever be considered/allowed to be a sponsor of this forum/organization, I should hope not.

There are no provisions in the charter that give us the right to exclude sponsors by their husbandry habits. They are sponsors. They pay the bills for the right to advertise on the board. As it is, we have accumulated a larger number of sponsors, and we may in the future change this.

Quote:
Originally Posted by lactrain
Im sure we are all guilty of this since when do we see a post in the frag swap thread asking the buyer what his tank specs are before the coral is sold. But we all would chastisize a vendor for keeping them in a system that is equivelent to it.

Vendors and buyers have different responsibilities.
Its okay for me to take my truck offroading. Its not okay for the dealer to take it offroading before he sells it to me.

Ya Ok ... a bit contradicting ... but I understand ... and I wont ask for clarification on this one.

 

[Chuck Spyropulos]

Rules

I believe that people should post factual information. However, I also believe that it is impossible to enforce. That being said, I think that all posts positive and negative should be allowed by the rules (except for name-calling, profanity, and outright malice). The readers can decide what to do with the information or weather they think information is factual or not...no one believes every thing they read especially when there is good information to refute what they read. The more posts, the more representative of the true quality of the shop.

For example if there is one post about shop X that is negative then only a small confidence would be associated with it. Now if the same shop X gets 100 positive posts, then the confidence is high that it represents the general consensus of a large portion of the BRS members. The one negative post concerning shop X would now be insignificant when compared to all the positive posts.

On the other hand if shop Y gets 100 negative posts, then BRS members considering weather or not to do business at shop Y may think twice about shopping there. So I really do think that looser rules would benefit members much more by providing more information without any damage to the reputation of any shop. It is basic math or the law of large numbers that would determine the validity of the information. In this manner all subjectiveness is removed and the forum would be self regulating, except in cases where there is obvious outright malice.

The thing is, until people start actually following the rules that are there, improving the rules doesnt make a difference.


Chuck's post above says he agrees that both positive and negative comments shoudl need to be factual. Thats covered by the rules. People just can't seem to follow them.

 

[KAS]

I agree that both positive and negative posts should be factual.

so what is your concern with the current forum rules exactly?

 

[Liam]

so what is your concern with the current forum rules exactly?

bingo

 

[Chuck Spyropulos]

EBay

Yes, I do see your point and I have been in similar situations on EBay where it DID feel like someone was extorting positive feedback. But EBay is a little different than the BRS forum. I was merely using it to illustrate my point that a few bad posts in the BRS forum does not cancel out 50, 100, or more positive posts. But I do see your point here.

Chuck, the problem doesnt really change anything when its normal users.

The ebay issue comes into play when you're dealing with a power seller. I've got a positive feedback rating of 60 I think. I have like 85 positive feedback (from 62 users) and 2 negative, so 60, with about 96%. Me getting 1 negative seriously affects my rating. A guy who has 42000 feedback gets one negative, and he doesnt care. So I buy something, pay on time, wait 6 weeks for product, leave a negative, and he responds by negativing me.

Hes still at 99.9999999%. I drop from 96 to about 93. I come out looking much worse than him on the transaction, and thats a problem.

I almost feel like ebay should implement something so that if someone negative feedbacks, the other user loses the ability to post a counted negative feedback. If the first user posts positive, the second can post whatever they want.

The problem now, is the power sellers WILL NOT leave feedback until you do, and if you leave negative, you get negative. Its basically extortion.

 

[RichConley]

Chuck, I dont understand your concern...

The rules state that you can post negative. You can post positive.

The only real stipulations are these:
It must be your experience, not someone elses.
You must be polite.


There is NO subjectiveness here. If you post something that happened to someone else, it gets deleted. If you post something that is a personal insult, it gets deleted. If you post something that is rude, it gets deleted. If you post an oppinion without a specific example, it gets deleted.

Other than that, it stays.

 

[Chuck Spyropulos]

Concern

I think everyone should post facts but I do not think that you can enforce a rule that requires this. Or actually, you may be able to enforce it somewhat but not very efficiently or objectively. That is my concern: Objectively deciding what is fact or fiction can not be done efficiently or effectively. So maybe the rules should stay the same but the Mods should let the relative number positive and negative posts objectively represent the profile of the shop rather than attempting to weed out "false" claims. Validity of the information increases as the number of posts increases.

so what is your concern with the current forum rules exactly?

 

[lactrain]

I understand chucks concern read his posting .....

His concern it that there is no way to prove whether the information that the mods are deeming to be firsthand are actually first hand .... or if they are merely written in first person.

So therefore why should second information be removed .... becasue though it is second hand information it may be very true!

There is no way to determine this!!!!!

Therefore all posts should be left alone unless they become derrogatory...and let the forum/members speak for themselves.

which I agree!!!!!!

Cmon guys read and comprehend

 

[Chuck Spyropulos]

Sounds Good

Rich can I PM you with a question?

Chuck, I dont understand your concern...

The rules state that you can post negative. You can post positive.

The only real stipulations are these:
It must be your experience, not someone elses.
You must be polite.


There is NO subjectiveness here. If you post something that happened to someone else, it gets deleted. If you post something that is a personal insult, it gets deleted. If you post something that is rude, it gets deleted. If you post an oppinion without a specific example, it gets deleted.

Other than that, it stays.

 

[Greg Hiller]

>Would Petco ever be considered/allowed to be a sponsor of this forum/organization, I should hope not.<

While I'm not on the BOD anymore, I can tell you what the position WAS previously. We did not activly try to find new sponsors that we thought might be questionable places, but on the other hand, we did not have a set policy in place that would stop one from becoming a sponsor. And the reasoning behind it was this....we as the club's BOD did not want to try to tell people where they could and could not shop. The example I used to give was, let's suppose I live across the street from 'Bad Shop X'. While I'd never buy a fish there, it's awefully convenient when I need to pick up some frozen brine shrimp. Why shouldn't the BOD accept Bad Shop X's sponsor ship $ if offered? The sponsorship often means a 10% discount. So when I pickup my frozen brine shrimp I get my discount.

We had hoped that people would learn in time which shops were best by speaking to others in the club, not by the BOD having some list of check boxes that would give the sponsor our gold star. We also had hoped (but this has kind of stalled) that we would be running online polls (as I did a few years back) to get a feel from members where the best shops in the area were, and what the best shops were for each different thing (best for SPS, fish, etc.). I'm still working on the poll thing, and will try and get back to it.

 

[One Eye]

Len and Chuck, I've been very aware of Chucks point for some time now.

As I have explained several times in the past. It needs to be first hand experiance because second hand info cannot be questioned.
EX: if you tell me your friend Billy Bob went to xyz and the store kicked him out because they didn't like his new mullet. Billy Bob is not a user of the forum.
1st, I can't ask Billy Bob why the hell he wants to wear a mullet anyway
2nd, the store can't defend against an acusation made by a third party.

Please read and comprehend this...thank you!

 

[Chuck Spyropulos]

Well Said Greg!

Yes, absolutely! In fact PJs is place that comes to mind. I like it because it is close and convenient for supplies and even Mysis now! But I don't go there for advice on Reef Tanks. That is a negative comment that is not based on any facts or first-hand information so should it be deleted? NO! Do I want PJs to close? Absolutely not! Will PJs sue me? Of course not.
So when these "grey" area comments get posted they provide some information that would otherwise get deleted if the Mods followed the rules tothe "T".

>Would Petco ever be considered/allowed to be a sponsor of this forum/organization, I should hope not.<

While I'm not on the BOD anymore, I can tell you what the position WAS previously. We did not activly try to find new sponsors that we thought might be questionable places, but on the other hand, we did not have a set policy in place that would stop one from becoming a sponsor. And the reasoning behind it was this....we as the club's BOD did not want to try to tell people where they could and could not shop. The example I used to give was, let's suppose I live across the street from 'Bad Shop X'. While I'd never buy a fish there, it's awefully convenient when I need to pick up some frozen brine shrimp. Why shouldn't the BOD accept Bad Shop X's sponsor ship $ if offered? The sponsorship often means a 10% discount. So when I pickup my frozen brine shrimp I get my discount.

We had hoped that people would learn in time which shops were best by speaking to others in the club, not by the BOD having some list of check boxes that would give the sponsor our gold star. We also had hoped (but this has kind of stalled) that we would be running online polls (as I did a few years back) to get a feel from members where the best shops in the area were, and what the best shops were for each different thing (best for SPS, fish, etc.). I'm still working on the poll thing, and will try and get back to it.

 

[RichConley]

Chuck, go right ahead.

I see the point that theres no way to tell if people are just making stuff up, as long as they say "This happened to me"

Theres no way to prevent that, and there never will be. The hope is, by not allowing vendors(or people associated with vendors) to post in any threads but their own, there will never be a situation where people will be put in a position where it is to their advantage to lie.

The main reason for not allowing second hand stories, is stories tend to get bigger as they get passed on.
Also, how many things (that are completely false) in this hobby are generally accepted because somebody misunderstood someone, and then kept passing the information on. How many reef myths like that are there? We dont want the situation where one person has a bad experience at a store, and 52 people post that same story, and it makes a great store look awful. One bad customer experience, and suddenly it looks like the store has a history of bad behavior.

We're trying to keep tales from getting any taller, but in general, we have to trust that the posters on this board are decent human beings.