Personal Ethics

I am sorry if this runs close to the rules again as this is my only point on the web now that gives me the ability and right to reply and express an opinion.

The previous nastiness left a lot of people confused. Why would I do this when the simplest thing would be to pay, why should I throw away potential business. Well the answer is quite simple - perception - if I became a trade member then you are all potential punters, both in your and my mind, and I am labelled and my views are coloured in the mind of the recipient by me being a "dealer" - by refusing to be a trade member then you are my potential friends, who I can help and get help from without that stigma and colouration implanted on my views.

That is my motivation for being on forums, if you require a business relationship with me go to ebay and talk to me there, they have mailing system - or talk to me via [email protected] Then I cannot be accused of doing it here.

Also regarding taking money from forum members. Then it becomes a business and is coloured by that. Moderation is compromised, a two tier system is created, "I pay to put my views so put up with them and if someone diss's me then moderate them" - ok a bit extreme but it is the start of the slippery slope. Perhaps we should create a differentiation between forums who see themselves as contributors to community and those that see themselves as potential businesses, who use community to get members (create market share) then exploit them - ho-hum!

Thanks for your understanding, sorry to belabour the point.

Richard

 

Get over it! I dont think anyone really gives a damn apart from yourself. If I was on the ZG mod team, I'd be thinking about banning you here too due to your constant AUP breaches.

 

What happened to a friendly approach ....this forum is renown for being a broad church lets keep it that way.

Remember "do as you would be done unto"

For me Mr Dunn is one of the good guys ...unlike some

as the old saying goes ...

I'd rather be in the tent with him p*ssing out, rather than him p*ssing in.

 

There you go, a forum functioning properly. Your perfectly valid views express that. In many ways I have sympathy for your views and need to let go. Just take this first post as explanation and letter of intent and leave it as that. BTW what is your view on the group review thing.

Richard

 

Richard,

But you are a "dealer" and some punters may well be cynical about any posts coming from a dealer, the only way to confound the cynics is to not be cynical in your posts.

I'd also point out that on PFM (as an example) you can have your cake and eat it to some extent by being private member Richard Dunn and trade Member NVA. Over there I am private member Uncle Ants (albeit making quite clear to everyone via my sig that I am in the trade) and trade member Needles & Spins.

Needles & Spins only posts to the Trade announcements and Trade classified sections. Uncle Ants (strange to talk about myself in the third person) posts to the public areas, but is careful to avoid selling anything and tries to stick to providing impartial advice on matters technical (as opposed to "what should I buy") type posts and also taking part in idle chit chat. So long as you don't use your private persona to promote your trade persona's interests I don't see this as a problem, so long as everyone else is aware that there is a connection.

So long as you are clear and open about who you are, people will judge you by the quality of your posts. Paying if you are trade is a side issue to this - that's just a way of funding the forums because they need some form of funding - I hardly think you can accuse the forum mods of being in thrall to the industry ... after all large chunks of the industry seem to dislike the forums with a vengeance. Who do these jumped up punters think they are to give crap advice? Giving crap advice has been the dealers and magazine's domain since year dot

 

some thoughts

I'll make the points as general a possible and hopefully not breach the AUP.

IMO there is nothing wrong with a manufacturer participating in a a forum such as ZG, but there is a fine line between offering general assitance and help to members and touting your own kit.
If the situation arises where a manufacturer feels that their own product would be suitable/recommended the sensible thing would be to communicate privately and make the recommendation. This takes the issue off the ZG (or any other) public platform.

On the issue of 'chain reviews', again I see no problem but if a manufacturer is initiating/supporting this he should not be submitting his own product for review and effectively obtaining free advertising and promotion.

At the end of the day this issue must be subject to the judgement of the moderation team here, it is often not a black and white issue and we should accept the decision of the forum owners and mod team.

<edit> Just seen the post by Uncle Ants above and he is a perfect example of how being a private poster and dealer can and does work very well.

 

Hi Richard,

I'm not the owner of pfm, and have only very recently become a mod there, but I'd like to attempt a counterpoint to your post.

I get the impression that you were surprised by Tony's PM asking you to pay your contribution as a trade member. I guess Tony - perhaps wrongly - assumed that you had read the AUP when joining pfm. The terms are clearly laid-out there. If you had read the AUP, you'd have known that trade members are charged 50 quid for the privilege of using pfm as a commercial platform, including the right to advertise their wares in the trade room.

Tony is not a rich man, he started pfm as an offshoot from the Naim forum and brought a number of regular Naim forum posters with him, so it was very much an enhusiast platform, but the forum got so popular that the running costs became significant. So he introduced the trade member fee scheme. Zerogain - a much smaller board - faced a similar financing problem some time back and asked for contributions from the members. Both equally valid ways to finance a board with the intention of keeping usage free to its members while not being a financial burden on the admins.

Second, not every member of the industry is automatically expected to register as a trade member. For example, Jonathan Carr (Lyra) and Doug Graham (Naim) are pfm members and occasionally contribute information about their companies' products, but do so in a way that makes it clear they are not promoting those products.

This part of your post

seems a bit simplistic for me. If you look at other pfm trade members, quite a few of them manage to avoid the dichotomy you postulate. They make it clear when they are wearing their commercial hat by posting in the trade rooms. In the public rooms, they are expected to behave, and do so, pretty much like any ordinary punter and not tout their stuff too unashamedly. The best advertising there is to appear knowledgeable and helpful.

This other part of your post

addresses a valid concern. Yes, the danger exists that trade members expect special treatment. However, from Tony's point of view, being a trade member gives you a defined benefit - access to the trade room and some latitude in promoting your stuff in the audio room - and that's the end of the story. Indeed, if you came to him and demanded special treatment, let alone the deletion of a post that was inside the AUP, because you are a trade member, I'm quite sure he'd take a pretty dim view on that.

In the end, you'll have to accept the fact that being a trade member gives you no special privieges with a certain amount of trust. If you had been on pfm longer, you would have had longer to build that trust from a user perspective.

It comes down to self-policing: if the pfm members perceived a bias from Tony towards the trade members, they would lose their trust in the openness and impartiality of the forum, and would go away. That they don't do so tells me that the general perception of pfm members is that Tony gets it right.

Lastly, maybe you didn't see yourself as using pfm for commercial purposes and thought you were only answering questions about NVA. In that case, let me remind you that the broad consensus of opinions on your "I'm Gone!" thread from the pfm membership was that you had made commercial posts. Perhaps you should have asked yourself if you had overstepped the limits of propriety, instead of accusing the forum owner of ill intentions.


Edit: excellent post by Uncle Ants above. Another example is Andrew Weekes, a mod on pfm; when he started a commercial sideline, he created the alw audio account to advertise his stuff and pays his 50 quid for that.

 

It works for you I am just against the concept in principle, as I said I think it is the slippery slope. Commercial and non commercial should be completely seperated IMO, which leaves a dilemma, can it be done? I much prefer the system as here, do you have to change your persona to post here, NO!

Maybe you need their marketing facilities at PF, I don't, and I object to being told I should pay and use them. I neither want to pay nor use them. Anyway we go in circles I object you approve - peace :MILD:

Richard

 

Well, I wouldn't have said I needed it no, but it can be useful to let folks know when you've got a sale on or a nice exdem or px bit of kit to sell. Unlike some dealers I don't use it that often, but the few uses I have made of it, I'd say it's more than paid for itself. WigWam's clasified area is actually better for generating interest I find, but again you have to pay for trade membership. I don't think the split personality thing on PFM is compulsory btw. Its just that I was Uncle Ants for a long time before Needles & Spins existed.

Like I say though I think paying or not is not the same issue as to whether you can be a dealer and a private member at the same time. I think you can ... but you've got to be careful to walk the line.

If commercial and non commercial should be completely separated then you and I should both be banned from the public areas ... period.

 

Well, you could stay on pfm and not talk about NVA at all.

 

No I can't I am banned!

Richard

 

So send Tony a friendly mail. Can't be that difficult, can it.

 

I said they should but can't be, we live in a real world not a cyber fantasy. I think the problem had not been thought through well enough and to just throw a PM'ed invoice at sombody out of the blue with no explanation is just plain bloody rude. A simple email requesting me not use the nva word would have done, but no! the commercial alternative prevailed, the gathering of more money was the one that chinked up.

I know how much it cost to pay a service provider for forum and website facilities and to say that the money from X number of business partners is needed to pay for it is fatuous. At that price *4* will pay for it with some left over, so the profit motive is hidden behind the stated altruism, *exactly* what I am accused of.

Richard

 

If the commercial and non commercial have to be kept separate, or paying to be a trade memeber could be seen as giving benefit, the how do you square that with the ordinary members who pay to help keep places like PFM and the wigwam up and running. They receive no special favours for their contribution. You appear to feel that the internet is free to be used. It is not, some one has to pay for the bandwidth being used, and if the ''owners'' of these boards feel that commercial users should be asked to pay a very small contribution towards that cost, then I think it is fair decision.

 

Richard

Like you I was banned from PFM this week and my attitude along with 99% of the others is who cares. I will not miss it and it will not miss me. The same applies to you.

There is no reason to jump off a building and on a scale of 1 to 10 for disasters, it does not even merit 1.

You are making yourself look stupid with all this whinging. You got banned, so what, who cares (no one else does), live with it and move on.

Take it on the chin like a man and shut up.

Regards

Mick ... banned from both Mana and PFM and could not honestly give a damn.

 

I'd suggest you could recruit reviewers via the forum but conduct all equipment transferes etc outside say via email ...the recipents could then post a report ..warts and all on the forum

the forum would possibley need to set up a seperate section or use the review area but with a rider explaining to any read whats happening so everyone knows the score.

I may of course be missing something that's obvious!

 

Your prerogative. You don't give a damn. Well we are different, I happen to care about this industry having made the decision to come back to it.

I had a "hissy fit" (I love that name, who invented it) in 1999 and stomped away from it (see not the first time, obviously a personality problem ). I came back as I saw an opportunity to do it differently and to circumvent all the crap that got me hissy in the first place. So this whole business has touched a raw nerve and I am sure it shows.


Richard

 

We could do a thread on where people have been banned from !

I'm banned from Rockgrotto ...with no satifactory explaination !

 

Richard

OK if you want to look a bloody fool then go ahead.

You seem to be ignoring advice and acting like a spoilt child.

You got banned, big deal, are you that small in stature that a ban upsets you that much?

It is bordering on the pathetic.

Regards

Mick

 

I'm banned from Mana; John Watson rightly concluded that I wasn't likely to buy Mana products. So I got banned in the Great Mana Purge. Not too sorry about it.