<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15371470#post15371470 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by andywe
Larry,
Obviously there are many of us that have issue swith RC staff and practices, but again Id efer to the reason this forum is here. Is it to support the reefing community or not?
The board is here to further the hobby, in order to facilitate that, we do offer forums free to use by local clubs around the country, and even the planet. What's expected in return is that the users of said local club forums conform to the rules set in place for the entire 200,000+ member community. Not a lot to ask, and whether you agree or not, the staff here does an exemplary job, and there are no plans to change people or methods.
Many of us pay money to the site, so I wouldn't go too far down the road of "free". RC staff chose their revenue model. The key is keeping users, because advertising revenues are generated not by the site, but by the users who participate.
Take it easy there cowboy, a quick look at this thread shows a lot less than "many" premium members. The vast majority of complaints here are coming from people that have given nothing to the community as a whole, and are now taking up valuable time that I, and others on staff could be spending in a far more productive way.
To a degree, you are correct, keeping users is important. Keeping this particular bunch of users is becoming less and less important when I consider the effort being put into it.
A common theme seems to be amongst the attitude of staff, which you exhibited with yourself with you " could care less " statement.
To expand on what I said above, it's a cost/benefit analysis thing. I feel like my time is being wasted here. No matter what I say, I feel the only way to stop the whining in this forum is to close it to new posts.
How about some accountability for the mods, whom interfere with many of us dramatically..whether it be speaking up in our club forum when no reason was given for them to, interfereing with selling threads becasue they were afraid something would happen that never did, or attitude I got when I asked who the mods were accountable too several months ago because I wanted to lodge a complaint. Yet if you follow these same power players as I have, you see them abuse and violate the terms they themselves "supposedly" uphold.
The staff here will never be accountable to you. You are in OUR house, simple manners dictate that you, as a guest here will comply with the rules set by us.
This thread is quite interesting, it has been mentioned a number of times here how our staff are coming into "your" local forum and dictating to you how to run "your" local club forum.
Albeit, yes this IS a public forum, it is a forum within a privately owned bulletin board. So, you are actually coming into "our" forum and telling us how to run "our" forum.
Now, realize something;
The entire staff here has global authority. Just because a particular Moderator is not listed as a mod of a specific forum does not mean that mod has any less power in that forum, than any other. Everyone on staff here is here to uphold the rules of this community, be they selling rules, flaming rules or profanity rules, etc.
I would love to see links to support your allegations. I find it difficult to accept, as
1)I know the people I work with here
and
2)you're the only one coming forth with these alleged infractions committed by our staff.
Then we get insulted with holier than thou attitudes and generic statements of " your wrong and we are right"
Nobody is telling you that you're wrong. What you're being told is that the rules are in place, if you are not willing to abide by our rules, you're not welcome here. It's as simple as that. Again, I do not care if you stay or go, my concern is that you stop being a thorn in my side. If you think you can have it both ways, you are mistaken, and I am prepared to take any action necessary to put this to bed. One trip to the control panel, and this could have been ended within minutes of it starting. I gotta tell you, I'm beginning to regret the course I chose to take here.
Heck, even the emails to my personal account, which I got from a mod, had a disclosure that was a clear violation of the TOS...and..not subject to RC TOS since it was ent to my personal email through Gmail....So when I changed the disclaimer in my reply, I got the expected childlike rant from the mod.
Interesting that you would make that choice of words. That same "disclosure" goes out with every email. For those that have not been in a position of receiving it:
RC retains ownership of this message and all associated contents, which are to remain confidential. This message is intended only for the designated recipient(s). Sharing, forwarding or posting of this information, without prior consent, may result in the loss of posting privileges on Reef Central's forums.
These types of issues are what I am seeing as a common theme. The fact that there are many of us here complaining should really be viewed as issues that are very real. this isn't one person, or a singular isolated complaint.
There's that "many" thing again. Look around, you are way in the minority. "Many" describes the members that are happy to be here, follow the rules, and enjoy this free resource without being a problem to the people that run it.
You are obviously never going to be happy here.
As a rule, we do not refund premium membership payments. I am personally willing to send you a check if you'll go away. What do you say?
Since you asked, the first change I would like to see is tha attitude of the staff. The second the attitude of the mods.
What you view as an attitude problem is not being seen that way by the masses, and there is no plan to make changes.
The only feature that should be opened is the search function, that would be my feature request.
Finally, something we can see eye to eye on. Search improvements, along with several other functionality issues are currently being addressed with our new software that you should all experience in short order.
I am happy, and available to have a phone conversation and talk about specific incidences if you would like. Just PM me and let me know.
Regards,
Andy Weinberg
Paying subscriber
I see no benefit to taking this discussion off line, and to be totally honest, I'd prefer not having my home phone number available to who ever might eventually get it if I start giving it out.
