Competitors, clarification

[Yewen]

OcUK are happy to provide the resources of these forums to responsible individuals without charge. They cost a substantial amount of money to maintain and use considerable amounts of bandwith which is paid for exclusively by OcUK. As you know OcUK are in the computer hardware business and therefore the promotion of OcUK's competitors is forbidden. Examples of promotion are :-

= Posting links to competitors websites
= Posting links to reviews that promote competitors
= Quoting the names or contact details of competitors
= Offering to provide the names or contact details of competitors
= Hinting about product availability at competitors and their pricing
= Using the forums to notify a member of intent or actual supply of names or contact details of competitors
= Listing competitors names, URL's or e-mail addresses in signatures
= Listing competitors names, URL's or e-mail addresses in profile
= Posting links to or the mentioning of auction sites
= Disguising attempts to do any of the above

Those are the forum rules taken from the FAQ.

As you will all see OcUK is making a push into consoles. To bring this section inline with the other sections and the rules it is now obvious that any store which sells console hardware, aswell as the normal PC hardware is considered a competitor.

This means the three big game named based stores are no longer allowed, neither are any other places if they sell console hardware.

I hope this is clear to people and that you can accept to follow these rules, they are not up to debate on here and any questions you may have should be directed towards my email or MSN, in trust and FAQ.

Please respect these rules, if you agree with them or not they are the rules in place and they now apply to a wider range of shops than before.

 

[Yewen]

He is right.

This OcUK's house, so house rules apply.

Plenty of other gaming forums not associated with a shop you can go to.

Huge ones infact, Gamespy maybe...

 

[Yewen]

What if there's a link to a competitor within a page linked to on here? Say if you link to a game review, or a news site, and it happens to link to a shop from there?

Depends on the size of the advert.

If its a small note at the bottom its fine, or a small advert that you have to look for. The adverts change so often its impossible to moderate.

If the review / preview has a full page spread thanking a competitor, then your best copying the review over without that part.

 

[Yewen]

Nothing complicated but we do not work for the shop.

Stock queries and pricing are issues only the shop can resolve, telling moderators will get nothing done.

 

[Yewen]

Its a shame that you dont have a 'house of the banned' like other forums i go to, so people can see why others have been banned and avoid doing the same.

You see, i aint got a clue what the bloke in here has just had his account deleted for, and it would be nice to know as am scared to even type this post

If you insult the mods or take a huge stab at the rules then you will have a suspension.

It is nothing more than that, if you want to say something but are unsure about it being ok on the forums then please feel free to voice your opinion to me in email.

The people getting banned are out to get banned, if you just be polite and accept what has been said then you have nothing to fear.

OcUK has only introduced these measures after how the more relaxed ones were treated.

This is how the forum will stay, as is shown in the threads here already people still need to calm down.

 

[Yewen]

I really can't see why there is still so much confusion from people.

I have to say I was in the same situation as quite a few people a couple of days ago, not really knowing what was going on or why a certain retailer was all of a sudden deemed a competitor.

It is now very clear why those measures were taken so I think we should all accept it.

The main issue was the fact that most people didn't see how the most recently banned competitor could even be deemed as a competitor. That is surely not an issue now with the introduction of the OcUK Games Console Range.

You can't expect OcUK to allow essentially free advertisement of it's closest competitors.

Said better than I could have ever managed.

People are still breaking the rules now, all it means is we are likely to introduce new restrictions to combat this and make everything clearer.

To make things clear you have to draw a line, ultimately that line is harsher than one where we allow people to walk the line.

To many people walked over the line, and when asked to get back on threw their toys out of the pram so now we have a giant fence up instead.

I just had the urge for a metaphor, sorry.

 

[Yewen]

My 2p for what its worth.

This whole situation has been a bit of a nightmare for everyone, there were mistakes made from ALL sides. The lack of warning before the blitz of clamping down the other day caught a lot of people, including myself, out. On the other hand the attitude of some people here left little to be desired, and probably hastened some of what has happened since.

Personally I think its a bit of a PR nightmare, a lot of good people have been lost over it, and there's been quite a lot of bad blood between parties.

At the end of the day Spie, you are now selling 360s and so the rules that exist on other sub-forums have fallen into place here. Fair enough. I do hope that you and the dons do learn from what has happened though, and perhaps in future give us some more warning, and be a little bit less heavy handed unless people are asking for it.

Also I'd appeal for calm from all sides before saying or doing anything rash. You dons are clamping down, clearing the place up and laying down the law, but please, please please remember the reason why I and most other people come here and may be encouraged to shop with OcUK is because of the community. Community. Its such a hard to manage thing, please be careful not to break it.

Apologies if this sounds slightly lecture-ish.

It has been noted how the whole thing was executed and if there is a next time it would be done slightly differently.

We are only clamping down on the people looking for a suspension or ban, there are plenty of them sadly.

Rest assured this will not happen again.

 

[Yewen]

Only time you will get the message contact the shop is when it is a RMA issue or a stock issue.

People rarely read every thread on the boards so in that case you will be directed to the shops contact page.

Never gets said that they are not contected, just that the forums are not the place for RMA issues.

People get confused about this all the time in hardware.

I agree to a point, but in particular I am referring to when [competitor] became a competitor the other day, before it kicked off. I may be mistaken but there was no warning. One of my posts with their name it was edited by Jokester, that's how I found out they were a competitor, and so I stopped talking about them. It feels like it will be a topic debated until the end of time, but a competitor warning thread, just like this one before you made [competitor] a competitor, would have saved a lot of grief. True, those being idiots and flaming you would still be idiots and flame you, can't avoid that, but I still stand by my point that it could have been handled a bit better from the off.

It all kicked off with some members to quickly to allow a thread to be made, any attempt after that point would have been futile due to the volume of rulebreaks and outrage at the decission.

Nothing is going to change about it so there is no use dwelling on the point.

 

[Yewen]

Yeah why dont they have this lol

I already have to add a usernote, email the member and depending on what its for get other dons to agree before making the suspension / ban.

Having a wall of shame would increase the time I have to spend modding.

It is not practicle and not anyone elses buisness really.

If you want to know about something email a don and they can explain the rule broken to you if you wish to use the list for this purpose.

(my email is always open)

They started selling them a couple of days ago, no doubt they will change their pricing and bundles in due course.

 

[Yewen]

aye but photography is a chill out place for me, here it feels like i've just been dropped in no mans land during a huge COD match

In PCG they are sitting in big comfy chairs smoking pipes.

Both extremes up here.

 

[Yewen]

No I did not say that.

Under the old unclear rulings with some sites it was ok to mention them if you were talking about them selling cabbages, yet if you mentioned that they sold a product OcUK stock or a product in competition with a OcUK range then it was not allowed.

It is now much clearer with the majority of these sites now just having a straight ban on being mentioned.

 

[Yewen]

I know but you have to make sure everyone is clear on this and not just the people posting about it.

I removed the other posts to just keep this tidy, my bad with that Zefan.

 

[Yewen]

Realised about 10 seconds after I posted.

At least it's all clear

Yup, now is the time to make it clear to everyone.

Goes to everyone if you need something cleared up like "is the pie shop down the road a competitor?" just email me asking and I will get back to you as soon as I can even if it is a short answer. (The pies would be nice aswell. )

 

[Yewen]

Yes it was, nobody followed this rule:

If you are unhappy about a particular forum, you should contact the relevant Don direct by e-mail, ICQ or MSN with the problem. Please do not post topics such as "Why was my post edited/locked/deleted etc".

 

[Yewen]

Well considering i dont mention coompetitors and didnt even post in the thread that was deleted about one of them - i still got suspended.....

With no explination either.

Catch me on MSN, same goes to andybtsn or email me and ask.

Just ask and ye shall be told.

 

[Yewen]

Currently the games only sites technically are ok to mention, as OcUK only sells hardware and bundles currently.

The odds of a store worth mentioning just selling games and no hardware at all however are slim.

If OcUK stock games at some point aswell then they would be classed as a competitor, it is safest not to mention any games stores at all. Most are likely to stock bundles or controllers at the least.

 

[Yewen]

All the ones I'm thinking of sell hardware too. So they aren't allowed I suppose.

Then they are competitors.

 

[Yewen]

Why bump the thread after 5 days?

They will get closed if they hang around for too long.

 

[Yewen]

if u edit it BEFORE a don sees it, u get away with it
if he gets there BEFORE you do, u will get warned, if u repeat u get suspended for a day i think

Thats about it yes.

If it is clear you are posting competitors and editing once someone has read them then expect a few weeks on holiday.

Just edits given out normally, certainly some are honest mistakes now with the larger retaillers and catalogues.

Keep doing it though and you will get a suspension, I send out emails if I have to remove several or make a post in the persons thread to alert them to the situation and hopefully stop them from doing it again.

If you get an email and then post competitors again though, then you get hit hard.