Competitors, clarification

SiD the Turtle said:
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.
Click to expand...

Yeah... there's a distinct heavy-handedness on these forums which you do not ever get at XS, EOCF etc... and i've been a mod at one of those for almost 2 years now.

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.
Click to expand...

Nicely said... it's not lecturish, just an objective observation. The problem is many people here cant explain it as eleqouently (due to age, idiocy etc) and I think thats why the mods react so badly.
 
SiD the Turtle said:
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.
Click to expand...

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.
 
Yep agree with above re the community aspect.

Community is what keeps me here, & makes me spend money here.

However I found myself suspended last night for making an objection in GD regarding the closure of this forum. Or at least that is what I assume it was for as it was not explained. The point I was ungracefully it seems trying to make that to close a whole forum seemed extreme to say the least.

This post is in no way trying to stir it up anymore than it already is, I do understand the business point of view regarding protecting the interests of OCUK, & have no problem with that at all.

I do however think it is incredibly difficult to moderate the no naming of competition rule, as really any 'retailer', high street, major grocery, or web based company could technically be classed as competion now.

What does concern me though is the way the suspensions have been flying, myself included. Moderation is fine, however there is a fine line between that & censorship. A little more communication from 'above' could have stopped most of these issues I feel.

As I say, not trying to make any enemies here..Just raising my hopefully objective view :)
 
SiD the Turtle said:
My 2p for what its worth.
Click to expand...
Completely disagree. This forum has always been a nightmare to moderate as it has or had more than it's fair share of people who think the rules don't apply to them. People like that will never be tolerated or welcome here, no matter how long they have been members. Good riddance.

At no stage was there a big sign here saying "the rules don't apply here". When it was noticed that we started selling XBox's what was the reaction? Oh my god, look at the prices, that's our forum gone etc etc. The reaction of some was bloody disgusting considering they are here FREE OF CHARGE on my forums.

So it wasn't poorly implemented, but the enlargement of our product range was greeted by petulant throwing toys out of prams. Do you ever think that I will EVER relax rules that have been in place for years? It will never happen.

I make no apologies for this post and like I've said before, if you abide by the rules, you are welcome here, free of charge. If you don't then we don't want you. It's your choice.
 
St0rmer66 said:
I have seen members of your mod team say exactly those words, "the forums are not linked to the shop".
Click to expand...
Where? They all know that isn't the case.
 
Just wondering what it 'cost' to run these forums or something similar ?

We talking about a server and a decent line, or is ther much more to it ?
 
Spie said:
Snip
Click to expand...

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 in 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.
 
Last edited:
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.

SiD the Turtle said:
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.
Click to expand...

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.
 
SiD the Turtle said:
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.
Click to expand...

Completely agree. Until today I had no idea that OcUK stocked Xbox 360s or when they started stocking them (was it today or last week?), and I imagine that quite a few other members didn't either which is probably why a large number of people became slightly confused when they were getting suspended for mentioning companies that had previously been ok to mention.
This is especially true when people had been given the go ahead by mods to mention certain companies as they were not direct competitors.

Edit: quick search reveals a post by Yewen on Nov 7th explaining everything, I completely missed it and now feel a little silly (Perhaps it should have been stickied?) either way if people were still mentioning after that they were either **** stirring or missed it as well.
 
Last edited:
SiD, that wasn't the big issue. It was the idiots kicking off because they thought they owned the forums.
 
M0T said:
Completely agree. Until today I had no idea that OcUK stocked Xbox 360s or when they started stocking them (was it today or last week?), and I imagine that quite a few other members didn't either which is probably why a large number of people became slightly confused when they were getting suspended for mentioning companies that had previously been ok to mention.
This is especially true when people had been given the go ahead by mods to mention certain companies as they were not direct competitors.
Click to expand...
No. Nearly every single suspension/banning was due to blatant rule-breaking, not just the innocent mention of a competitor.
 
Spie, whilst you are glancing in this direction, is there any chance you'll be needing any more mods here? Because I'm up for a crack at it :)
 
DailyGeek said:
Spie, why you are glancing in this direction, is there any chance you'll be needing any more mods here? Because I'm up for a crack at it :)
Click to expand...

Now what you should have asked was 'Can you put xbox 360 hard drives on TWO?' ;)
 
DailyGeek said:
Spie, whilst you are glancing in this direction, is there any chance you'll be needing any more mods here? Because I'm up for a crack at it :)
Click to expand...


I had also offered, however I would agree that chosing moderators is a bit more complex than "he offered".
 
dokko said:
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.
Click to expand...
Yeah why dont they have this lol
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom