Avsim, please open a payware discussion forum

[Tom Allensworth 1,532]

Since you brought it up, as an AVSIM staffer writing front page news articles you were asked to stop posting any front news regarding VOS because of your obvious connection to the product. No other reason. We did not want you or AVSIM accused of any improprieties. We asked that you allow other front page editors to judge whether Koorby's news was indeed news. You quit AVSIM as a result. Your connection to the product now is what got that thread deleted. You know the rules Jaykae. You may have taken exception to my message about the thread, but it obviously got your attention. That was my intent. Castigate or vilify me all you wish; you broke the rules, you know you broke the rules, appropriate steps were taken, and you don't like it. You will get over it.Also, please note that your message has not been deleted and you have not been banned. And, I have not "rubbished" you.

[Tom Allensworth 1,532]

Yeah, funny that. :)

[JayKae 1]

Good thing I have kept all the emails Mr Allensworth of the happenings back then, I knew they would come in handy some day, I posted something about VOZ when I was on duty one time and it got questioned and I got asked to let others post that. Which I agreed to, without any dramas.(refer emails of 16/01/2007 till 20/01/2007 )Then in April I put up an item of a developer whose only form of communication was via Simmarket and YOU did not like that because you have issues with Francois and Miquel, so I was told off not to do that anymore. I did not like that and THAT is why I left, nothing to do with VOZ or any of my other projects.(refer emails of 02/04/2007 and 04/04/2007)Anyway, it is obvious that everything I say will be taken out of context and used against me, so this will be my last post on AVSIM ever. Have a good one guys!

[Tom Allensworth 1,532]

Yes, I agree. You are pretty naive.

[Guest firehawk44]

Actually I think posts such as this discussion and discussions related to new products should nonetheless be placed in the proper forum, the Hangar Chat forum. There product developers can then 'hangout' and discuss their new or current project to interested visitors. Then, if you ever visit the hangar, you may have commercial developers coming up to you and saying, "Hey buddy! Do you have some time? Have you seen this new product I want to sell? Just let me show you what I got here inside my coat." Just like walking down main street, USA.... lol Best regards,Jim

[vgbaron 3,620]

In theory it sounds doable but in practice, I fear it would give the mods fits. I've been around these parts for quite a while and I fear it would quickly generate into either a flame war, an advertising forum or a support forum.Barring those that get out of hand, I've found a lot of valuable discussion of payware in the usual forum with no issues.Nice idea but I vote no - as if it would count! :)Just MHO,VicQ6600 G0 CPU 2.4 o/c 3.65Evga 680i A1 with P31 BIOS 2G XP2-8500 DDR2 1066FSB Mushkin 996535 RAM 5-5-4-12-2T320G 7200 HD partitioned for XP/Vista/Programs 2 - 74G Raptors in RAID0 500G 7200 HD for backup SATA DVD burner Evga 8800GTS 640 PCIx 169.13 betaKandalf LCS case w/ built in liquid cooling 850W Thermaltake power supplyVisit the Virtual Pilot's Centerwww.flightadventures.comhttp://www.hifisim.com/banners/hifi-supporter-sigbanner.jpg

[FSS_Adrian 0]

Wow, I'll be honest and my post count will tell anyone that I don't hang out here very much. But I am absolutely astounded by the arrogance and absolute high an mighty behaviour displayed by Tom Allensworth and his forum administration team. I mean I had heard the stories and read numerous articles and post on other forums (not only VOZ or Orbx) about how some gracious contributors to FS development have been treated by AVSIM but I had never seen it first hand. Now I have, I've had a chance to see it in action and to tell you all the truth, I am disgusted.It's one thing to uphold rules, it's another to be arrogant sods. Definitely looks like being one of the top flightsim websites for so long has really gone to the heads of those high up in the administration team. It is a sad thing to see what power does to some people. And all this talk about bandwidth being used up on forum posts... give us a break, how cheap is bandwidth these days?

[Geofa 108]

Seems to me "arrogance" would be coming from those that read the rules of this site when they sign up which are clearly stated-then don't follow them.As a mod-I have also helped develop and beta tested lots of stuff.I follow the rules too. There is something I am beta testing right now I would love to post shots of because it is so cool-but will wait till the appropriate and rule abiding time.I confess-when Acceleration went final and Microsoft gave us beta testers permission to post shots-I posted some in the screen shot forum basically because many were asking for them, and my enthusiasm got the best of me.When it was pointed out by a fellow moderator that until released to the general public, I was not following avsim's policy- I withdrew the shots and apologized for not thinking a little more carefully.I fully understand enthusiasm-and I also understand the rights of the people who pay for a site to make the rules and expect those that use it freely to abide by them.http://www.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/1b5baf...b9f427f694g.jpgMy blog:http://geofageofa.spaces.live.com/

[FSS_Adrian 0]

Like I said, it's one thing to uphold rules. I am more pointing out the tone and choice of words when I highlight arrogance in this instance.

[DadJokeCinema 145]

>Wow, I'll be honest and my post count will tell anyone that I>don't hang out here very much. But I am absolutely astounded>by the arrogance and absolute high an mighty behaviour>displayed by Tom Allensworth and his forum administration>team. I mean I had heard the stories and read numerous>articles and post on other forums (not only VOZ or Orbx) about>how some gracious contributors to FS development have been>treated by AVSIM but I had never seen it first hand. Now I>have, I've had a chance to see it in action and to tell you>all the truth, I am disgusted.>>It's one thing to uphold rules, it's another to be arrogant>sods. Definitely looks like being one of the top flightsim>websites for so long has really gone to the heads of those>high up in the administration team. It is a sad thing to see>what power does to some people. >>And all this talk about bandwidth being used up on forum>posts... give us a break, how cheap is bandwidth these days?You're probably right. The admin team should definitely just smile and ignore it and not get upset when someone basically calls us fascists on our own forum because we followed our own rules.And since you brought up, I was going to get a piece of gum from 7-11 in a few minutes. Since it's pretty cheap, you wouldn't mind paying for it, right? And, of course, you know that old rule from school, if one person gets gum, you have to have enough for everyone else, so while you're out, could you pick up a piece for the other 44,000 members of this forum? Sticks of gum are cheap these days, so you shouldn't mind covering everyone.

[slashed2 53]

I say open one, would make for some fun reading that's for sure, though you may actually have to pay for 2 full time moderators considering the amount of work they'd need to handle.Concerning developers posting "ads" for their products in these forums, my humble opinion is it's a tad on the junk email side.When I see a post by a fellow simmer who raves about a product (sesquashato sp?) comes to mind, well he's evidently enjoying the product. I see other posts that say check this out or this has been released and the responses that follow, it gives me some indication of what the product is like from people who have used it that have no other reason to post except for an fairly honest feeling of the product. I've even felt compelled to respond in the positive especially if I like a product.Enter in a payware developer or someone who is associated with a product, comes in without any indication that they work for that product and promote that product with a positive post on how good it is etc.... I'm inclined to believe them or at least get a positive feeling about it because I believe they are sharing an honest opinion without any ulterior motive.That would be similar to someone from McDonald's posting how good the new triple big mac burger is without saying they are from Mcdonalds, or a company writing a review of their product and posting it on amazon or some such site.I think I side with Avsim on this policy.I'm just a user of the forums and one potential customer, but I do not like being decieved, especially by advertisers. There's enough darn advertising in the world and I should know, I work in marketing and I schedule some of it.

[FSS_Adrian 0]

>You're probably right. >>The admin team should definitely just smile and ignore it and>not get upset when someone basically calls us fascists on our>own forum because we followed our own rules.>>And since you brought up, I was going to get a piece of gum>from 7-11 in a few minutes. Since it's pretty cheap, you>wouldn't mind paying for it, right? And, of course, you know>that old rule from school, if one person gets gum, you have to>have enough for everyone else, so while you're out, could you>pick up a piece for the other 44,000 members of this forum? >Sticks of gum are cheap these days, so you shouldn't mind>covering everyone.Once again, like I said, it's one thing to uphold rules. I am more pointing out the tone and choice of words when I highlight arrogance in this instance.No problem, plenty of pieces of gum for everyone at other sites where people wont be treated as second rate citizens.

[DadJokeCinema 145]

You know, what it comes down to is that I'm pretty tired of reading posts or getting emails suggesting that AVSIM is, or is causing the problem in the community. We're not creating the divisiveness and we're not causing the bickering, and we are trying our best to contain or stop it, and for it, we're accused continually of smothering people's rights or playing favorites or whatever. The problem IS the community. We had to split the FS9 and FSX forums because the members here could not stand to act civil to each other in the same forum. I didn't want to do it, I thought it would great expand our workload and that it would create a segregation between users of the two products, but that's apparently what you wanted.That is not our fault. And it is hard to just brush off all the complaints and ranting we get leveled at us constantly, these volunteers who take their own time to try against all odds to make this a good place for flight simmers to come. I've tried to step back some, because I was getting a lot of people telling me that I was the problem with the community, and yet it has still gotten worse.So when people come in here with self-righteous indignation of how we are shutting down their rights as an individual, yeah, people are going to get a bit uppity about that. I can't think of how else we are expected to react to that. Are we supposed to say "I'm sorry, we shouldn't have followed the rules for you since you care so much about the community, we'll let you post as much about these commercial products as you want even though you have a clear association with the developer and this issue has come up before with the rules clearly being explained to you." Is that what is expected of us? There are other forums where the admin makes you convince him that you are a worthy flight sim fan before he lets you in. If we gated the entry, we could probably ensure a nice, homogeneous community where everyone shared the same opinion. Instead, we have tens of thousands of people from all over the world with different cultures, languages and opinions, and the admin staff does their best to just make sure everyone follows the rules. And, as volunteers, the pay here is not worth the abuse the we take sometimes, but we stay and sometimes we speak our minds about it. As long as people follow the rules, we don't care if you do the same. I think it's a fair system.

[Geofa 108]

As for treatment-I am curious.The offending original thread was removed when it was pointed out that it violated the rules-and you seem to be in agreement with enforcing clearly stated rules.The op in this thread asked a good question which I and others mods replied to with politeness.The next post I see is from JayKae. I will not requote his comments as they are above to read, but second rate treatment seems to manifest here.Now personally-when someone does violate a clearly stated rule a I'm sorry usually goes a lot further than the rant that was contained in this post. http://www.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/1b5baf...b9f427f694g.jpgMy blog:http://geofageofa.spaces.live.com/

[FSS_Adrian 0]

>As for treatment-I am curious.>>The offending original thread was removed when it was pointed>out that it violated the rules-and you seem to be in agreement>with enforcing clearly stated rules.>>The op in this thread asked a good question which I and others>mods replied to with politeness.>>The next post I see is from JayKae. I will not requote his>comments as they are above to read, but second rate treatment>seems to manifest here.>>Now personally-when someone does violate a clearly stated rule>a I'm sorry usually goes a lot further than the rant that was>contained in this post. You're right I do agree with upholding the rules. My point, which you seem to be missing here is in how these rules are enforced. The treatment I refer is best explained by the following:http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...d=437379&page=2"Jay, do that again and you will be banned from these forums. If you have an issue with that, then send me an email and I will spell it out for you."Fair enough, if Jay was to continue to post what moderators would consider to be "blatant advertising" then in the first sentence he was clearly informed of the consequences. What I believe is not required is the second sentence, that is plain arrogant. Furthermore the thread was locked, meaning there would be no chance for him should he wish to apologise for the situation. He's left without defense or opportunity for reconciliation.Then above..."There was a thread made by someone with a history of breaking the rule"Not only has he not had the opportunity to defend himself but now another one of the administrators are having a go. Anyone care to elaborate on that "history" of breaking the rules? Jay seems to have pointed out that the "history" relates to a single incident that was indeed "handled behind the scenes". Not publicly here in your forums.I don't know... it's all well and good to enforce rules, but it seems to me that certain members of the moderation staff need to concentrate more on these rules than on discrediting the people they are enforcing them on.Anyhow, I'm done. My first few posts at AVSIM have become my last.