One of the thorniest problems on the message board has been to find a way to deal with the use of the board for commercial purposes by people posting messages. I think it has been difficult to find a good position on this. On the one hand, I think there are those who exploit this free service to promote their business. I object to that, as do many if not most readers of the message board. On the other hand, I really don’t want to stop individuals from selling whistles to each other and using the board to initiate those transactions. Personally, I don’t mind if a person who makes money by selling or making whistles posts an occasional message making us aware of something they have to offer. However, I think it is important that such a person can demonstrate that the majority of their posts are entirely non-commercial. In other words, they are contributing members of the board community. I also think it is critical that their be NOTHING competitive about the message. No “best deals.” Nothing that suggests any superiority over others’ products and services. Nothing that diminishes or belittles the work of competitors.
So, because for the most part I think almost everybody falls well within these guidelines, I’ve taken a pretty tolerant approach to people using the board to get free advertising. Now I am running into this problem: Whenever I allow SOME of this to occur, resentments arise from those who I’ve asked, in the past, to stop posting commercial messages. You get into judgment calls about what constitutes inappropriate use of the board. Regrettably, I think I’m going to have to take a firmer line about this. I am proud of the fact that we’ve not had to ban anyone from the board. Let’s keep it that way. Here are some new guidelines.
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The blanket policy is this: You may not use the board to promote your business. Exceptions will be made under certain conditions. Some of those will be outlined below. When in doubt, email me and I’ll try to work with you.
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If you are not in the business of making or selling whistles or other products (of any kind), but you have items such as used instruments you want to offer for sale, you may post two messages. In the first, you describe what is available and you provide your email address and/or phone number. You may not use the message board to receive offers to buy or to negotiate further. Replies to your offer of sale should not be made on the board. Your message should clearly indicate that interested parties should NOT respond on the board. If replies are made on the board anyway, you must respond to them off the board. They will be deleted if and when I see them. When the item is no longer for sale, you may post a message indicating so. Or you can just delete your original post.
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If you are in the business of making or selling whistles or closely related products, you can announce the availability of new products or special deals. Once and only once. You may not include ANY competitive or self-promotional language.
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You may post a message on the board that describes your business, avoiding competive language and claims of superior products and services, ONCE A MONTH (not more). I’ll evaluate these announcements for appropriateness and delete them if I see fit. In any message, I recommend that you let it be known that you will email announcements about products and services you render to interested parties on an opt-in basis. In other words, you invite people to email you if they want to hear more about your business. You collect their email addresses and email them as often as you wish and as often as they will permit. You may renew that offer ONCE A MONTH (not more often) on any or all Chiff & Fipple boards.
I’ll repost this occasionally and will also email it to people who may have missed it if and when they post inappropriately.
Sorry to have to do this, but I’m spending way too much time trying to manage this problem.
Thanks!
Dale
[ This Message was edited by: DaleWisely on 2001-10-09 01:05 ]
[ This Message was edited by: DaleWisely on 2001-10-09 08:12 ]
Aw Dale, lighten up. I for one look forward to the sales offers. Generally speaking they are few compared with the overall total of posts. If the board was being inundated withe SPAM it would be different. Personally I think a lack of posts is a bigger problem with boards such as this one. Let’s do all we can to encourage people to read and post messages.
As a complete newbie here, please forgive me if this has been raised before, but wouldn’t having a separate forum for commercial posts (or maybe all ‘trading’ posts) be a workable solution? Maybe you could impose a rule that only people who significantly contribute to the main forum may post to the new forum (to prevent freeloaders).
Just a thought.
Keith
[edited to fix typo]
[ This Message was edited by: keiths on 2001-10-09 04:49 ]
Your posting (which I do think is going too far in one direction - especially for a normally ‘well balanced chap’ like yourself - but I would, wouldn’t I?) suggests that you have had complaints from those who have been stopped from posting commercially in the past.
As I am one of those, can I just say, I certainly have not raised any objections and I do think that this board benefits from posts from whistle makers and sellers (but I would, wouldn’t I!).
First of all, regarding your idea that I “lighten up.” I appreciate your attitude about this and I think it is shared by a lot of people on the board. But, I get complaints, most of which, frankly, I respond to with a ‘let’s just keep an eye on this and see how it goes.’ I don’t think I can ignore all the complaints.
The idea of a separate board that permits commercial activity has been raised before and I personally like the idea. However, there has been a good amount of protest about splintering the board. I think I’ve offered a good compromise here, one that actually does include limited permission to post commercial messages, free of charge.
I hope you guys can appreciate the fact that this is a bit of a no-win for me. I’m trying to respond to the wishes of two groups, one that clearly has no problem with the commercial messages and another group that is really bothered by them. I think this is a fair compromise.
Dale
[ This Message was edited by: DaleWisely on 2001-10-09 08:08 ]
As a sysop myself, I sympathize with the Dale in his attempts to thread his way through a minefield, and think he’s doing an excellent job. Commercial traffic can be a significant problem if it is abused and people start leaving the board because of it. ( I already get enough spam in my e-mail box, thanks all the same. ) What we have here is more than sufficiently valuable that efforts to prevent this happening are worthwhile.
Just a suggestion: Why not require a “COMMERCIAL” or “4SALE” tag in the subject of any such topics that are started? That way, anyone who isn’t interested can spot them immediately and simply avoid them. Those who may be looking for new whistles, or songbooks, or the like, will know to have a look.
Hello everyone.
I don’t usually post to this board unless I feel that I need to do so to provide some service to persons on the board that have
asked a question about some problem or issue
regarding one of my whistles. Even then, I don’t respond to every item relating to my whistles on the board, preferring to contact the person directly to help them with the problem. I feel that the board is for the whistle players who are often also my customers to share tunes, ideas and ask questions about whistles,problems with whistles, makers, etc. The fact is, that although I almost never post, I always read the postings of the members, because they tell me a lot about how I am doing, which is sometimes not too well, in serving my customers. Also, I find out what people like in whistles and the materials they like best.
It is by listening that we makers can do a better job, and if we do a better job, we won’t have to get on here and spout about how great we are, the members will do that much better than we could, and no salesmanship is needed with the wonderful comments that they
will write about our products and services.
Another thing is that Dale does his utmost to
be as fair and impartial as a man could be in
running the whole Chiff and Fipple network.
We all, makers and players alike owe him a debt of gratitude for his work and service on our behalf. Dale is in this for one reason and that is because he loves whistles and he
loves music and he loves the people that play the whistles and the music. In the interest of being good citizens, we sometimes have to prefer others’ feelings over our own. Dale is doing just that in putting up these guidelines.
Now back to working and to lurking
Thanks,Dale, I appreciate you very much.
Michael Burke
I for one would like to thank Dale for all his excellent and much appreciated efforts with this site. I enjoy reading about people’s experiences, however I do value the site as a way to get information on purchasing whistles & related items.
I personally would like to see a separate “trading” forum as opposed to little or no advertising on this main board.
Many of us whistlers are way out in the boonies and do not have access to whistle-selling shops so we have to purchase via internet. Also, I don’t have a lot of time to surf various sites to search for whistles. I would find it very convenient to have one place advertising merchandise for sale - kind of like catalogue shopping!
Anyone who is offended by 'free trade’doesn’t have to visit that forum.
What do you think?
Sue
I would also love to see a trading/selling forum. I don’t think it would splinter the board at all, it would just be an additional feature. People who don’t want to see stuff for sale would have no problems on the main whistle board, and people who want to find items for sale would know where to go.
It could be a general sale board for flutes, whistles, pipes, etc. Dale, let’s set one up for a month’s trial or so and see how it goes. Afterward, we could post opinions on how it went and you could make your final decision.
And thank you for creating C&F, it’s a great place to be!
I have never found the number (or nature) of commercial postings on the message board to be excessive or untolerable. In fact, I appreciate them because I do find out about “deals” or new products that I likely would never have known about (like a lovely Chieftain D I got from Phil Hardy a few months ago - thanks Phil!).
Nevertheless, I acknowledge that Dale (by virtue of his founder, administrator, and all-round swell guy role) has to deal with all the complaints that the message board generates. I also respect the fact that Dale has the unenviable task of creating guidelines that he thinks are fair and reasonable even though others may not think they are fair or reasonable. IMO Dale does a remarkable job, thanks Dale!
As suggested, perhaps the best win-win situation would be to have a single “trading board” forum where interested forum users can seek out information from any whistle-related merchandise vendors like sale announcements and product announcements, etc. IMO items being sold privately should also be in the “Trading board”. Some simple rules could be applied such as “subject lines should be descriptive of the posting”, etc. I do not think a separate “trading area” would have a splintering effect on the board.
All I can say is that as a result of one of the recent “commercial posts” in question I was able to make a deal for low B and low C whistles. Without the “commercial post” I would have never been able to acquire these two gems. As some say “please don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater.”
Hello everyone.
I don’t usually post to this board unless I feel that I need to do so to provide some service to persons on the board that have
asked a question about some problem or issue
regarding one of my whistles. Even then, I don’t respond to every item relating to my whistles on the board, preferring to contact the person directly to help them with the problem. I feel that the board is for the whistle players who are often also my customers to share tunes, ideas and ask questions about whistles,problems with whistles, makers, etc. The fact is, that although I almost never post, I always read the postings of the members, because they tell me a lot about how I am doing, which is sometimes not too well, in serving my customers. Also, I find out what people like in whistles and the materials they like best.
It is by listening that we makers can do a better job, and if we do a better job, we won’t have to get on here and spout about how great we are, the members will do that much better than we could, and no salesmanship is needed with the wonderful comments that they
will write about our products and services.
Another thing is that Dale does his utmost to
be as fair and impartial as a man could be in
running the whole Chiff and Fipple network.
We all, makers and players alike owe him a debt of gratitude for his work and service on our behalf. Dale is in this for one reason and that is because he loves whistles and he
loves music and he loves the people that play the whistles and the music. In the interest of being good citizens, we sometimes have to prefer others’ feelings over our own. Dale is doing just that in putting up these guidelines.
Now back to working and to lurking
Thanks,Dale, I appreciate you very much.
Michael Burke
