Forum Rules Update

[Dapper Don]

I disagree with that completely Rsurfer. But that's cool too.

[Klasse Act]

Great post Dan except the Republican mention.

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[Nick McKees37]

I think that this is a gigantic mistake on Autogeeks part. When one tries to supress the sharing of information in an online forum, the end result of that is always the same. That forum will become extinct because users that want to have free discussions WILL leave and migrate to somewhere where they can have that. Then, that forum will become known for suppression, especially for something as silly as the discussion of products that are sold elsewhere. There will always be another free forum to join and also Reddit has a great Auto Detailing sub-Reddit to enjoy as well. Nothing screams insecurity and fear of transparancy like having a rule like that. Let alone enforcing it. One thing to keep in mind when dealing with an online community that generates 95% of their own content is that they are the creators of what everyone logs into each and every day to read that new post or comment to that thread being followed. That's right, we the "users" are the ones that generate almost ALL of the content that is read on this forum. Not Autogeek. Even if you had all of their employees working around the clock, they could not produce enough content to keep the traffic count up for this site to be worth coming back to. But tell me more how suppressing discussion is going to be healthy to that community? To be quite honest, if there are products out there that can go toe to toe with what is offered here then it would be a smart business decision to add those products to the current product line rather than enforce no discussion about it. You know who else does that kind of censorship? Religious cults, republicans and third world dictators. Not what I would call good company to keep. It seems to me more and more that the management here is getting a little to old for the internet and how it is used with some of the things have been happening here. I don't post much here, but when I start seeing a users freedom to simply discuss something like a different product in jeapordy, that means that MY freedom to discuss something is going to be next. And that just doesn't seem to kosher with me. Any professional worth their salt should have the confidence in what they are doing or what they are offering to allow ANY discussion about it. That is what having the courage of your convictions is all about and is a hallmark of reputable business. The ironic part is that while we "users" are being silenced from discussing other products, PBMG has more shadow brands and companies that totally act like they are different companies or even competition than you can shake a stick at. Now who are the ones really being deceitful?

The rules haven't changed. We're just making everyone aware of them, that's all.

AGO, for the most part, attracts the highest caliber group of people in the internet discussion world. If anyone has an issue with our rules, then they probably joined with ill intentions in the first place.

You typically join a discussion forum for 1 of 3 reasons:

1. To learn.
2. To help others.
3. To cause trouble.

The rules are in place to keep the 1% out, so the 99% have a fun, family-friendly auto detailing discussion forum to learn and to help others learn about car care and detailing.

[Klasse Act]

Also well said Nick!

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[Rsurfer]

The rules haven't changed. We're just making everyone aware of them, that's all.

AGO, for the most part, attracts the highest caliber group of people in the internet discussion world. If anyone has an issue with our rules, then they probably joined with ill intentions in the first place.

You typically join a discussion forum for 1 of 3 reasons:

1. To learn.
2. To help others.
3. To cause trouble.That's the 1% for sure.

The rules are in place to keep the 1% out, so the 99% have a fun, family-friendly auto detailing discussion forum to learn and to help others learn about car care and detailing.

[Klasse Act]

It seems some understanding has been discussed here and I like how this thread is going, common sense points made on both sides of the issue.

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[AGOatemywallet]

"Religious cults, republicans and third world dictators."

How in World did you come up with that trio?

[House of Wax]

AG is a great forum, but it's the enforcement of these rules that keep it from being my "detailing home".

[Mike Phillips]

I think that this is a gigantic mistake on Autogeeks part. When one tries to supress the sharing of information in an online forum, the end result of that is always the same. That forum will become extinct because users that want to have free discussions WILL leave and migrate to somewhere where they can have that. Then, that forum will become known for suppression, especially for something as silly as the discussion of products that are sold elsewhere. There will always be another free forum to join and also Reddit has a great Auto Detailing sub-Reddit to enjoy as well. Nothing screams insecurity and fear of transparancy like having a rule like that. Let alone enforcing it. One thing to keep in mind when dealing with an online community that generates 95% of their own content is that they are the creators of what everyone logs into each and every day to read that new post or comment to that thread being followed. That's right, we the "users" are the ones that generate almost ALL of the content that is read on this forum. Not Autogeek. Even if you had all of their employees working around the clock, they could not produce enough content to keep the traffic count up for this site to be worth coming back to. But tell me more how suppressing discussion is going to be healthy to that community? To be quite honest, if there are products out there that can go toe to toe with what is offered here then it would be a smart business decision to add those products to the current product line rather than enforce no discussion about it. You know who else does that kind of censorship? Religious cults, republicans and third world dictators. Not what I would call good company to keep. It seems to me more and more that the management here is getting a little to old for the internet and how it is used with some of the things have been happening here. I don't post much here, but when I start seeing a users freedom to simply discuss something like a different product in jeapordy, that means that MY freedom to discuss something is going to be next. And that just doesn't seem to kosher with me. Any professional worth their salt should have the confidence in what they are doing or what they are offering to allow ANY discussion about it. That is what having the courage of your convictions is all about and is a hallmark of reputable business. The ironic part is that while we "users" are being silenced from discussing other products, PBMG has more shadow brands and companies that totally act like they are different companies or even competition than you can shake a stick at. Now who are the ones really being deceitful?

Please take this as a positive suggestion, that's all.

As someone that types a lot on forums and has been typing a lot on forums since the software was released in it's beta form in 2000, here's a tip...

Try to hit the [Enter] key once in a while and break HUGE chunks of text into separate paragraphs as this makes it easier on the human eyes to track and follow one sentence to the next sentence.

By this I mean, when you're eyes get to the end of a sentence they need to "track" the lines of words and drop down JUST ONE LINE to the next word in the next sentence to be able to digest what was written.

I'm not an eye doctor so I don't know why it is a little "white space" in-between paragraphs helps the human eye to do this but it does. It's even more important when typing on electronic interfaces than on paper but still important on paper.

Just a friendly tip because when you make your writing easier to read more people will read it. When you type in one huge chunk some people will simply scan it and some people will skip it altogether.

As an Admin on this forum I will often times edit someone's post to break up huge chunks of text just so I can read it so I can dissect it using the multi-quote feature of vBulletin when I type out detailed replies.


I like your post but I find it very hard to read I almost edited your post just to hit the [Enter] key here and there to make it easier for me to read but instead I thought I would use this as a teaching moment for you and everyone else that types on a forum.



Now about your post...
I actually do have a lot of experience running forums. I brought the MOL forum (MeguiarsOnline.com), up from scratch and ran it for 7 years.

Everyone told me a "Manufacturer's Forum" would never work but I proved them wrong and when I left Meguiar's it was the most popular and busiest detailing discussion forum in America and rivaled Detail World and completely surpassed Autopia.


I have so many "Behind the scenes stories" about this industry in general and here's one from my time at Meguiar's.

When I started the forum management wanted ALL the talk to be about Meguiar's products only.

I objected.


I said if there are products out there that are better than Meguiar's we shouldn't stop people from coming to MOL to talk about them, we should find out if they are in fact better and then bring this to the attention of R & D and if true improve the current Meguiar's product and if needed introduce a new product to fill the needs of the market place.

I won.

Meguiar's was an open forum under my direction and still is today.


The rules in place here at Autogeek are in part the rules originally established before I came to Autogeek and in part the rules Autogeek borrowed from MeguiarsOnline.com

Just look at the MOL forum rules and you'll see they are very similar to the current AGO forum rules but it wasn't like that till I came to Autogeek. And the reason why was before I came to Autogeek there were no rules outside of rule #1 and a few bad apples were ruining the forum. So we implemented some solid rules of behavior and then simply implemented the forum rules.

What I believe and what has proven to be true is that when you have good forum rules in place you NEVER ban anyone. A person bans them self by breaking the forum rules. All the forum Moderators have to do is enforce the forum rules.

I will also say that before I came to AGO there was a spirit of rudeness on this forum that caused people to not want to post. I'm happy to say AGO is NOTHING like that now and that's how a GREAT forum should be. It should be helpful and friendly. It should feel like your second family in the cyber-world and I think I can get a lot of our regular forum members and our long-time forum members to vindicate me on this.



Summary
This is a great discussion so far and I can assure you that everyone's input is being read and evaluated.

I will also say there's no reason to bring politics or religion into this thread.



p.s.

Note how I used a little bold text to help break up the regular text and to also draw your eyes to areas where the topic changes. That's another technique for making it easy for your reader to digest what you write.

[Ricorocks]

Amen Mike oops!