I tried to reach out to the other side. Got Hand slapped.

I'm one of those people who hates letting a bridge burn, unless I am absolutely sure that it is not due to any misunderstanding.

So I tried to reach out to John to figure this out.
Here is my letter and his reply.
Now, I'm done with the other board.

John,
Let me start by saying I speak for many people and I’m writing this letter is because we are clueless. We want to understand. We just don’t get it.

I’m sure you’ll agree that there are many definitions of “profit”. Profit can be physical, emotional, financial, social, being right about something, or succeeding at something, but one way or another we all look for profit (or “benefit”, if you prefer). If you were accepting advertising, then another board stealing your advertisers would take away your profit, but you are not. If there were some sort of prestigious award you were up for that was given to the best board in a particular category, another board might be considered competition. But there is no award to our knowledge you are competing for. We can’t figure out what profit/benefit you seek by taking the actions you’ve taken.

There is nothing on your board which suggests or requests loyalty to your board, forsaking all others in the category. In fact most members of your board were members someplace else, such as the Yahoo Silverwing group, or other maxi-scooter groups, before they came to you, and still are. At no time before this have you complained that dual membership to any other board was a conflict of interest.

There is nothing on your board that indicates the information there should be proprietary to those that read your board. In fact, it is only logical that much of the information provided to your board came from other forums, and much of the information on your board was disseminated to many other forums. When I first started P&A, you knew I combed thousands of posts from the yahoo forum to get information for that section, and you saw nothing wrong with taking info from that forum and adding it to your site. In addition, when I let you know that I had zipped up everything from P&A and posted it as a text file for the yahoo group, rather than ask me to take it down, you simply asked me to re-label it from the uk board to silverwing.org. You didn’t complain about the information being shared.

You have worked hard to maintain your board, but no one worked harder than me to make it grow from a forum into the definitive reference site for Silverwings. Over 1500 posts! And JeffR’s how-to’s set the standard for pictorials. No mod was on your board as much as I was or worked as hard to keep posts in the right place or combine links when appropriate, or delete dupes/dead links.

You once told me that if someone started a “competing board” it was a way of saying that your board isn’t good enough. Maybe in some ways it isn’t, but that is each individual’s decision, not yours. Every board has a different personality, as created by the owner, and echoed by the members. Jeff’s board has a different personality, and its popularity is a clear indication that there is need for a forum with a different personality than yours. The idea that someone should be a member of both forums, or transfer information between them, is both normal and expected. The problem is not that he started the board. The problem is that you consider it a competing, rather than complimentary or sister board.

Personally, I like the layout of .org better than 600. It’s much easier to find new information on .org. The problem is that your rules interfere with the excitement and desire to provide and access new information. .org has become stagnant and boring, and you’ve banned the top contributors of new info.

I know how you feel about advertising and I would like to point out that JeffR pays a fee each month to keep banner advertising off his site. It’s not quite as free as open source, but not everyone is an IT Professional with the time, effort, and knowledge to make open source work. We live in a capitalist society where we support the exchange of goods and services for profit, and there is nothing wrong with having minor hosting company ads on his board in exchange for what they provide him.

Together we built your board to what it is, but somewhere along the line you put something ahead of your enthusiasm for the bike and riding and its possibilities and the value of sharing information, while the membership of your board did not. That is where the problem started. And I think that like me, your time investment to date is so great, that you don’t want to see it wasted. All of the collected wisdom that is on your board has been also collected by me personally for that very reason. I didn’t want to see it disappear if you got vindictive, which is certainly the way it feels. The information itself is meant to be in the hands of those who can use it, rather than mired in the red tape of the politics behind silly board rivalry. Since the information was never intended to be proprietary, there is no reason not to share it.

Without P&A and how to’s, your board has little if anything that other boards do not. If you disagree, it’s easy for you to prove. Disable those two sections for two weeks and see if the posting frequency changes, or the content of the conversations changes. Or you can remove all of the posts of those you’ve banned, and see what content is left. I bet that better than 80% of the monthly traffic on your board is about questions that are already answered elsewhere on your board.

If I posted everything I’ve saved, en mass on the 600 forum, the big difference between your forum and 600 would be the physical layout and the personality. Then whether your board continues to thrive or not would be based exclusively on your personality, the rules you make for your forum, and what its members bring to the table. Would your board survive? Sure. Would it thrive? Not so much. Those of us that are no longer members take with us all our knowledge. Banning us from your forum doesn’t hurt us one bit. We are around to help others and we’ll do it at 600 instead of .org. The only ones who suffer are new and junior members (the core of your membership) that no longer have access to our knowledge and experience, and any new information we bring to the table. You have around 60 members that have contributed more than 100 posts, and you have lost or alienated at least 20% of us.

As I’ve said before, we are uninformed and clueless to your reasoning. So now it’s your turn. Please explain in small words so we simple folk can understand,

1. The profit/benefit in considering 600 as competition vs. companion. What do you achieve?

2. Why inhibit external links to .org, when allowing them leads others to explore your forum?

3. Why the dual standard? We can bring info to your board, but can’t take it elsewhere? WTF?

4. What do you gain if 600 disappears? Other than peace of mind, where’s your profit/benefit?

Yes, .org is your baby. You get to be King John and boss people around and do things your way. From the perspective of forum users, however, you are a service provider, and some of the rules you have simply do not service our common interests, which is why we go elsewhere. As a group we just don’t understand how you or the Silverwing community profit/benefit by maintaining the attitude you’ve got. We’re willing to understand. We just don’t.

Since you no longer own a Silverwing, and your passion for it is gone, (or at least surpassed by some other form of profit/benefit) perhaps it’s time to pass the baton to those that still have a genuine enthusiasm for the bike?

Here is John's reply:


Dan,

I didn't read all this as I quickly got bored reading it. I've run SW.org successfully for many years and I don't take kindly to people using a rival forum and trying to integrate it with mine. I've told you many times and yet you still persist. I've been very tolerant with sw600 users but now I've had enough. You are currently the top user with honda_silver second and you are both abusing my bandwidth for the sw600.

I'd prefer all sw600 users keep to that site and let the vast majority get on with using my site in peace.


John.




So that's it then, I will leave John in peace and reduce his bandwidth challenges. He did in all fairness tell me that there was a financial aspect to limiting the size of his board due to bandwidth costs, but that is obviously not the whole story. Oh well. Good bye John.

Better known as "TLDR."

DuggleBogey wrote:

Better known as "TLDR."

Huh? Dunno what that means.

Not a lot one can say; apparently he won't listen to reason so there's nothing anyone can do.
I'm really sorry you chaps have been treated so badly but ......
viva Silverwing 600!

Ouch! I am new to the SilverWing, and am hungry for information and other's experienced. However, I have just deleted the .org link from my favorites. He can keep his bandwidth with an attitude like that!

I just did some math.
He has 637 users. We have 687

He has 29088 posts since sept 2004.
We have 14452 posts in two years.
27% of the posts on his board are from
10 people...including him!

Posts 29088
TRANSAM86 1879
Dan Spevack 1589
honda_silver 1181
ILKBASS 1150
masscoot 713
swf_admin 517
paul_scooter 373
JeffR 348
joncallihan 264
DennisB 190

I'm going to make a prediction now and check this thread in a year.
I predict less he'll have less than 4000 more posts one year from today.

Dan

"TLDR" is web forum speak for "Too Long, Didn't Read."

It's for when someone wants to comment on a subject but doesn't want to take the time to read what you have to say. It's considered a sign of disrespect.

Basically it's saying "you're opinion isn't important enough to me to read what you have to say."

Bravo Dan... I knew there was a reason I respect you so much. That was a classy I mean VERY CLASSY way of reaching out to King John ( was I first to call him that?). That was a LONG reach out. I read every word. Every word you used was expressing a desire to get along. You invited him to a hand shake and made perfect sense to any normal person. You didn't get your hand slapped... that was an angry slap to the face of all of us on this forum. I am so proud of this forum. Not so much that we are smarter or better than anyone else, just proud that our core is bigger than any one person or idea. I know some of the newest members here are probably wondering what the hell is going on. But the Silverwing 600 sails are full and a sailing we will go. I so look forward to being involved in the future of this great group of Silverwingers.

Lets Roll.

Thanks Dan.

I didn't realize that I had posted so much there -- probably a lot of it had to do with my DayLong vs Corbin prejudices. I still prefer the Shasta Lake product.

None the less, I seem to be in the minority -- to the best of my knowledge I've not been banned by King John (must be the Irish surname )

That's ok Jon you're still welcome here.

If its any consolation to you, if I had it to do over, I might have gotten the Day-long.

Thanks for the kind words Gary.

dspevack wrote:

I'm going to make a prediction now and check this thread in a year. I predict less he'll have less than 4000 more posts one year from today.

Based on tyrannical king John's response ... he would be happy with 0 posts which would be the lowest bandwidth possible.

Mature forums (or forum administrators) easily overcome the "cost" issues by a number of ways. If someone choose to treat a forum as a fiefdom and the membership as serfs, then they are in the dark ages.

Dan,

I was just reading his rules and here is one I saw:

"Competition is good, monopolies are bad!"

It seems he is breaking his own rules. He doesn't Competition and he wants to be the Monoply. These are in his rules. Kind of funny.

I think all has been said...Let John Cooper's ship sale right on by. We don't need him or his forum. Let go! We need to move on form this point....OK. Thank You very much.