74 replies to this topic

[Robert Giacometti]

That doesn't bode well for our community. 'Cause we have all agreed that the two things we all agree on -if we set aside politics--is that no one like dog pooh in their front yards.

So, if these companies aren't advertising because they disagree with us and it doesn't have anything to do with pollitics---what the hell are we talking about? Are you telling me that there are companies in folsom who do like to see dog pooh in our front yards?





(sorry, my sarcasm meter was running a bit tweaked) if the thought of dog pooh littered neighborhoods, endorsed by locally owned companies---is revolting to you, please skip this post.

Its NOT about the content on the forum or wether the posters are too liberal or conservative or there are too many of one or the other.

Ask yourself this, if you felt their was a bias within an organization, would you support that organization?

[folsom500]

Robert- If the business' perceive a bias- is that not just in the political section where you have always claimed moderator and John's bias ? What other bias could it be ?

Since the politics section is gone for now - so would your perceived bias as well as that other business that you mention in plural...

Right ? Or clarify ...

Cheers
F500

[supermom]

Its NOT about the content on the forum or wether the posters are too liberal or conservative or there are too many of one or the other.

Ask yourself this, if you felt their was a bias within an organization, would you support that organization?

I am merely pointing out that your perception may be misguided--by your own bias'.

Sorry, Robert, You know I respect you-but....

I don't believe the reasoning. Not yours-nor the web site owners reasons, for why businesses are not advertising as much.

Gasp!!! Holy Crap---has anyone told Tomato Pages that we are in a recession?

[john]

Robert, please enlighten us. I'd rather discuss this in an open forum - if there's a reason people are taking their business elsewhere, I'm happy to take the feedback. There's always room for improvement in every product.

[Robert Giacometti]

Robert- If the business' perceive a bias- is that not just in the political section where you have always claimed moderator and John's bias ? What other bias could it be ?

Since the politics section is gone for now - so would your perceived bias as well as that other business that you mention in plural...

Right ? Or clarify ...

Cheers
F500

I've never felt John had a bias or stated such. I think he has been more than fair and has admitted he gave some way too many chances. I think that was very admirable.

I have said there are SOME, Mods ( very few) who allow their biases affect their selective enforcement of the rules in the political section. We all agree none of us are perefct so everyone one of us would have some sort of bias in our beliefs, but the selective enforcemnet became obvious to many, beyond a simple imperfection humanity. These were documented for all to see.

Its rather hyopcritical of some who were so critical of Bush/Cheney & Pailn with their posts, who are so pleased now, the political section is closed.

Closure of the political section is being viewed by some as a form of censorship. If the Mods are viewed as leaders on the forum and some Mods are advocating being happy at the closure, after they were so generous with their criticisms in the past, what kind of message does that send to the business community or the community as a whole?

[cw68]

I've never felt John had a bias or stated such. I think he has been more than fair and has admitted he gave some way too many chances. I think that was very admirable.

I have said there are SOME, Mods ( very few) who allow their biases affect their selective enforcement of the rules in the political section. We all agree none of us are perefct so everyone one of us would have some sort of bias in our beliefs, but the selective enforcemnet became obvious to many, beyond a simple imperfection humanity. These were documented for all to see.

Its rather hyopcritical of some who were so critical of Bush/Cheney & Pailn with their posts, who are so pleased now, the political section is closed.

Closure of the political section is being viewed by some as a form of censorship. If the Mods are viewed as leaders on the forum and some Mods are advocating being happy at the closure, after they were so generous with their criticisms in the past, what kind of message does that send to the business community or the community as a whole?

I assume you are talking about me as one of the mods. I am happy that it's closed so that everyone in there doesn't have to be babysat anymore and that we mods perhaps one day can quit being blamed for problems cause by the poor behavior of others. Whether or not you believe this, it has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with people not being respectful and responsible. You can twist it and tie it to politics if you want but that's not the reason. It's not my fault that the majority of people who were disrespectful held similar political beliefs. I also think you saw "selective" enforcement because you only noticed it when it went against your beliefs. Over the years I have PM'd people with warnings, most of whom apologized or/and said they'd change their behavior. These were sent without consideration to which "side" they were on. I could tell you this to the cows come home but you'd never believe me.

You're right that advertisers had more that just beefs with the political section. They had problems with things just being pissy and negative in general. You know, like when a member of the MyFolsom community put up a post asking for support for a local school event and the entire thread was derailed and turned into a soapbox for someone bitching about "feel good" programs, gov't waste, etc. Remember that one? What was meant to be a means of bringing the community together to support their town turned into something that turned off members of our community and did very little positives for our town.

[old soldier]

if I was thinking about being ad advertiser I would want to know how many folks read the forum and then I would take a measure of how smart they are by the quality of the old discussions. Seems to me the political forum was a better measure of the old intellignece of an argument and a discussion about recipies, or dog poop on the trails.

the only problem might be if an advertisor was a little on the liberal side and might be upset with the razor sharp analysis put out by the conservative folk.

the old moderators should just watch for cussing and off color stuff and not with the content. the other thing a moderator can do is shut down a topic after it appears they are beating a dead horse.

when we had a good political topic going folks were hopping on the forum more each day to see the current comments and by doing that were seeing the ads a few more times, just like a billboard along highway 50

I can't say I have ever been mad about any posts, but then again when you are old its good when you mellow out. My big thing as I said yesterday is keeping away from the obama death squads..

[john]

For the record, this is why the forum was closed (at least temporarily) -

it was doing more harm than good. It had turned in to something that was no longer fun to read, but a chore to moderate. We'd get PM's daily about so-and-so saying this and that, and myself and the whole mod team would get PM's about this as soon as we logged in. We simply had enough.

Plain and simple, our old solutions were not working. I had to change something.

It has nothing to do with bias. We all have our bias. I am more conservative, cw is more liberal. camay and forumreader are conservative, stevethedad leans to the left. My point is that I try and round out the moderating team.

Regarding advertising, yes, the general negativity drove some people away. It's unfortunate and a problem many websites deal with - the anonimity of the internet leads to a lot of keyboard warriors. I'm trying to make some changes to improve this.

[Bill Z]

I assume you are talking about me as one of the mods. I am happy that it's closed so that everyone in there doesn't have to be babysat anymore and that we mods perhaps one day can quit being blamed for problems cause by the poor behavior of others. Whether or not you believe this, it has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with people not being respectful and responsible. You can twist it and tie it to politics if you want but that's not the reason. It's not my fault that the majority of people who were disrespectful held similar political beliefs. I also think you saw "selective" enforcement because you only noticed it when it went against your beliefs. Over the years I have PM'd people with warnings, most of whom apologized or/and said they'd change their behavior. These were sent without consideration to which "side" they were on. I could tell you this to the cows come home but you'd never believe me.

You're right that advertisers had more that just beefs with the political section. They had problems with things just being pissy and negative in general. You know, like when a member of the MyFolsom community put up a post asking for support for a local school event and the entire thread was derailed and turned into a soapbox for someone bitching about "feel good" programs, gov't waste, etc. Remember that one? What was meant to be a means of bringing the community together to support their town turned into something that turned off members of our community and did very little positives for our town.

I remember that one, it did get ugly fast and not really for a good reason. but I think it did bring up some good questions and points, sometimes things are done with the best of intentions, but a proper analysis reveals the objective of the feel good activity may not always truly achieve it's intended goal, in fact it may be counter-productive, while those that participated blindly feel they actually helped the cause, when the net effect is the exact opposite. This can happen when "labels" are incorrectly used.

For instance, when I worked at company A, we used solder to strip gold from the leads of our transistors so as to prevent a phenomenon known as gold embrittlement which makes for weak solder joints. This solder pot would become polluted with gold periodically and we had to get rid of it and refill the pot with fresh clean tin/lead solder. Company A then paid someone to haul off this "toxic waste" (high lead content) for "hazardous waste" disposal.

but then our business got sold to company B and we were told to look into alternatives. We found someone that would buy this "hazardous waste" from us as he considered it ore, he could extract the gold, tin & lead and sell the 3 materials at a profit.

We don't know what the hazardous waste guys did with it, but presumably, they followed hazardous waste disposal practices as that is the business they were in. But at company B, we found that instead of paying someone to take it away, we now got paid for someone to come and take it away, and then we also knew it was being recycled instead of being dumped.

[cw68]

I remember that one, it did get ugly fast and not really for a good reason. but I think it did bring up some good questions and points, sometimes things are done with the best of intentions, but a proper analysis reveals the objective of the feel good activity may not always truly achieve it's intended goal, in fact it may be counter-productive, while those that participated blindly feel they actually helped the cause, when the net effect is the exact opposite. This can happen when "labels" are incorrectly used.

Not every post on this forum should be used as an opportunity to argue, debate and point out flaws and negatives. Sometime there needs to be times where posts are just left as they are intended, "Hey, I'm doing XYZ, anyone else want to XYZ?" and they don't need to be turned into a mess. It seems to me as if the last six months has led this forum into turning every post into an argument of some sort. Not everyone wants politics and/or accounting to rule their every move, their every thought, every thread. They don't always want to know how and exactly why you feel the way you do.

That post, to me, made Folsom seem less like a town where people help out each other, and their community, and more like a place where neighbor argues with neighbor. That's what this forum was seeming to be too. Sometimes you just have to let things go -- if your neighbor asks you if you know where there are any pink cars, you just answer the question instead of trying to explain to him why wanting a pink car is wrong/wasteful/naive, etc.

[palango]

For the record, as a CONSUMERI have spent almost $1500 with advertisers of myfolsom.com. I would have taken that $1500 and more than likely (based on a google search) would have taken my business out of Folsom or somewhere else.

My buying decision had nothing to do with one section vs another, but that I trust John and his product. I do agree with cw68 that overall, these boards have become too much of negative energy.

I believe that the reason why business do not advertise here has more to do with the current state of the economy than other afformentioned factors. In fact, I believe that one thing that John can do better is to enlist businessowners that advertise cutrrently to create a portfolio of "satisfied" customers/testimonials (video or powerpoint) and how myfolsom.com has helped them GROW their business.

[mylo]

I hope I'm one of the biased mods!

[Robert Giacometti]

I assume you are talking about me as one of the mods. I am happy that it's closed so that everyone in there doesn't have to be babysat anymore and that we mods perhaps one day can quit being blamed for problems cause by the poor behavior of others. Whether or not you believe this, it has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with people not being respectful and responsible. You can twist it and tie it to politics if you want but that's not the reason. It's not my fault that the majority of people who were disrespectful held similar political beliefs. I also think you saw "selective" enforcement because you only noticed it when it went against your beliefs. Over the years I have PM'd people with warnings, most of whom apologized or/and said they'd change their behavior. These were sent without consideration to which "side" they were on. I could tell you this to the cows come home but you'd never believe me.

You're right that advertisers had more that just beefs with the political section. They had problems with things just being pissy and negative in general. You know, like when a member of the MyFolsom community put up a post asking for support for a local school event and the entire thread was derailed and turned into a soapbox for someone bitching about "feel good" programs, gov't waste, etc. Remember that one? What was meant to be a means of bringing the community together to support their town turned into something that turned off members of our community and did very little positives for our town.

I recall you were one of the ones, who contributed posts that most would view as not being favorable towards the Bush/Cheney & Palin and now are happy the politics section is closed. I can only judge the selective enforcement based upon what it is I see. I did see where one Mod would warn people to play fair, but coincidently it was only after a Conservative posted in response to liberal post. After numerous instances of this, one gets the impression there might be a bias in ones enforcement.

I do recall that thread that was started asking for community support for a project. I do also recall a forum member asking questions about the effectiveness of the program, questioning wether or not the program actually did what the OP claimed. I never knew questioning the efectiveness of a program translates into someone turning that into a soapbox for bitching?

I do know some other businessmen praised and complimented the forum member who raised the questions. One businessman and advertiser on this site encouraged the poster to keep asking questions!

I also recall in that thread one forum member offered a public apology to another forum member, something RARELY ever done on here.

I'm almost getting the sense that there are some who enjoy the right to ask questions, yet don't want others to enjoy that same right.

[cw68]

I recall you were one of the ones, who contributed posts that most would view as not being favorable towards the Bush/Cheney & Palin and now are happy the politics section is closed. I can only judge the selective enforcement based upon what it is I see. I did see where one Mod would warn people to play fair, but coincidently it was only after a Conservative posted in response to liberal post. After numerous instances of this, one gets the impression there might be a bias in ones enforcement.

I do recall that thread that was started asking for community support for a project. I do also recall a forum member asking questions about the effectiveness of the program, questioning wether or not the program actually did what the OP claimed. I never knew questioning the efectiveness of a program translates into someone turning that into a soapbox for bitching?

I do know some other businessmen praised and complimented the forum member who raised the questions. One businessman and advertiser on this site encouraged the poster to keep asking questions!

I also recall in that thread one forum member offered a public apology to another forum member, something RARELY ever done on here.

I'm almost getting the sense that there are some who enjoy the right to ask questions, yet don't want others to enjoy that same right.

Yes, I complained about Bush and Cheney, but I never attacked the people with whom I disagreed. BIG difference. I don't know how many times I have to say that I miss the politics section in general. I like debating. I don't like slamming and belittling those with whom one disagrees. It's a difference you appear to refuse to acknowledge.

Asking questions is a good thing and I highly encourage it everywhere in my life, but knowing when and where to ask them is something called tact. I strongly believe in the right to ask questions, but do question how and when one does. I recall a thread where one asked for community volunteers for a FCUSD non-profit organization that turns waaaay sour. Might it not be best to start a separate thread to ask said questions instead of kerplunking a thread that was reaching out to Folsomites interested in volunteering to strengthen our community? Do we really want to inhibit people from reaching out to their community? That's a categorical "no." There is a way to get one's voice heard and still support those around them -- whether or not one is in agreement with those asking for help.

At this point I feel like I'm hitting a brick wall over and over and over again. One gets it or they don't. Conspiracy theories abound, but most often the most reasonable rationale is the truth. It's not flashy, it's not newsworthy, but it's solid and strong -- the stuff upon which our country thrives.

[john]

I'm closing this. We get it - turn the page...