RFF Censorship?

[JohnM]

Stephen gave us his reasoning - that's all the communication that was needed. The decision was his to make so let's respect it and move on.

 

[ChadHahn]

I am a member of a Martin guitar forum. Almost daily people ask about different auctions. Is this guitar refinished? Did that model come with those features in that year? Is this person lying or just deluded?

When you are talking about guitars that can sell for many tens of thousands of dollars you can imagine that they pick apart the tiny out of focus pictures in the listing trying to figure out every nuance of the auction.

These threads often get pretty hot and heavy and lots of times the seller of the guitar rings in. I've seen the seller call the posters about every name in the book but I've never seen anyone get threatened to be sued.

I think that not wanting to say something for fear of being sued is cowardly and a disservice. If you keep quiet you are just allowing the person to rip off more people.

Chad

 

[back alley]

has anyone noticed a decline in the number of posts with questions about ebay items?

and chad, calling stephen a coward? that's out of line.
this site has provided more of a service for rf users than most any around.

joe

 

[jlw]

I can easily understand Stephen not wanting to provide an open forum for discussions about a business that has absolutely nothing to do with him, especially when those discussions are likely to become slanderous.

And since RFF is his proprietorship, for him to exercise control over what he wants to present isn't "censorship." For all of you who think it is: Hey, I want to come over to your house and put up a yard sign urging people to vote for a political candidate you don't like. If you say, "No thanks, not in my front yard"? are you censoring my political statement? Or are you simply exercising your right to make your own statement on your own property?

 

[ChadHahn]

I'm not calling him a coward, but I feel this fear that people have is uncalled for.

He calls himself a bartender. What if there was a bar you went to where all of a sudden there was a sign on the door listing the topics that you couldn't discuss. Sure it's their bar but one still can speak their mind.

Where would America be if people couldn't speak unpopular topics in bars? The internet was built on the free exchange of ideas. When people buy popular websites in the hopes of making money from them, then often the exchange of ideas suffers.

Chad

 

[back alley]

the internet was originally built for the armed forces, to be able to communicate in times of war when the lines of normal communication were gone!
making money from a website? what a dreadful idea.
i suppose you volunteer all your time and survive off the charity of others?

joe

 

[jan normandale]

Stephen deleted an entire forum, not just one thread or post. You may not have found value in it, Jan but there's something to be said for giving your friends a heads up regarding a place almost all of patronize. Members weren't just b*ing and moaning about bad transactions, they were asking opinions about auctions, before bidding. They were asking for advice on how to handle suspicious or peculiar dealings. Heck even Camera Quest benefited when sellers were using images taken from the CQ website. I learned a lot about cameras from discussions about auctions that were highlighted in that forum.

No one says a thing about the HU: threads that point to directly to auctions. Those threads help members get gear. What's wrong with helping on the other side of the equation.



.

Ray, I was more focused on details of the posts where issues were aired. I think Trius/Earl posted a good summary of what my experience at RFF has been. Often a lot of heat but little light and usually there was a valid reason for these mixups. With most of them resolved however there is was a pallor hanging over the person/s named.

A specific example involved a RFF member Flashover. He was out of commission, had posted/bought camera related stuff and was nowhere to be found. A lot of things were written about him that were totally wrong. Eventually he resurfaced and resolved all the ‘noted’ problems and he continues to be an active and contributing member. The problem was people leapt to conclusions based on notions and not fact. I don’t take much stock of these threads for the reasons illustrated in these two examples.

Regarding the Ebay forum that was deleted. My bad there. I have never used one of the threads in that Forum nor read any. This lead me to the response of there being a redundancy that seemed logical to delete the RFF forum if Ebay was on the job. I guess I’ve just been lucky at Ebay.

As an aside a yellow flag comes up for me when a new member with less than 10 posts arrives on site to raise issues. We’ ve seen this before at RFF and then the poster almost invariably disappears after raising these things. So I’m less than enthusiastic when a “he said, she said” gets posted.

 

[Keith]

From the 'bartender'...

Don’t worry folks. If George and I had not announced the change of ownership, you would not have been able to tell it from the site’s contents! [unquote]

😀 🙄

 

[TeePee Smith]

From the 'bartender'...

Don’t worry folks. If George and I had not announced the change of ownership, you would not have been able to tell it from the site’s contents! [unquote]

😀 🙄

who is "george"?

 

[rpsawin]

Where would America be if people couldn't speak unpopular topics in bars? The internet was built on the free exchange of ideas. When people buy popular websites in the hopes of making money from them, then often the exchange of ideas suffers.

Chad

Yeah, like porn, mortgage rates and online gambling. It may be used to communicate ideas but it was not built based on them. And the internet took off when commerce seized control of it.

Bob

 

[TeePee Smith]

Jorge... George. I'm confused... one guy or two different guys?

 

[JohnM]

One guy.

Most call him Jorge - Stephen Gandy calls him George.

 

[TeePee Smith]

Oh, I guess I get it. Any of my Hispanic friends would be offended... but whatever works around here is okay by me.

 

[back alley]

jorge=george same guy same name one is english and one is spanish

 

[charjohncarter]

MY friend just got major scr4w5d on Ebay with a camera deal. It's too bad but I'm not dealing with them any more.

 

[TeePee Smith]

Muchos gracias mi amigo, Jose.