Mark,

With all due respect and at the risk of getting banned, or whatever may be, I want to post the following:

There have been a few threads recently that have caught the eye of the moderators and one or two that have been closed or deleted. In one of the posts you stated;
"In some ways its like ****. You can't really define it until you see it. Because of my day-to-day involvement with the site I've been seeing this type of pattern in some key areas of the site and am trying to resolve it before it drives away members and vendors that have played by the rules we set in place many years ago."
I am an engineer. If you give me set and clear directions on what I can and cannot do I will follow them to a tee. But the **** reference is unclear. The site seems to build for months to a froth with very light moderation until something snaps and the hammer comes down. Some of us do not know when this is coming or what has caused it because of the moving "****" target and some people and vendors seems to be affected more than others.
I have seen, in the last year, Palo Uber come on NAM and have the ***** kicked out of them in probably dozens of threads and thousands of posts. I may be wrong, but I don't remember one or two major moderator crackdowns in these threads. On the other side of the NAM world, there are some questions(admittedly some from haters, but some are very valid questions from folks) about some vendors amazing performance claims and the hammer is dropped. It just seems to me, and I think some others, that not all of the vendors and users are playing by the same rules, and of course this creates animosity and the issues we are seeing. This may only be perception and not reality, but someone's perception is their reality.
If the performance forum is to calm down and survive, questions need to be asked of vendors and the vendors must back up their claims or suffer the bashing that ensues. In the end, the vendors and ultimately NAM will prosper. Otherwise, I believe this cyclical froth will continue to build and tear the site apart. I think, above all, fairness to all and a level playing field will ultimately solve the issues.
With respect to my signature and history, I have no allegiance to any vendor. This letter is not aimed at one vendor in particular, but I will comment on two.
I was 100% on the M7 bandwagon during the M62 buildup. I have M7 parts on my car now. I didn't buy RMW for over a year waiting for RMW to put numbers up to back up the claims. In the end the numbers proved their products worthy. In fact, I've probably bought something from many of the vendors on this board. I am going to buy what's best for my car, and I'm here to research and learn about the parts. I'm going to ask questions, and sometimes I am not the most tactful of people. I'm not here to be a fanboy or hater, I am just here for answers. As an engineer, sometimes it is not enough for me when relative terms are used to justify performance parts. I apologize for that. But in a performance arena, I think more than relative terms are expected.

Thank you.

 

Such are the issues when profit is more important than community.

 

This is an incorrect assumption. I am no longer compensated for doing admin on the site and I am not responsible for acquiring vendors on the site. As with anything in life there are a lot of back channel issues, patterns, and the personalities that people display online that I see on a day to day basis. These are what have facilitated the recent moderation changes on the site.

Mark

 

I don't feel it was an incorrect assumption at all. I believe that it's spot on, actually.

This is a sponsored site. Allowing companies to sponsor an enthusiast forum is a double edged sword. On one hand, you allow your members to potentially reap benefits like discounts, and preferential service. This is huge, when you consider that, as a member, all you need to do to get them is nothing. On the other hand, there is the issue of profit being put ahead of those members. In order to retain the contributions from said sponsors, the moderators have to ensure that the forum environment is conducive to those sponsors.

I could cite examples, and beat a dead horse; but I won't. That would be futile. But the fact of the matter is that forums like this one should serve the community that they were created to bring together. When sponsors are accepted, they are given some level of editorial control over the site. It then ceases to be by and for enthusiasts, and becomes by and for the almighty dollar.

 

I wish vendors had any level of editorial control on NAM. We have none.

 

I beg to differ. Have you read the new "regulations"? All because some vendors are full of it, and get called on it as they should. Do you think for one minute if they weren't sponsors, and protected by bogus rules like this, you'd hear half of the claims from vendors that you do? A third? A quarter? No. Because the enthusiasts will call them out on it every time. Don't come here bragging about your new whatchamacalit and then cry foul when people yell B.S.. But they do. They go crying back to the mods, and expect to be coddled. The sad part about it, is that they are. And ultimately, the people that lose, are us.

Like I said. By and for the almighty dollar.

 

this is indeed the cycle here, but, it's not unique to NAM, though the difference between the extremes is certainly more here than any other place I spend time on the wild, wild web. we discussed this exact point with the thread 'Whats Wrong With NAM?' that was started last summer.

 

It is cyclical. From the thread last summer I took away that people wanted the mod team to back off so we did. Certain people took advantage of that and started overrunning the site...that builds to a froth and the hammer comes down. Personally if everyone took two minutes to think about what they post, insure it is within the guidelines, its impact on new and old members relative to them wanting to contribute, etc. we would have far fewer problems on the site. Unfortunately this isn't the case and from time to time we have to reset expectations.

In a perfect world we wouldn't need any moderation because people are thinking about how their posts are viewed, interpreted, and because they are trying to contribute to the community as a whole. Obviously there is not a perfect world when it comes to the realm of online communities.

 

 

All of this is sidestepping the larger issue.

People trust public television because it is paid for by donation and subsidy. Throwing sponsorship and money into the mix will only poison the forum, as it has done.

This problem will not be resolved, and issues with people bashing sponsors will not go away until the sponsors do. It doesn't cost that much to host a site like this, and can easily be paid for, and offset with something like AdSense. But, instead, the choice has been repeatedly made to continue sponsorships, and to side with the bottom line instead of with the members of the forum.

Edit: Further, you now have people paying for custom user titles? It's reached a level of almost obscene proportion.

 

 

For those that find this analogy amusing, I'll cite another.

Top Gear is a fantastic car program because they will not accept bribes under the guise of sponsorship.

 

If they did have any bribe money, they could get the stig a personality, and some new damn listening tapes

 

I said it a year ago and I'll say it again....the best way to smooth out the cycles a forum sees is to have much more active moderator involvement. Management by bee stings, not by a BFH to the head. That said, in the end, nobody listens to me anyways

 

This only works for member-to-member issues.

If you want to fix NAM, you need to boot the sponsors. Period.

 

NAM is a business...has been for longer than it has not been. It is what it is and most forums accept sponsors and don't have these issues. I've seen the books for the site I moderate and the numbers are healthy, as is the membership and sponsors. Only one or two bad apples in the sponsorship bin and they dominate 99% of our time (dealing with them and the members about them).

 

What?

It seems to me that the site is very much driven by the revenue stream. What ever happens, what ever the latest flare up, all an unscrupulous vendor has to do is weather the storm. Then come back and continue to peddle his wares as if nothing happened with no adjustment required to behavior, or business practices.

While the moderation effort could be a more consistent, it can also be less obtrusive. I highly doubt that a little controversy is hurting the web traffic coming to this site.

And no, I never listen to PGT.

 

Just checking.

 

No, NAM has become a cesspool of petty hate because of greed and impropriety. There are plenty of sites that thrive without sponsorship. I'll not cite my preferred example, but you know exactly what I'm talking about.

"It is what it is" the nothing but the latest in a long line of PC copout B.S. tactics. It "is" crap. It could be better. Just eliminate sponsorship, and all will be well, as in other forums that forego it. If a decision is made to retain the revenue stream, and serve your pocketbook instead of your member base, don't be surprised by the results. Further, don't implement some ****-a-mamy crap to further annoy your members just to assure the sponsors that evewyphing wiwl be awlwight.

 

I agree totally

 

not sure what you do for a living, but I pay hosting bills for my company website and email etc and it's not cheap. NAM is no different. Sites that thrive on sponsor-free models are either run by very generous people with their own money, site donations, or click-through advertisements.

A site the size of NAM takes MUCH more bandwidth and a MUCH larger budget for the servers running it compared to the site you won't mention.

 

I am a part of the team that maintains the internet presence and internal J2EE applications for a financial institution with websites that make NAM look like an Angelfire page.

With the amount of traffic that this place generates, it would be paid for and then some with just a couple AdSense placements.

 

right, so, adverts. <spins in circles>

 

Adverts provided by a third party. No preferential treatment is given to these people, because no funds are exchanged between whatever random contextual sponsors are chosen, and the forum.

 

so, 'Enlarge ur penorz!' is > 'XYZ Intake promises eleventy-six hp at 19k rpm'??

problem solved