This part of the job sure is fun
. Believe me when I say that the LAST thing that anyone at the TDR or the moderators want to do is have to take actions against a member or boot someone from the site. In the close to 3 year history of the site we can come up with 6 people that have been booted from it out of over 12,000 users. It is NOT something we take lightly. One thing we know for sure is that it is a 100% guarantee that if we have to boot someone from the site that we will get a ton of grief from it - so it's a last straw measure.
We've been trying to let this thread play out because if we close the thread then we will be accused of closing it because of bad press. As you can see from this post we do not try to limit the criticism nor do have we stopped anyone from mentioning competing sites so you have options if you wish to visit them. I'm going to try one last time to explain the position of the TDR on this and I sincerely hope that this thread will either go away or some people will understand why actions are taken when they are.
This was and never has been about someone attacking an advertiser. As was said by someone earlier in this post if that were the case then you wouldn't see all the criticism of Dodge, Cummins, Banks, Dr. Performance, BD, etc - those would be deleted, they aren't. All of those are or have in the past been full page color advertisers in the magazine and each one represents a far greater amount of advertising revenue to the TDR than do all of the Amsoil ads put together.
What you have to keep in mind is that 90% of the discussions with users about violating the guidelines of the forums take place off line in private discussions with the individual member and you never hear about them. Vendors and members are allowed great leeway in violating the guidelines while we try to deal with it off line. Only after there is little to no cooperation from a member for a long time is it then taken to the strike 1, 2, 3 step.
Doing a search on Don M's posts I come up with 189 posts from him mentioning Amsoil since August 22 of 2001. I haven't read through all of them but I can virtually guarantee that none of them are applauding Amsoil. So if we were trying to stop that criticism why wouldn't we have taken action 180 posts ago? As I said above, Don had been warned repeatedly to not instigate oil wars, and that does not mean that he couldn't post factual information about Amsoil or any other product for that matter - that's always welcome. What it did mean is that he could not bait another user as he did in this case to strike up the wars again. I was very clear in my email to him when he was suspended for 10 days what would happen. Here's a quote from my February 11th letter to him (Gene received the exact same warning btw from his 10 day suspension):
We will reinstate your access on February 20th and hope that you will let this issue drop at that point, if not we will then revoke your posting priveleges and refund your subscription money.
I don't know how I could have been any clearer on what the consequences would be. I too am sorry to not have his knowledge here on the site any more as I enjoyed reading many of his posts as well. Given that however, no matter how knowledgable or helpful someone is if they cannot abide by the simple guidelines that are on the site that 12,194 other members can we have to take action.
You have to keep in mind that we are trying to keep 12,000 + members happy with the product offered here. I have talked with many of the people that are listed here as no longer posting on the site (other than those booted) and discussed in length why they no longer post. Interestingly enough not a single one of them have said that it was because of too much moderation. As a matter of fact in most cases I've been told that it was in fact because we didn't moderate as much as they felt we should have. Some simply don't have the time to weed through the volume of posts here given that many of them have been gone over time and time again in the past. We recently added the First Time Cummins Diesel Owner forum to help with that. Others were sick of being attacked by other users or vendors. Others had even different reasons - but not a one said they weren't posting because of over moderation. There will always be a small percentage of "problem" users and the more users you have on a site the more of them there will be. With 12,000 users+ it's inevitable that we will have more than sites with 1,500 users. We ARE doing our best to provide the best product possible for the MAJORITY of those 12,000+ users.
It's been stated above that the only actions that are taken against members are when it's against a vendor or advertiser on the TDR. One of the people that have been banned from the site was because of conflicts with one specific user and he told us that he couldn't stop and to remove him - which was done. Two other cases were people posting either vulgar or dangerous information on the site (one of them was turned into the FBI just in case because he posted links to terrorist sites where there were instructions on how to build a nuclear bomb and conspiracy theories after 9/11). On the case of the group purchases the owners tried hard to work with the individual involved and even created an entire category in the classified ads for group purchases because of complaints of the number of group purchases being posted in the forum. Yet that person would not stop posting repeatedly in the forums about the group purchases even when an area had been specifically created for him to post them.
Criticism is certainly welcome, we consider all input for the members. When it's appropriate we make changes to the site, guidelines, etc. What you have to realize though is that much of that input/criticism takes place off line and you don't see it. There is a very small minority of members that want a "war room" or no moderation. There is a great majority of members that tell us that they'd leave for sure if that was the case. If you are one of the ones that want no moderation, want a war room, etc then you are going to be sorely disappointed because your view is in the extreme minority and it will not be implemented. You have the option to request a refund and move onto greener pastures.
For those of you that are supporting our decisions and the way we run the site I thank you for your support. However, I'd ask that if you wish to post to this further please keep it simple with a "I agree with how the TDR is handling things" or something like that and do not attack the members that are expressing their dissatisfaction. What we are trying to accomplish here is to minimize the amount of conflict on the site while providing the best information resource for our trucks. Thanks for your time.
If this thread continues down the path it's on it will be closed and not because we're trying to squash criticism of the TDR.
-Steve St. Laurent
Lead Moderator
Attention: TDR Forum Junkies 
... . Rick
Bland vanilla sanitized half, and a colorful interesting half where 
