Why this?

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#24
My proposal; these members who are owning a company pay a deposit when entering as members. If some of them is violating the forum rules or is acting in a strongly improper way in any other sense, he or she can be a)warned, b)fined (by the forum administrators deducing a sum from the deposition), c)banned . A combination a+b is possible or even b+c.
A committee of some moderators and "ordinary" members can decide about the punishment if a fine seems to be motivated.

Punishments have drawbacks, but as it is now banning doesn´t seem deterrent enough. And we don´t want similar affairs to occur. Economical consequences are on the other hand rather strait forward and easy to understand and are used in many disciplines.
The problem might be that it´s not appropriate to introduce such an agreement retroactive. For of course it has to be an agreement signed by both parts.
 
#25
In reality, we have lots of participants who are commercial, and lots more who are in the gray area. And 99% of the time, 99% of them do the right thing without any incentive/disincentive other than their own sense of decency and the culture of this forum community.

Just to put things in perspective.
 
#28
OK, I wrotre a mail to Coldamp and asked an explanation for this incident and I got this reply:


Hello, Bert.

I am desolated about this issue, because the forum administrator inmediately closed my accounts without notice; we have tried to contact him to give some explanations and they haven't even replied, so now we are in a situation where I am being strongly criticized but I cannot provide any explanation or apologies to the DIY community.

First of all, I admit having used both names and now I know it was a big error, we didn't know it would bother people so much. Our intention was double: first, to isolate our technical questions and contributions (that were a lot) from our products, so we don't give any clues of how they are made. Second, why not? to provide a small "boost" to sales by recommending the product or simply defending it from attacks in a forum where we first found a very hard opposition to something different to some more stablished brands. I repeat, this was an error and not the most moral marketing practice, but we won't do it again for sure.
Things must be understood withint their context, and the fact is that we found things like people criticizing our products without even having bought them! ...and we felt that we had to do something about that. Definitely we decided to "play the same game" and this was not a good idea.

However, we have never attacked our loyal competitors, nor written false things about our products either. On the other hand, we did provide very valuable contributions to the forums, where I have been a member for about 6 years. I think that it is a pity that they forbid me the registration and don't know how to defence about that...

And now... even when my behaviour was not correct (and I apologize for that), some people (specially my compatriot Eva) is accusing me of very bad things such as using the forum knowledge for developing our products. That's totally false, and even when we have asked for some advice on very particular questions, we have tried to contribute as much as possible to the forum knowledge, (and some other companies have taken advantage of that, you can be sure) as you know. My developments are original (although we have never claimed to have re-invented the wheel) and only make use of general knowledge, like any other (we live in a world of information, one cannot be jailed in a room and develop something with no news from the outside!) Needless to say, we have never violated any patent either.
In fact you can find almost the entire BP4078 schematics spread in my posts, and the majority is designed by us, the rest is common knowledge and when some DIYaudio user has helped us improve our products with some particular question, we have tried to offer him products for testing as a compensation.

When we realized the importance of the forum as an advertisement vehicle, we felt that it would be honest to insert some paid ads in DIYAudio pages, just to contribute, but after contacting them, they didn't reply to this with a proposal.

We have been working VERY VERY hard in experimenting, developing, contributing and testing our products during more than 3 years, and are providing an unequalled service in terms of guarantees, response, delivery times and support. And believe me, we are not getting too much profit (production and investigation is expensive). However, our customers have congratulated us in countless occassions and that's worth more than money.
But now our name is being stained by people that is simply annoyed but also by some others that are using this to take commercial advantage.

I am putting a lot of excitement on this company and would never cheat anybody. We will continue working hard so we can make a lot more DIYers happy with our products.

Best regards,
Sergio
Click to expand...


Well, that shows the man had no wrong intensions other than some minor commercial.
 
#30
Ssanmor unfortunately has committed various serious infractions:

1. Having a second identity

2. Using this identity to promote his product, possibly giving him an unfair business advantage

3. Receiving some help with technical issues under this identity without revealing that this information might improve a commercial product that would compete with the products of those that gave him advice.

In my opinion this is disgraceful behavior. It cheapens the image of our forum and damages the goodwill that exists between commercial and private interests. Commercial involvement has sometimes been controversial, but I am firmly convinced that some of our most valuable members have had commercial interests, and as long as this is known, their comments can be interpreted in this light.

Ssanmor at any time could have stopped using his “puppet” Pierre, but seemed quite satisfied to continue in this deception until he was caught. His apology, while in fact apologizing, is also filled with excuses for his behavior which to me do not seem entirely justified.

On the other hand, he has been a faithful, and contributing member for many years as ssanmor, During this time he has generally been helpful, cooperative and pleasant to other members. He has also possibly damaged the reputation of his own business and has been the subject of public humiliation.

After discussing this with the other moderators and distinguished members, reviewing this thread, and reviewing many of the posts in question, we have decided on a path of action. While others have been involved, I will take responsibility for these final decisions:

1. Posts from “Pierre” will remain, but will have an added title making it clear that he was a proxy for ssanmor of Coldamp. It is important to have this record to demonstrate what has happened.

2. Ssanmor will be placed in the sinbin for 4 months- the longest sinbin term to date. He can write any moderator after the end of March, 2008, or have any member post to remind us if he is unable to contact a moderator, that his term is over.

3. If he creates another identity ever- before or after the bin time is over he will be banned, and no representative of Coldamp will be allowed to post again.

I sincerely hope that this is the end of this issue and that members of all opinions on the subject can accept it as the best solution, or at least a sincere effort at the best solution. Further discussion of this is of no further use now that a decision has been made, so I will now close this thread.


Variac
:captain:
 
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