It's annoying enough to see that insulting subject line keep popping up in my "New Posts", doubly annoying when I have to suffer that subject line on a post which is really off topic. (E.g., "Don't they have TiVo in the UK?") But the two C.net Topics/threads whose topics are complaints about a certain maker are now at the top of the list when I do a Google search on Maker M's name. (And that's a major reason why I'm carefully not naming him here.) The "Questions Needing Answered..." Topic was closed by KC as being "unproductive", but it's still there, and it still shows up in the Google search, broadcast to all the world and emphasized by being at the top of the list.

Folks, we may feel we have a friendly, private group here, but in fact we have the Google "camera" following us wherever we go, even into our equivalent of the bedroom and bathroom, and broadcasting everything to a wider public than any TV show ever had, and available at the click of a button for years to come.

Even those posts defending M are, by their very existence, prolonging and bringing added attention to the "Utterly..." Topic here on C.net, yet any new viewers are still going to see the complaint first, and possibly never scroll down to the defense.

That's why I'm posting this here in this subForum. It's about the Forum, because it's about how we use the Forum. And that's a general point. But now some specifics:

The originator of those two Topics (I'll call him/her "Y", and use the male pronoun) made complaints and accusations against a specific individual, not only maligning M by name, but putting the denunciation and the name into the subject lines. For maximum negative impact? Asked for details, Y has not been forthcoming. Who is he, really? What is the special nature of the instrument he ordered? What specific "promises" did M make? Were they really promises, or merely "current estimates"? Y says he paid a deposit to M. Has he asked that it be returned? (I might even guess that M has offered to return it, but that is entirely a guess, based on what I would be inclined to do.)

I'm tempted to respond to Y with a long list of "questions needing answered"... by him. But his email is "Private", and he hasn't been "active" here since Feb. 1, two days after his first post. I believe that means that he hasn't even logged in. Did he simply take our advice that C.net was not the proper place for pusuing his campaign?

Whatever the reason, the fact is that his posts and threads are still alive, and through the agency of C.net and Google are a potential information-virus with the capability of widespread propagation. True or false, he provides no evidence for his complaints, and so they could become a legal basis for a charge of slander or libel (please let's not argue which). And one poster has recently added a rumor which is both obviously fabricated -- since no-one but M could possibly have the information to validate it, -- and contrary to facts reported by others.

So aside from cautioning all about the effects -- possible and even actual (it does show up in Google) -- of their posting behavior, I would recommend 1) that the "Utterly Frustrated..." Topic be closed, and 2) that both it and its "Questions Needing Answered..." companion Topic be deleted from C.net. And if this Topic also disappeared, I wouldn't complain.

I'll remind everyone that I am a staunch supporter of "Paul owns C.net, so he has a right to do whatever he wants with it." So the above is my opinion and my recommendation, and nothing more. If he makes no changes (or even deletes this Topic and not the others), I will not complain. Still, I hope he considers my argument, and any comments (public or private) by others regarding the issues I've raised.

I should say that I do think there was some interesting and useful discussion in the "Utterly..." Topic, and I think that if people wanted to discuss general issues of the business of concertina construction and repair, without making personal attacks, that would be appropriate.

In fact, I think I'll start such a discussion.

Quite a wake up call Jim. I mentioned my wife's name in the forum, and low and behold the next time I google her (that didn't sound quite right), there is it at #5! Thank goodness I had mentioned to her my use of her name in Alan's discussion on being a professional...she could have been offended and suprised.

This must have caused the builders in question a great deal of pain. It's not fun, but I would like to say that several of the C. Net family....made me very proud in their staunch defense against a particularly unhinged rant. Were I to need someone to watch my back in a pub punch-up vertual or otherwise, they'd fit the bill methinks. For good or otherwise it's out there and their swift response brings a little balance to what otherwise could be very damaging.

I know, because there are two reviews of a performance I was involved in over ten years ago floating around on the net. One good, one very ugly and hurtful to me personaly.

P.S. It occurs ta me you'd be a tough customer in a altercation as well .

Well, one of my anecdotes -- which I won't expand on here -- is about the time I used my tin whistle to successfully fight off three muggers.

Question: Was it a low or high D whistle?

I purchased a low D whistle that is made of pvc pipe (don't laugh, it is drop dead beautiful black and a stunning tone). One of the makers selling points was that it would be very useful in a punch-up.

Now I have a mental picture of you going at them, whistle in hand, like Dartanian!

WARNING: Thread Drift (Hmm. Why can't I make the smiley red, too? )

Not low D. Standard Generation D whistle.


Sounds like the one otsaku showed me last night.
Very nice. And somehow an easier stretch for the fingers.

Jim,
Thanks for bringing this up. I fully support your request to remove this topic.
As soon as the first mail of Y appeared, I did not like it at all. In my opinion a newcomer with a first mail like this does not fit in this C.Net community. So I reported the mail directly and asked Paul to remove it.
Paul replied and gave some reasons (at that time) to continue.

Jim, I think that your arguments add some extra weight for Paul to reconsider the situation.

I also think it should be removed. I have been amazed at the "wallet waving" going on and think that some of the statements have been quite crass.

Jim makes very valid points about google - big brother is watching, and that is perhaps why the first post was anonymous.

What about defamation of character? Potential loss of customer trust? etc.

Best think would be to close it down and remove it and then 24 hours no one outside this community would be any the wiser.

It is a shame that drift from the original subject for me and a lot of other people has got really interesting.It would have been better in hindsight to have moved the subject of Concertina Manufaturers economics to a different position and let the original drift out of site.
With that in mind my response to Franks posting is that I recently posted a discussion regarding the current price of concertinas and suggested that are they underpriced and Franks` calculation are showing that.I think now is the time to buy, the market seems to be moving upward and also there seems to be a large number of people buying concertinas at the moment.One day their German/Chinese cheap concertina will be exchanged for more costly models and makers will be even busier than they are now to keep up with demand.
I will finish by saying that I do not accept orders for goods that I cannot supply in the required delivery time.The more I hear about orders outstanding for ten years plus it is no wonder some customers are getting dissatisfied.
Al

That seems to make the assumption, which in my experience is false, that M takes "orders" in the normal sense of the term. I am on his list. It was my understanding when I submitted my name, that M would keep a record of my request, and would contact me about converting it into an "order" when he was ready to begin work on it... if that happens before he dies. He made no promise or even estimate of when that might be, though he did indicate that it would likely be longer if I was requesting something special, which I was.

If you want to discuss the pros and cons of that way of doing business, I invite you to the Makers & Markets Topic I've started in the Instrument Construction & Repair subForum.

Jim I will just finish my point here before joining you in Makers and Markets section which I missed earlier,my apologies for not seeing it.
I mentioned no specific name when refering to makers in my last posting Jim,I was actually thinking about another maker when I wrote it,but I can understand your assumption as this subject was originally about a specific maker, however do you think an open ended agreement is a proper business deal,I do not. It is just the sort of thing that eventually leads to frustration and argument.
Al

I agree with Jim and Henk, I think these topics should be removed from the forums

While I have squirmed uncomfortably through some recent threads, I will go on record with apparently the minority opinion, that these posts should not be deleted. The basic reason is that I think that it is a step in over-restriction of the compass of possible c.net postings. This is the only forum which I monitor or on which I participate, and a major reason is the courtesy and respect generally displayed. Nevertheless, I think that this arises primarily from the nature of our core group and it is a mistake to try to legislate this standard. There have been cases where Ken and Paul have stepped in, of which I have approved, but I think these are best treated as exceptions.

What are the good reasons for deletion? Jim’s major argument, filtered through me, is that the google eye is watching. Well, yes it is, but doesn’t that go with the territory? I suspect the “M”,s, to accept the specific terminology of this thread, do not often “google” on “M+concertina”. Is the “M”’s reputation significantly harmed? It’s tempting to say that anyone so ignorant of the concertina world to take place value on such a posting over the overall reputation of the M’s in the concertina community would deserve what they get, and the better for the rest of you on their waiting list, anyway. More significant, for me, is that C&R M, would be sufficiently dismayed by news of this little tempest and in fact cut back their concertina-making activities. I do think this is over-analysis; I suspect from OB’s own comments that they have already sized up his specific situation. They must regularly deal with a great many antsy customers. If they choose to move the “squeaky wheels” up or down their list, that’s their prerogative, IMO; more power to them. Obviously, they have not adapted the “W*lm**t, or any other customer-efficient strategy, nor should they. Personally, I think they should be regarded in roughly the same vein as artists. You may commission a certain type of artwork from a particular artist, agree upon a price and some hopeful date of commission, but, unless you’re the pope, you don’t say, “Wasn’t that ceiling supposed to be finished 36 months ago?” Possibly, if the M’s are aware of this thread, they might alter their policies in a manner more suitable for themselves and their customers? Even without assuming any basis to OB’s claims, wouldn’t this be a good thing for all parties?

As Jim noted, even uncomfortable threads, such as this one, elicit responses interesting in their own rights. This group of threads has already brought out one of our rarer posters, whose comments are, to me, like jewels, and thus has earned its place.

What are the standards for inclusion in c.net? Non-offensiveness? I think most would agree that would be a disaster. I think we gladly accept our own Jim as he is, with occasional prickly comments that have sometimes offended (admittedly, at a much lower level). Where’s the cutoff? My personal preference is to set it higher than proposed. We don’t want to descend to the level of many, perhaps most other forums, but between the innate nature of our community, at present, and the efforts of our forum administrators, I would rather we let things take their own course until there’s an obvious and genuine deterioration of civililty. General slagging (I love learning these Britishisms) must of course be off-base.

edited for clarity

I find it interesting that two c.net users (one in this thread and one in the other utterly frustrated thread) have taken the care to refer to, but not name, a large US retailer through the use of asterisks.
How about a middle way? In the other UF thread, could the name of the maker be similarly transformed? Then there would be no censorship and the discussions could continue.
Samantha

You mean, edit all the existing posts and their subject lines, to eliminate the name reference? An interesting thought, and one I think would be quite appropriate, but...
... I suspect that for Paul or Ken to do that would be the equivalent of making a "special" concertina, i.e., extra work when they already don't have enough time.
... There are ethical and possibly legal issues involved in editing someone else's posts, for which I would expect strong opinions on both sides. For Oddball to make a legal complaint, though, he would have to reveal his true identity.

Who's Clarity? Typos sister?

It occurs to me to wonder whether they did that for fear of retaliation over what might be considered a negative view of said retailer, or whether it's so that C.net won't be presented to everyone googling said retailer's name, or for some other reason I haven't thought of.

Isn't she Faith and Hope's ?

Hum, wouldn't dream of speaking for either of my fellow dwellers in the land o the Free an' dah Brave, but I would not mention the retailer in questions name because "it" is viewed in small town America as a plague. Once established on the outskirts of a community, it is only a matter of time before the small shops in the town centers slowly go out of business.

"It" is infamous for labor practices that are an abomination. Aggressive is "Its" corporate mindset. "It" stands poised over small town America with a cudgel in "Its" mitts and uses our own little icon to my left as "Its" logo. Go pick your reason...I've said too much already .

I stand with Stephen. The record is now out there. Let it stand. The artisans have been well defended. In fact were I younger, richer and in better health, I'd get in line for an EC, shut me yap and wait (didn't hardly know their names before this punch-up began). Paul and Ken have managed the situation in a measured and responsible way. Bravo. In future we'll all be a bit more careful would be my guess.

Oh, I can't wait to use "slagg off" in conversation...got to get the proper pronunciation though. I'll try it out on fellow commuters in the morning !

Howzabout redressing the bad publicity aimed at the Dippers by deleting the negative bits of the thread and leaving the glowing testimonials.

[I am deleting the original content of this post, because it's an earlier version of my immediately-following post. I don't know how the duplication happened, since I only submitted once, but since I can delete the text here, that's what I'm doing.

........... /Jim ]

Reasonable, IMO.
My concern about the original posts was twofold:

First was the simple fact that the original posts strike me as the internet equivalent of a masked man trying to stir up a lynch mob against someone who isn't even present. He failed to identify himself, even when asked. His questions of, "Why did M do X?"and "Why didn't he do Z?" presuppose that M actually did X and that he not only didn't do Z, but is somehow obliged to do so. Yet questions by those attempting to learn more were ignored. It was also a hit-and-run. He joined C.net, made his attacks, failed to get the support he desired, and apparently hasn't even logged on since then, nearly 2 weeks ago and 2 days after he joined. It appears that he isn't interested in our "community", except as a tool to be used to further his anti-M campaign.

The fact of the threads showing up on Google was my second concern. If it were just here on C.net, we could be satisfied that the subsequent discussion has adequately countered any unfairness in the claims. But I feel that what we have here is similar in effect to a major newspaper publishing an anonymous story that accuses a prominent public figure of scandalous behavior, publishing in the local edition subsequent evidence to the contrary, but leaving the original story on the AP wire to be copied and published by other papers throughout the world. Unfortunately, the only way on the internet to restrict circulation of content on a publicly accessible web site is to remove that content from the site. That's why I made my removal suggestion. You have suggested a more selective removal, which I think would be more appropriate, but which I suspect would entail considerably more effort on Paul's part, even if he felt it was otherwise reasonable.

So I've presented my perspective, but that's it. It's not up to me.

The above analogy doesn't hold water. Searching Google for 'Colin Dipper' does turn up the thread in question: not just the original "story," but the entire thread (up through this evening) on a single web page. As far as I can tell, there's no way using Google to pull up just the initial post.

Also, this isn't a major newspaper, by any stretch of the imagination. It's an unedited, very loosely moderated web page, with no mechanisms to validate the identities of posters or prevent postings by imposters. That's not a criticism of Concertina.Net -- it's standard operating procedure in Internet communities, and mechanisms to prevent such abuse would be cumbersome and probably expensive. I think Internet users are smart enough to know the difference between a major newspaper and this forum.

The Dippers' reputation has been adequately, if not vigorously, defended in subsequent posts. On the whole, I think the thread -- "negative bits" and all -- provides useful information to someone who is thinking about getting on a makers' waiting list. Had I read this thread last year, I might have taken additional steps before sending off my money to get on a (different) maker's waiting list. Accordingly, I strongly oppose deletion of the thread in whole or in part.


Logging-on is not required to read C.net ... one can read everything as a guest. For that matter, one can monitor an existing thread from Google.

I agree.

Providing feedback from concertina consumers, for concertina consumers, is a useful function of this community. Such forums always attract their share of angry ranters, but that's part of the mix. Overall, the thread was useful because it laid out some of the pitfalls of ordering a concertina in this fashion, as well as useful information about how to deal with such orders.

The maker in question is in an odd position -- kind of an icon in our little community, but also a business that needs to be responsive to customers. Having read the threads, I don't think I'd be less inclined to order from him, but I certainly would have a much clearer idea of what to expect and what questions to ask.

I do agree that the hit-and-run behavior of the original poster is disturbing. But in the end, we all benefit from the open exchange of views, despite the ranters who always show up for the party.

Your comments have made me realise that this topic has provided some very useful feedback

No, it's not a major newspaper, at least not to the general public. But for me at least, it fills the function of a "concertinist's newspaper," and as such c.net is, in fact, the biggest of its kind.

Just my .02


Edited 2/18 to fix the quote because I am a quote feature idiot. I'm sorry, Michael