Deleted Posts

[Gadgie]

Hello

I recently had a posting in the Recommendations section, warning of a local company who's customer service was bad (and giving precise reasons and pictures of their work). My postings seem to have disappeared without my asking for them to be deleted. I contacted Mr Fernie and the administrators of the org but they have chosen not to reply.

I don't see the point of having a recommendations section if the company can ask for their bad rep to be removed.

Has anybody else had postings deleted?

[rob1]

I have replyed to threads that have been deleted but for different reason to you.

I have to agree with you, there is little point of a recommendation section if posts recommending people to stay away from a company are being removed.

However I can also understand Mr Fernie's postion (not the none replying - thats just rude!). He as the site admin/owner/King Orger, has various responsabilities associated with said position. Should someone posts something that could cost a company for example, some business, then that could put Mr Fernie in some legal mumbojumbo hot water.

[locini]

Ive had posts deleted too.

I posted a link and details to my new business in the appropriate business section, after a request from Neil for new businesses to post their news... My post was swiftly removed followed by a PM from Bill saying that my website competed with a section of his, therefore he would not entertain it on his site, and any links posted to my new site would be removed by admin.

I thought it was terrible as this site profeses to be a public forum, for public discussion however by admins own actions, you are only allowed to post things that do not directly effect the site owners. Surely they cant have both???

I argued my case however my lengthy PM's back to Admin were ignored - Very rude...

[jinglejangle]

I can understand you feeling a bit annoyed but a wrong word on here can greatly affect a business - someone may have a grudge in for a business, or be a rival. I know of businesses who ask the admin to remove GOOD and BAD posts as they do not want any comments regarding their business on here.

[oldmarine]

I have been more fortunate with my postings. I have never seen any of mine deleted. I have seen a few derogatory ones deleted for what I though were good reasons. I agree with the comment that the site administrator has a responsibility to avoid lawsuits or various other reasons. I have always found the administrators to be quite fair about the whole thing.

[RecQuery]

I've noticed critical posts even ones with evidence deleted too, even without an explanation. Hardly fitting for a community forum to filter the community. Some people just can't handle criticism or debate.

[Bill Fernie]

In regard to items removed from the forum where there may be, in our opinion, a legal threat, it would seem only sensible to remove it. We also do not have time to debate issues like that.

As for replies, I did manage once to keep up with this but not for a long time now. The flow of emails and pm's is such that it would take quite a few more people to deal with my emails alone on Caithness.org. I receive somethwere in the region of, including spam of course, around 200 per day. I delete many very fast from time to time to clear the backlog but currently have somewhere around 2000 unopened emails.

On the question of whether or not, I, as site owner would allow other businesses to use it in any way that reduces my ability to ensure it has along term future, then the answer is no. I think I already allow many things on the site that I have been told I should remove either because they threaten the site or are attacks on me. For the most part I do not remove attacks on me if it is connected to the web site. But I mainly do not have the time to respond to everything that is posted on the Fourm.

On recommendations, I have to admit I did not forsee the problems with that section when we set it up. Naively, I expected it to be posts about good things folk had found and that would be ok. However any negative things do give rise to complaints that are impossible for us to verify. From time to time we do get complaints from business owners stating that if we do not take action it could get us into legal difficulties. We do look at that side of things if a post is drawn to our attention or if we spot it.

Locini has a property business and has been told that he can have a business page on the business index and advertise properties for sale or in the property section like all the other agents in the county. I cannot be fairer than that.

I do try to protect the business of our traffic as that is what is paying things. If the site is to have a future after my demise then it needs to be able to generate some income or it dies with me. I think I am as fair as I can be on a site offering many free services. I am sure I will not please everyone especially if they cannot get exactly what they want. But the answer is clear to me - anyone can spend 10 years doing what has been done here, and maybe faster, but it does take incredible number of hours to do so.

My approach may be not to everyone's liking but then I had to learn it the hard way - by doing it. The internet is a free country and anyone can do it if they want to. I did it my way.

And now on with the day.................

[Walter Ego]

Bills right in what he says and does.

I have had had posts removed and I must say it is because of what I have posted. If the moderators or site owners decide to run the site as they see fit, then that is what they can do. A 'community' website is not owned or dictated to by the community it represents.

[locini]

Locini has a property business and has been told that he can have a business page on the business index and advertise properties for sale or in the property section like all the other agents in the county. I cannot be fairer than that.



Bill

This is news to me... You or Neil, never indicated that this would be possible in our past correspondance... which was why i was so miffed. Back then, I thought you were being very unfair letting other local property sits advertise their listings on the org property pages but not mine.

I would like to accept your offer of being able to list my details on the business section and also list my properties on your property pages.

In return i will place a link back to this site on my page as i feel this is only fair.

If you can email me a banner link to caithness.org or such like to enquiry@highlandhomesales.com i will get it loaded on my site ASAP.

[Niall Fernie]

Firstly let me deal with posts removed from the recommendations forum and similar posts elsewhere.

When a business gets ripped apart on our forum they have two choices, join the debate and try to settle the matter in public or seek legal advice.

All power to those who come on and fight the good fight themselves, I feel they get more from it and perhaps ensure a similar situation with a customer does not arise again.

On the other hand, those seeking legal advice seem to see Caithness.Org as their first target. As we are the target of any initial legal action and in most cases have no way to know if the person complaining is correct or if they just have an axe to grind we have to remove the thread. Sometimes there is an obvious answer to whats been going on for example an ex-employee making false claims about a previous employer or a competitor slagging off their competition but otherwise we have no way to know who is in the wrong. In those cases we have no option but to extract ourselves from any action against us by removing the threads or posts in question.

When someone posts in the recommendations forum we expect it to be positive and those businesses who cannot get positive feedback from their customers are the ones to be avoided. The section was never designed to be a place where people could just slag off any businesses they did not like in the hope that they would damage their reputation.

And now to answer Locini...

We have explained to you that property advertising or advertising a property business is not allowed on our forum as we feel it would divert traffic from our own property section.

When any new business starts up that knows about our business section they submit their details to our business index. You seem not to have done this. We would of course accept your submission and it would sit beside everyone else that we see as competitors in the county.

As for property advertising, we currently offer this for free to any business or individual who has property to advertise. Again you appear to have to have ignored this and I find that strange for someone who wants to have sale properties or rented properties advertised on the web.

I did e-mail you with these options some time ago and you either chose to ignore it or did not receive the message. Hopefully you will understand our position now that it is in the public domain.

[locini]

As for property advertising, we currently offer this for free to any business or individual who has property to advertise. Again you appear to have to have ignored this and I find that strange for someone who wants to have sale properties or rented properties advertised on the web.

I did e-mail you with these options some time ago and you either chose to ignore it or did not receive the message. Hopefully you will understand our position now that it is in the public domain.

Neil,

Its not a case of ignoring it - I musn't have received the message.

I never received any PM or message to that effect from either you or Bill. I have screen dumps of the origional post and our subsiquent PM's to refer back to. Having just looked back over this, I find no discussion of me being allowed to post my business on the .org hence the reason for me not submitting my business or any property details - I didnt think you would allow it.

Anyway, I appreciate your position and thank you for for letting me know that i am in fact allowed to submit my details and client properties. I will make a start on that later this week.

My offer still stands for a backlink to here. Pm or email me your banner.
Thanks.

[Gadgie]

Thanks for all the responses. I put my original posting in the general section but it was moved to recommendations by the admins. I had a response from one of the admins last week (thank you) and totally understand the org's position which is fair enough. Although every word of my posting was true, I can see how some may not be. I was just after some guidance as to what was unacceptable, so I guess my question has been answered.

PS - had the business in question rectified all the matters outstanding, I would have deleted the post myself (as agreed with the company), but they didn't...

[gerry4]

When someone posts in the recommendations forum we expect it to be positive and those businesses who cannot get positive feedback from their customers are the ones to be avoided. The section was never designed to be a place where people could just slag off any businesses they did not like in the hope that they would damage their reputation.


I am not sure why you expected the comments to be positive. One of the best examples of where this is not the case is Trip Advisor. You get very mixed reviews of hotels on there.

What happens if a business gets a 3rd party to post a very good review of itself. How would the reader or you, know of this? The only way the reader would be able to find out the truth is by others refuting the good review by their own views. If you censor the negative views then your site will be giving a false impression of that establishment & allowing the public to be deceived by these dubious establishments.

[Colin Manson]

Trip Advisor has Reviews, those are by nature both positive and negative.

Recommendations are always positive.

We specifically don't have a review section to avoid a of the legal issues that we don't have the time to deal with.