latzke

*BLEEP*

Lest you get the wrong impression, I did not use a profanity (the word is a common word for urinating that starts with a "p").

Per this topic...

If you want to send comments to the administrators feel free, you can email us all through the forum system.

I can't email or PM you until I have 20 posts.

If not, then I believe our relationship is concluded and you should head back to NSX Prime.

I can't email...so the "if not" seems to be implied. Is this a way to tell me to *BLEEP* off without actually havig to type those words, or did you forget that I can't email?

If you'd like to stick around and become a member of our community you're welcome to, but I'm personally growing tired of hosting an open discussion about the grievances of someone that has never posted on our forums before, and probably never will again. We run our site our way, and it works for our 20,000 some members.

The way the moderators of this forum have so welcomed me (censored my post, wrongly accused me of not reading the rules, locked my thread - three things I've never before experienced in 13+ years on the net) and listned to my feedback (by focusing on justifying the rules, which I have no problem with, instead of better docuemnting the rules so they are more clear-obvious for future new users), sticking around doesn't seem likely. I'm surprised you're not interested in the observations and feedback an outsider has, especially when the feedback is specific to how your site (fails to) communicate the specifics of this forum to new users. Maybe you want to continue turning new users away by confusing them, then mocking them for not reading the undocumented rules.

I'm not sure why the original thread was locked. I was being polite and constructive. It ended up off-topic, but that could be solved without locking it (move it, without leaving a shadow, to this feedback section of the forum). Locking it limits my feedback options (can't PM/email you, like you suggest I should...can't reply to locked thread) to opening another thread (as I've done here) - which seems like a behavior you'd like to discourage instead of encourage (I imagine you'd prefer to keep discussions within a topic, not have several topics spawned for the one discussion).

that is not quite right either.  it would be pointless to PM you, because you wouldn't be able to access the function to even read the PM.  Post count must be above 20.

That's quite fine/OK. It's an uncommon choice in my experience, but your choice none-the-less. It's your board and thus (rightly) your rules.

My real beef is that these things are poorly documented (this thread, and others like it, are the only places I see the 20-post-count limitation mentioned). The PM Section of the Help area doesn't document it, the error message given the user does't document, nothing about it in the For Visitors and New Users area, etc.

Had I been able to find this information, I would never have posted this topic/thread, and never (wrongly) accused of "forgetting to read the rules."

As for this site allowing people to just sign up and sell would be like handing out a complimentary member list complete with email addresses upon your electonically signing the membership registration agreement.

Profiles can be viewed by members and non-members, logged in or not. I don't think it would be difficult to harvest contact information (email addresses from MSN messenger field, home page URLs, IM information, etc) that people have made available in their profiles with a few simple scripts. I assume that being able to send someone a PM or email through the board doesn't give the sender the email address of the recipient. While annoying (one could send emails to people), that is much different (and not inclusive of) revealing more personal/contact info than looking at profiles.

Otherwise .....i am sorry find you local auto trader and list your car for $30.

Done (original post linked to one of these online classified ads). I just thought someone here might be interested in a rare car at a good price. I'm not sure why it's such a bad thing to have people registering just to sell cars (people do it on NSX Prime all the time...and we like it cause it helps us find good deals on the kind of car we like), but that's your choice.

BTW, I did go back and scan for the text you posted above in red. Sorry I missed it (must have thought it was part of the banner ad). My suggestion to include this info in more than one place (help, forum rules) is still one I would make.

Thanks for your help.

Damn, I was gonna refer that car to someone at the AF Academy, but I didn't copy it down. 

←

Well, you could PM me to ask for info, but I wouldn't be able to PM back:

Sorry, an error occurred. If you are unsure on how to use a feature, or don't know why you got this error message, try looking through the help files for more information.

The error returned was:

You are not allowed to use the messenger feature on this board

Looking in the "help" section, as suggested by this error message, I'm not able to determine why I'm not able to PM. Another suggestion to admin/moderators would be to edit these types of error messages so they're a little more useful. With no documented reason (that I can find) I'm inclined to think the board is broken.

BTW, I did see this rule...

We enforce a very strict policy regarding solicitation of our membership by Forum participants except in those Forum sections where advertising is expressly permitted.

...but it was a little hard to post in the buy/sell forum. I figured my post would likely be moved (without leaving shadow) to the buy/sell forum and not completely censored. This is the first time EVER, on ANY forum that I've had a post censored/edited by a moderator/admin. Seemed a little overboard.

- Craig

You should clear this kind of advertising with one of the moderators here. I think you have to have over 20 contributing posts on these forums or you have to be a gold member to sell.:whistles:

Too bad they fail to mention this anywhere where I think it would be obvious. Hopefully they'll start per my suggestion.

Moderator edited the title of this thread to read "I Forgot To Read The Rules" and stripped the (my) content from this post. I ask, "What rules?" I looked in the places I thought would cover rules/etiquette/etc...

- forum terms and conditions

- Buy And Sell Forum Specific Rules

- Help

...and was unable to find anything about restrictions on posting to the buy/sell forum. Given that I didn't receive an email to verify my email address (which I'm used to forums doing to keep trolls/bots/etc away) I reasoned that maybe there was an issue along the way with such an email (sending failure, cought by SPAM filter) and that was the issue.

I didn't see any restrictions on new memebers, heck the Buy And Sell Forum Specific Rules section says the following, which implies the opposite:

If you are a new member to the LOC and are trying to sell something please be as specific as possible to every detail possible of the product.

If you're going to have rules (whatver they are, it's your right to have them), please at least make them easy to find and obvious. Good car forums I'm familiar with, like NSX Prime, do a pretty good job of making any restrictions obvious.

I would suggest following suit and putting whatever rules you have about classifieds into the threads I linked to above...unless you like making it non-obvious so you can put people like me in their place (which would be a rare mindset for a forum admin/moderator).

Regards,

Craig