I get your point Pat, but I don't think it is quite as straightforward as you state. I can think of a few reasons why here, and there may be more that don't come straight to mind:
1) there isn't any business lost in the sense that forum members aren't paying for any services. They flit in and they flit out at will. In business terms users are just clicks on some stats system.
2) If someone asks a simple question on a public forum about another person's whereabouts or what has gone on, what is wrong with a simple truthful reply? Are you suggesting that it is wrong to give a simple answer on a public forum?
One could go further and see situations where it would be wrong not to help someone who genuinely needs that information. e.g. extreme example: if you were in hospital A and hospital B had developed the drug to cure you which A does not have, it would be wrong for a visitor to A not to tell you about B.
3) if someone says that member xx on this forum can be served better in the quest for an answer on another forum we would allow that information to be shown here.
(On a similar vein in our own business:
- I point some of our customers to other companies when I think their needs will be met better by that other company. e.g. I pointed someone the other day to the developer behind the HJ site as they needed some help with ASP.NET as we don't do that. i.e. if there is a service someone wants and we aren't really able to provide that I point them to someone that can. By being civil and putting their needs first I sometimes get other business that is more relevant to us from them, just because they know they can trust us to give them what they really need. If I don't, that's also fine.
- I never try to keep a customer whose 'heart and soul' is really with someone else for whatever reason. If someone doesn't appreciate the service or product that we supply, then no amount of persuading can often make them feel otherwise and we let them go. We are worth far more than having to beg, grovel and scrape to a customer that doesn't value what they get from us. Our customers appreciate us and we feel likewise about them. If they don't, they are better off served elsewhere and that is good for both parties involved.
4) I believe there is a technical issue also at stake here in that the HJ Backroom policy (as I understand it) does not specifically ban the kind of activity that ChrisPeuguot and Caveman have done. I may be wrong and they can correct me, but I believe that part of the problem is that they don't know what policy in particular they have infringed. At the end of the day this is probably irrelevant because that site can do what it likes and that's ok, but it does rather leave a sense of injustice that punitive action has occurred when no apparent rules have been broken.
Last edited by: car4play on Fri 4 Jun 10 at 09:48
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