Kioti thread cencorship?

[MikePA]

I love how people toss around the word censorship. Which is usually soon followed by the conspiracy posts about why threads are pulled. Now we add to the paranoia that certain posts are pulled to change the meaning and the accuracy of threads. Good grief. Some people's threads are inaccurate enough. They don't need any help from editing by black helicopter pilots.

Opinion threads, fact threads, likes/dislike threads, experience threads, etc. are all welcome, assuming they do not get personal. Even resurrection of ancient threads involving TBNers long gone are tolerated...most of the time.

This has been posted over and over again. The problem with bashing threads, whether product, dealer or manufacturer, is we only see one side of the equation. We do not know the source for the information when someone posts information about a dealer or manufacturer. The other thread about a manufacturer pulling out of the market was, frankly, irresponsible. Even though it was posed as a question, it's still irresponsible and was nothing more than a vehicle to start another bashing thread. Postings on the Internet assume a life of their own and a thread, even posed as a question can quickly turn into 'fact' which can have a devastating impact on the target of the thread as well as result in collateral damage to dealers. To not deal with them would be irresponsible.

 

[Steve_Miller]

It's all about balance and 'I' think they (moderators) have done a very good job. I'm not combative and I think most people here are not either by nature and that is why the membership has grown for the most part on this board. There will be people come and go and that is how you find something you are comfortable with. I started a political post without even realizing it once and it was pulled and I'm glad it was, hindsight is just about everyone's best asset, mine especially. Like they say one bad apple can spoil the whole barrel, so if you can sort them out before they spread to rest, they will last much longer. Hope I'm not out of line with my opinions, but I support what the moderators have done with this forum.

Steve

 

[rox]

I love how people toss around the word censorship. Which is usually soon followed by the conspiracy posts about why threads are pulled. Now we add to the paranoia that certain posts are pulled to change the meaning and the accuracy of threads. Good grief. Some people's threads are inaccurate enough. They don't need any help from editing by black helicopter pilots.

Opinion threads, fact threads, likes/dislike threads, experience threads, etc. are all welcome, assuming they do not get personal. Even resurrection of ancient threads involving TBNers long gone are tolerated...most of the time.

This has been posted over and over again. The problem with bashing threads, whether product, dealer or manufacturer, is we only see one side of the equation. We do not know the source for the information when someone posts information about a dealer or manufacturer. The other thread about a manufacturer pulling out of the market was, frankly, irresponsible. Even though it was posed as a question, it's still irresponsible and was nothing more than a vehicle to start another bashing thread. Postings on the Internet assume a life of their own and a thread, even posed as a question can quickly turn into 'fact' which can have a devastating impact on the target of the thread as well as result in collateral damage to dealers. To not deal with them would be irresponsible.

Since I did see the pulled topic and posted twice in the topic I have to agree with what MikPA has said above. It is kind of like the stock market, a rumor starts and with the internet within a short time it can bring companies stock prices way down, to the detriment of the stockholders and everyine who works there. The topic was since the HQ didin't return my calls they are pulling out of the US market. It was a streatch, the logic used to come to that conclusion. I could feel that out of sheer frustration with his past and current problems with the tractor that Jim was trying to make as much noise as possible in order to get attention to his problems. IMHO he jsut went over the line a little bit, and so did I once. Even sweet little rox got a topic pulled once so we all can get carried away. Well probably not everybody but a lot of us.

You gotta have a lot of sympathy for Jim, 192 hours on a tractor and his serious tractor problems do not get resolved very quickly. Jim just chill, post the information on your tractor issues but try and bring it down a notch or two if you know what I mean. A lot of us have had threads pulled and go on to live a happy and healthy life afterwards Hey on some mean website they ban you without ever blinking their eyes.

It is kindo of like in backyard baseball wo kids yelling, "It's fair" "It's foul" "It's fair" "It's foul" "It's fair" "It's foul" take a do over and lt us know what is happening with your latest tractor issues in a new thread.

 

[JoelD]

As my dad has always said, I get the "everything with moderation" idea.

Not to dwell overly on this topic, but do overtly, overly optimistic, blatant sunshine pumping, grossly inaccurate positive threads get pulled?

This forum has been hugely valuable to me, and I am very appreciative for it's existence (guessing someone is making some money somewhere, or it would likely not exist for terribly long).

moderating these forums can not be an easy process.

I got a PM stating they are working on a way in which to capture owner opinions on machines, and the like, that would be hugely valuable.

Joel

 

[MikePA]

Not to dwell overly on this topic, but do overtly, overly optimistic, blatant sunshine pumping, grossly inaccurate positive threads get pulled?

If you read my post, which includes an explanation/reason for why some posts are removed, you will be able to figure out the answer to your question as well as determine a reason.

 

[MessickFarmEqu]

What I notice happen was that a post about the financial health of Kioti was pulled. There is no good reason to do this. Not to say anything at all, but if a tractor company is failing, their product is poor, etc, etc... we should not be withholding that infomration from the community of buyers as we maybe preventing them from learning some very important information. Take FarmTrac. What if that had surfraced online months or years before the company tanked... would TBN had pulled that? What about all the people, dealers, etc who could have avoided the fallout.

 

[MichiganIron]

What about all the people, dealers, etc. that could be financially damaged by a false rumor started by a frustrated customer. The customer has the right to be frustrated and post his/her frustrations and problems for all to see. Falsely posting comments about a companies financial condition, good or bad, without basis, could be crossing the line.

 

[Hakim]

I got a PM stating they are working on a way in which to capture owner opinions on machines, and the like, that would be hugely valuable.Joel

Hi Joel & all on this thread.

Well, these are difficult areas to balance for all of us, users and moderators. We do not usually remove messages when members discuss a problem with a tractor, or with a dealer --- so long as they wish to discuss it in general terms of the EXPERENCE. The problem arises, always, when someone wants to vent and in effect harass a dealer or company by specific name.

The problem is (as our moderators have already expressed quite well) that we cannot possibly know which person may be telling the truth. Several times we have had disputes between a customer and a dealer that wound up in legal territory, and we were specifically asked to remove posts, because they would work against the owner.

According to the various laws as we understand them, Forum owners are not held liable for statements made on web sites (so long as several relatively minor conditions are met, which we do on TBN). However, this does NOT excuse an individual poster form being sued for defamation of character, libel, damage of business reputation and other problematic areas.

We moderate/remove less than a fraction of one percent of all posts. We tell people up front in our Terms of Service that we are a family friendly web site; we do not have an open, free-wheeling, anything-goes environment. There are plenty of places online like that -- but this isn't one of them.

Many times people have an event or what they perceive to be a negative experience with a tractor dealer, home builder, whoever. They are "hot under the collar" and probably feel they have been wronged. It is frequent that people issue threats to "spread it all over the Internet." And many people do. But not here.

We just had to make a decision as to what we considered fair to all parties. Our purpose is not and never has been to "expose lousy dealers" or lousy equipment or anything else. There are ample public agencies and legal avenues for customers to complain to a business, or take action to redress wrongs.

Major manufacturers do have problems from time to time; but my experience has been that all of them are genuinely and sincerely interested to favorably resolve problems for their customers --- within reason. As we all know, now and then, there can be an "unreasonable" customer. TBN cannot try to take sides, investigate facts, or try to make sure no one is fabricating information, or exaggerating and so forth.

Our compromise, since the beginning of this site, has been to allow "complaint" discussions in a reasonable manner. However, when we feel someone is adamant in their desire to "expose" a specific business, we remove those posts. If possible, we may edit out the dealer or other specific name, and let the thread go on talking about the issue in more general terms.

It is easy to get background information and recommendations on local tractor dealers. Most of them have been in business for decades. Some of them may have a bit "different" ways of doing things in the tractor/ag industry. Sometimes people new to tractors cannot appreciate that tractor sales and service are not going to be like buying something at Costco, or even a car dealer for that matter.

I can tell you with 100% certainty, that no compact tractor manufacturer has ever contacted TBN to request removal of a post they did not like. Most of them do monitor the site, and provide lots of great information about their products. But they have never once intruded to attempt to change the way users talk about their products. I find this refreshing and highly commendable.

We are nearing 400,000 unique vistors each month. Surely you can appreciate the chaos that would instantly arise if we just sat back and let anyone say anything they please. Just not gonna happen...

We are in process of putting the finishing touches on new feature (it may be part of TBN or a new site altogether) which will have specs and stats on virtually every compact tractor in the marketplace. There will be a way for users to rate various tractors, rate experience with one's dealer, and comment about safety issues and similar things. The database is complex and the many features turned this into our most major project yet for TBN. We hope to launch it later this year.

Hakim Chishti,
TBN Staff

P.S. The various points have been adequately expressed, so I am going to close this thread.

 

[MikePA]

...I would venture a guess that the "yeahs" outweigh the "neighs".

"yeahs' outweighing "neighs" is irrelevant.