Rick wrote: I've had posts removed/deleted before all this ever happened. One was for guessing who a poster was and the other was for laughing about a certain insult of a certain poster. Since I don't know what was deleted, I can't comment on whether it was warranted. Nobody has absolute freedom of speech here... I guarantee I could make a post right now that would be banished to internet hell.
I'm getting tired of defending my neutrality.
Rick, I am fine with you reserving judgement until seeing everything. It's why I've offered to make appointments at my office and show anyone everything privately so as to not take up everyone's time and attention.
I do know that no post was ever deleted for having a laughing icon only. There may have been a glitch with attempting to post, or something like that, but no moderator here would EVER do that.
The part where you were naming a poster by name was edited to remove the name only, not deleted entirely, because we've always maintained that posters have a right to anonymity if that's their desire. We may move posts to other forums, but we don't delete because that permanently changes conversations, allows moderators to completely alter the flow of a conversation and control it how they like, and suppress information that may not portray them or their friends in a good light. I saw it a lot on Pinecam, where posts that questioned their mods and admins, or how they operated, were disappeared. Communities Bound (which I'm going to call CB from here on out, just so you know I'm not referring to a person's initials) used to be vehemently against that; I still am - look at how many posts have been put up on this site bashing me, or what the mods here have done, and how this business is run. Not a single one of those was ever deleted - we listened, we talked, we defended, and we changed how we worked to provide you better service, learning from our mistakes and apologizing when we screwed up.
I feel that if a business owner/manager has to hide legitimate complaints about how they operate, then they don't deserve your business, or your respect. If a business owner/manager can't reply to you as themselves, then they aren't being upfront and honest with you, and again, they don't deserve your business or your respect.
I understand that you didn't see the posts that were deleted on 285Bound before they disappeared so you wouldn't be able to gauge for yourself whether they were worthy of deletion. I did see them and they were not, but at the moment you cannot take my word only as I am involved in the situation. Becky did print screen shots and I will be collecting those from her soon and adding it to my collection of evidence which, again, anyone is welcome to come view for themselves and come to their own conclusions - that's how I've always operated, whether I'm discussing global warming, whether Star Trek is better than Star Wars (duh. LOL), or defending my own actions running this site (if I was allowed to post the evidence because it wasn't personal info): I provide links and explanations ad nauseum in invariably TLTR posts (like this one is getting to be, sorry).
Because this is coming up, I want to clear the air on this one point: the contract clearly states that Bound owners are independent affiliates. These sites were originally intended to be tailored to each individual area, custom designed how the owner wished - no cookie-cutter, across-the-board similar design was required (and it was purposely written that way, as that's how the former co-founder jmc insisted it be - that's how he built his businesses that got him inducted into the IT Hall of Fame). If the owner didn't wish to have a "Ring", wanted to moderate like Pinecam does or not moderate at all, didn't want to have advertisers, required members to pay to sign up, etc, they could - it's their right. Nor was "Bound" branding required - so the business does NOT have to be named after the bound.com url that is bought; changing names is allowed within the contract terms.
And none of this is just my opinion, I've had this contract fully vetted by two lawyers and they arrived at the same conclusions - all I did was send it to them and asked them to explain to me what I could and could not do based on the language contained within explaining my obligations and CB's obligations. If you'd like a copy of the response letter they sent to CB's lawyer refuting the accusations leveled at me, I'm happy to provide that as well because everything's addressed in there, point by point. It's not confidential information, it's facts straight and simple.
PrintSmith, thank you for your kind words and for spelling out perfectly how things should have been handled. You've got a deal on the notification.