Because activity continues around this issue, let me just update you on what we’re doing about negative posts & threads. What I’m doing is not a tidy solution, but it’s the best I can do. I hope to be able to respond with consistency to comments about other makers, but I frankly have doubts I’ll be ever to catch all of them. I’m going to police, most, the ones that are “hotter” and more contentious, I suspect. Sorry, but I’m not going to get as worked up about “I don’t particularly like Feadogs” as I do with “This maker of flutes is giving me horrible customer service and makes expensive firewood for living and his mother is of ill-repute.” Don’t bother explaining to me that to be consistent, I’d have to respond equally to all cases. I get it. I just can’t keep up with it all, so I’m going to put out the hottest fires as best I can.
I am allowing posts that follow the guidelines you can find through this link:
http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?t=63797&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
But to hit the high points.
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Comment only from personal experience.
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Provide opinions but give enough detail about the basis of your opinion to be useful. No global dismissals or disparaging works, like “His flutes are crap.” If you think they ARE crap, you must say why. What’s crappy about them?
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Regarding complaints about customer service, stick to factual descriptions of what has happened and avoid summing up with characterizations such as “Mr. X is a thief and swindler.”
Based on feedback, many of you think these are reasonable and some of you think they are overly restrictive. So it goes.
Once someone posts an appropriate critique (or a positive comment, for that matter), when the thread is left open, inevitably the responses become a problem. The RESPONSES don’t follow the guidelines. There’s danger of pile-on. So, I lock the threads when I can get to them.
This often provokes indignation, as it did last week. Someone PM’d me to say “Why are you protecting (Mr. X) by locking all the negative threads about him?” My answer: “Hey. Notice I didn’t DELETE the negative posts. I LOCKED them to try to prevent loose and unfair reaction posts.” If I am really trying to protect makers from negative feedback, I’d just routinely delete all negative posts. I don’t, unless the posts don’t follow the guidelines about personal experience, etc.
So, there you go.
