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Hello Everyone, The name is Helena, I manage the forum management team here at VS.

Wanted to make a quick into, I will be helping Phil out with this announcement. So you will see my posts here and there.

Thanks
Helena

 

[270778]

Curious as to the New owners thoughts on the "moderator is always right" policy, will there be an appeal policy put in place? Perhaps some "professional" moderators and an appeal for some "perma-banned" members who actually added content to the site but who fell victim to immature actions from a few mods and site sponsors?

Good luck

Ernie put the staff in place for a reason, if the staff collectively want a change then we will adhere to that. If the community wants something, they are more then welcome to ask for it. Right now our job is to get to know this community, once we have done that, these questions might be better to ask.

Helena

 

[270778]

I am not sure what sites you are on of ours, but to address your statement.

Just joined up here a few days ago after lurking for awhile, and now that I find out Vertical Scope has taken over, will be leaving.
Vertical Scope are a blight to internet forums, they have ruined every forum that I used to frequent, and now looks like that has continued with this one.

They will assign a junior lackey to look after this forum, alongside their many other forums to administrate over, meaning there will be no passion behind it. Just another source of ad revenue for them.

We have many forums, this is true, we also have a support team that works across many forums, we set up sections where users and the staff can get a hold of us. We do this because we trust our site staff to keep the community going, they are the ones that built it, we respect there decisions and get involved as much or as little as they request.

The advertising will now increase and the only way to not see them will be to pay for "premium" membership.
I was forced to lodge a PayPal dispute when I was a member on another one of their forums, I made the mistake of paying for premium and then opted to cancel after one year and they took money without permission, and refused to give it back.

Oh well, it was nice while it lasted. Good luck.

The advertising on most sites does not increase, we do pay to run host and maintain these sites, as well as the initial investment we make when purchasing the site. We generally do not have add ads for registered users but for guests. And in the past (5-6years ago) we were a bit aggressive with the ads to put on sites, but have since learned from that mistake and been less intrusive when we put ads on a site for registered members. Some sites request not to see any ads, and request to have it as a feature for paid members. We do not implement this, it is a request.

As for paid memberships those either are already on the site or the staff asks to add them to get a sticker program on a site. Also when you signed up it was clearly stated that it was a pay pal subscription that auto renews. It lets you know that if you want to stop the payments to go to paypal and cancel the subscription. It also send an email around renewal time to let you know it would be auto renewed. If you catch this within 60 days of payment, we have the ability to issue a refund, after that paypal does not have the option. We do not refuse to give money back, but are not able to after the 60days.

Hope that answers that.
Helena

 

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JeepForum.com - Registration

Not sure if this is their typical setup

That membership was set up before we bought the site. This is often the case with sites we buy, the old owners set up memberships to help pay for the site. To take away the membership and add it for free upsets the users who have already paid for it, so we generally add a sticker to the package and keep it running. When we have contests on sites, or users want to raise money for a cause we give them out for free.

Helena

 

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Hey Everyone,

Happy thanksgiving to all our fellow Canadian's, Phil and I will try to be online today. We both have family dinners tonight, so please excuse the lack of frequency on here today. If you need something answered and it is an emergency, please PM me.

Thank you for the understanding!

Helena

 

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Technically, any picture you post on a Vertical-owned site can't be used anywhere else. So you can't use your own pictures that you submitted. Any review you have written, they own it.

Sadly, they don't tell you this with the announcement of the new ownership.

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm not sure that's strictly correct.

Jeannie

GinGinD is correct, we own nothing but the rights to your content. You own the copyright. We can not use your image anywhere but on our own network. So we can use it in a monthly newsletter, for example. This was explained many a time on the site wulf is speaking of. We post up the policy and TOS to protect ourselves. Since unlike Ernie we manage a number of communities. Like the mom and pop shop down the street from your wont put a sign up saying you are on camera, but the chain store will, because they have had to deal with an issue like that in the past.

Helena

 

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Nice... one of my posts already disappeared without a trace. Please have the decency to leave an explanation why content is deleted for all to see.

As the mods will tell you, soft delete is on the site, so if we did remove anything it would show to the action will show to the moderators. So they can tell you if we touched anything. Also i see you removed your own content.

Helena

 

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Admins can physically remove posts or threads without a trace so soft delete does not apply there.

I will let the staff answer this one, since we had a chat about soft delete.

Also Ernie can still see what we do, by going into the admin logs, so you can ask him to confirm that if you like.

No account owned by VS or used by VS i should say has touched any of your posts. The staff can also confirm that you are the one removing your own content.

I will let you contact them to investigate this matter, we have no interest in removing your content. What ever it is you would like to say about us can stay here, the forum users are educated enough to make their own conclusions.

Helena

 

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I'm pretty sure that I've seen the Watchuseek Facebook page using pictures posted by members to illustrate links...

Currently or in the past?

Helena

 

[270778]

Ok, this is just to show you an example.

WE currently don't run that page, I can find out who posts that content though?

Helena