Ad Forum Closed...
#1

... this is the reward...

Well, 1st of all and feremost, I want to thank Dave for the wonderful job he did and is doing, and for having built a wonderful community where I made several friends. And this totally free of charge.

Without this my collection wouldn't have been as good as it is.

One of the reasons I love to come here is that the people are *really* friendly, moderate, helpful, positive and constructive. I really do mean this. For example, Johnny informed everybody that 42S replacements were available ont he HP parts website, what I really want to thank : he enabled so many of us to get one of the last of these babies.

Dave, as site-owner and hence moderator, hardly gets into discussions and this is something I truly appreciate : On many sites the web owner considers himslef as a god and because of his permissions is able to get the final word. Dave certainly does npt abuse of his rights.

I guess taht the MoHPC site is currently paying ransom for its success : many and many more people are joining our community, what is of course positive, but maybe from time to time bad internet habits arise.

To be very honest I haven't read the all litigeous thread. For one reason : it was too long and too boring. I don't want to have an opinion about this but the main point is that courtesy rules should be applied on the AD forum.

And because someone, certainly respectful and asset to our community by his knowledge didn't want to recognize his slight misuse of the forum, and instead of writing "OK, I'll consider these remarks" wrote a long book to justify his behaviour, including insults to people of this community, the result is that the Ad forum is closed.

What we have to do now, in a constructive mind, is forget about all this and maybe set up some courtesy rules. Here are mine, that I've applied since a long time :
- never the same (or similar) ad twice in a week
- grouping the items
- if remaining items after a few ads, -> ebay. Though, and you can check my activity on ebay, I seldom use
- no too long ads. Link to your own website page for details, pictures, ... In that concern I would ask Dave to enbale formatting rules such as existing ones in this forum.

Long life to MoHPC website, and long life to the ad forum, which is one of the best ways to continue maintaining our collections.

#2

A pity that the Ad Section was shut down.

I've met good people here and thank their help. And I regret to say that this is not the first bitter, personal, sometimes furious exchange in this forum. But it had never gone so far before, this time it was too much.

If there is an annoying item about anything on this wonderful site, it should be kept between the involved parts. It is sheer cowardry to start a fight without telling who you really are, intending to get as many as possible involved against a single individual; it is not very respectful to go on with it as if to back the illustious unknown individual who shot the first shell. Suddenly everybody got an ax to grind and Both Dave and Doug, then some others, including Unknown, took it very personally.

Who is "Unknown"? And why suddenly everybody got an ax to grind or made it personal? Who is more jerkish, the jerk himself or the one who follows and backs the jerk? Why the urge to corner the accused after somedody who withholds his name shoots in anger?

I think we know better than this. Certainly. Such personal issues should be kept personal, not public. No one among us has been appointed the Gatekeeper or the Absolute Ruler of the HP Kingdom, and no one should behave as if he/she were it. Our little machines have made us a community, and I would even dare to say that we are a bit different from the rest because of that. Doctor Michael Meyer once highlighted sharing, cordiality and prompt help as the main characteristics of the HP Forum/collectors community. That last exchange about the Ads showed a quite different reality.

We can do better than this. So let's behave like the good people we are and put jerks and all this behavior aside for good.

Dave: is it posible to make it mandatory to include an e-mail address and a name, other than "Unknown," for each posting? If there are privacy concerns, public free email services are available everywhere to protect your identity or privacy and the like. You can hardly respect a fellow who covers himself as "Unknown" and then, so to speak, starts a war.

By requiring an address, conflicts could be handled (without such bitter exchanges like the ones we have seen recently) between the involved/annoyed parties privately and thus avoid going public on the Forum. There is better fish to fry in the Forum than petty disputes over ads, transactions or replica labels, to name but a few.

#3

The issue is one of the 'members' is operating a business (profitable of not) by buying and selling calculators and works to keep his postings near the top of the ads. There is an appropriate place for running a business such as his (EBay) or setting up and operating there own web site where the true operating costs can be incurred. I am truly sorry that Dave Hicks has had to encounter the abuses of the site he has worked so hard to establish but unfortunately there are always people who will take advantage of others. A lot of other sites have had to ban classifieds due to similar behaviors and it is quite unfortunate that the behavior of a few can ruin a good thing for others.

#4

The classifieds section will resume operating under these Terms Of Use

It may be a bit of a shock to go from a system that essentially consisted of "use your common sense" to such a wordy document, but given the age of the forums, perhaps we're overdue.

The terms are pretty generic stuff. I grabbed the text from another web forum's Terms of Use (with permission) deleted about 40% of it, and made it HP-forum specific. For the most part, it doesn't reflect a change in how these forums have operated for years. It just spells things out. It includes a few recent discussions such as using multiple "handles", and posting auction ads under misleading headings.

One important word in the document is "discretion". I think most will agree that I have been pretty hands-off. This document is not intended to signal a change in that attitude. Rather it should indicate that I do reserve the right to get fully hands-on when I feel the need. Historically, this has been very infrequent so a lot of you probably never even noticed.

The Terms are still a work in progress and I'm open to suggestions.

#5

Quite formal, but seems necessary.

BTW abiding to your rules won't change jabits for most of us...

Thanks for opening the forum again, and for keeping this site alive, let's hope that the forum will remain as pleasant as it used to be

#6

.

#7

The reason I used "Unknown" is because I didn't want to be barraged with tons of emails. This was a guess on my part that this person would do that. However my guess was confirmed when Dave said he had gotten 9 emails and didn't even finish reading all of them.

Dave posted:

The issue is one of the 'members' is operating a business (profitable or not) by buying and selling calculators and works to keep his postings near the top of the ads. There is an appropriate place for running a business such as his (EBay) or setting up and operating there own web site where the true operating costs can be incurred.

Exactly. This is why I posted the original message. He is obviously running a business and doing it here to avoid ebay posting and commission fees.

This I feel is taking advantage of Dave Hick's site and generosity. This has been going on for quite some time now. I knew other people had surely complained and it didn't seem to change anything. I knew if I sent this person an email it would do nothing. Except maybe get me a mailbox full of inane rantings and name calling.

Juan J Posted:

Who is "Unknown"? And why suddenly everybody got an ax to grind or made it personal? Who is more jerkish, the jerk himself or the one who follows and backs the jerk? Why the urge to corner the accused after somedody who withholds his
name shoots in anger?

I have no ax to grind and didn't make it personal. I posted 2 quotes. I didn't post any of my own words. My follow up posts to the person I don't feel are jerkish or that I tried to corner him. He said the ads were different. I showed him they weren't, again without any personal attacks. Unlike what I received in return.

I have been on usenet for years and if I wanted to make it personal I could have melted this person down into a smoldering pile. Reading his incoherent posts this would have been like shooting ducks in a barrel.

I didn't do that though did I?

I even asked my wife to read some of his sentences and she couldn't make heads or tails out of them.

I guess that's all I have to say about this issue besides the next 2 things.


I am truly sorry and apologize to the whole HP community here for starting this war.

I would also like to apologize to Dave Hicks for turning a VERY nice and friendly forum so ugly. This was not my intention.

God bless all and may your HP's run for years,

Christopher

BTW. this email address is valid.

#8

It's been an interesting weekend. On Friday, I flagged some emails about Doug's ads in my inbox but didn't go check them out right away. About three hours later, I came back and found a message from Doug about your posting on the forum. I did a quick check out of curiosity to see if "Unknown" appeared to be any of the previous complainers and it didn't.

I decided to let this one play out in public in the hope that it would lead to more self-control. I think it did, but it still wasn't pretty and I apologize to everyone for that.

#9

"Dave: is it posible to make it mandatory to include an e-mail address and a name, other than "Unknown," for each posting? If there are privacy concerns, public free email services are available everywhere to protect your identity or privacy and the like."

I could certainly require that the field be filled in, but doing it "right" requires verifying that the email address exists and that the poster reads that address. That means a registration system. This leads to some additional questions:

1) How many one-time/only-time posters will find registration inconvenient and not bother to ask their questions?

2) Do I want to implement that myself or switch to new forum software?

3) Does the average HP calculator owner not realize he can create a hotmail address in under a minute?

These questions have so far resulted in me "back-burnering" such a change.

#10

... failing to try to inject a tiny note of levity, for fans of "The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin"

(whose boss, C.J., frequently started sentences with "I didn't get where I am today by ...")

#11

Looks good, but might I make a small suggestion? In the part about reposting items, perhaps you should make it clear that ads for particular ITEMS should not be posted more than once a week, regardless of whether those items are advertised individually or as part of a larger ad. That might help stop people from trying to use "loopholes" such as claiming that an ad wasn't a repost because SOME of the items in it had changed.

#12

I added that - Thanks!

#13

Dear Juan,

Thanks for thinking of me. I followed the thread with a great deal of sadness. I really wanted to simply post, "knock it off." But, as Dave said he thought it best to monitor and let it play out, rather then censor.

I've learned the hard way over the years that it never pays to become "defensive." It makes a person look bad when they don't need to.

A real-life example: There's a surgeon in California that does a stomach-stapling type procedure for weight loss, named after himself, called the "Foby Pouch." A 20/20 (or 40/40 or 60/60..)-like show interviewed a woman who had terrible results; losing too much weight, becoming near-death ill, etc. When he was asked about it, he blamed it on her, saying, "she didn't follow my instructions," etc. This may have been quite true, but his defensiveness immediately made him look bad and the situation became adversarial, etc. Instead, all he had to say was, "...That poor woman. Not everyone has good results, and she did very poorly. And her case shows the risks...." And he would have come out looking fine. The lesson is: if anyone sticks a microphone in your face (with some parallels to the Forum), the worst thing possible is to become defensive. It's far better to say, "I'm not sure, I may have been wrong, I'll look into it..." or ANYTHING other than defensiveness.

I think too many parties on the that awful thread became too defensive and took things WAY too personally.

My hope here is to encourage that helpfulness you mentioned. This community has been very special, unique, supportive, and ... dare I say... even loving, in a hobbyist/collector/engineer/friendship/group-compatible sort of way.

Alright. I said it. And I feel better, anyway.

On to what matters most here:
"Another day, another calculator..."
Happy Programming,
Michael



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