This is just a general comment regarding this site as viewed through my eyes. I am not an owner, do not have any special access or treatment, and want to just be a member and contributor.
We have had censorship ever since this site was developed and on the Prevost Stuff site before that. These were and are private sites and the owner of the site has the freedom to do as he chooses. Rarely does Jim Skiff interfere or censor. When he does it is usually justified. I have been censored. Once I was censored for mentioning another Prevost site. I got over it real fast because in the overall scheme of things it was no big deal. As Gary points out we have very few rules as can be seen by the crudeness of some of our posts. But there is one rule or circumstance that I see as a guaranteed way to bring about censorship and that is to promote business on this site as a member and not a sponsor. Let me explain. Sponsors pay a lot of money to advertise and participate on this site. Our rallies are excellent as a result of participation by our sponsors. They attend, they put on seminars, they treat us to meals, they bring their products for us to look at and they are available to answer any and all questions. So they not only pay a lot of money to get their names on the web site, they spend serious money to participate in our rallies.
But we have had folks try to be suppliers or service companies or support (for a price) for our buses, not bey being sponsors, but by just buying a one year membership and then developing customer lists from the membership list and by posting or advertising on the threads. That's probably OK if the product or services is very limited and does not compete with a sponsor, but if it does Jim Skiff is in danger of losing sponsors, and we also will lose that sponsor support from the site and at our rallies. This issue is not clearly defined so when one of us crosses the line it is a judgment call as to whether the post remains or if it gets modified or deleted.
Doing so is not an indication of malice. It is solely a reaction from Jim or a moderator such as Truk and if you as the poster disagree send an email, a PM or phone to see what the problem is.
But please don't take it to heart. Sometimes all of us posts something we wish we hadn't or wish we had said differently. We make mistakes. In this instance if Jim messed up cut him the same slack others cut us when we make a bad post. Just my opinion.
Before there is any discussion about POG and Jim Skiff I hope everyone realizes how much he does in the background unknown to a lot of folks. Think of Jim as our paid administrator. Our dues pay him to maintain the site, arrange rallies, get sponsors so we have direct access to them and get the benefit of their participation on this site. He makes POG happen. Anyone can create a site and do it for free, but one thing is an absolute certainty, and that every one of us benefits to a much greater extent than the $100 is costs us to be here, in the form of information sharing and the expertise of the participating sponsors.
I'll step down from the soap box now.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by rfoster
