Simon King Access here is a privilege, not a right, and participation is voluntary. There is no democratic process behind my post removals or account bans. I am judge, jury and executioner. I judge solely on my perception of a person's post or comment history. If you find that unacceptable, move on, because it won't be changing anytime soon.
Simon King Access here is a privilege, not a right, and participation is voluntary. There is no democratic process behind my post removals or account bans. I am judge, jury and executioner. I judge solely on my perception of a person's post or comment history. If you find that unacceptable, move on, because it won't be changing anytime soon.
Posting this with comments disabled does not count in your favor. Original post removed.
Originally shared by Simon King
Censorship and Attacks
I have found it very strange that the owner of this group chose to censor multiple posts about InstallAware over the course of the past two weeks.
I have found it even stranger that the same owner, who allegedly based his censorship of InstallAware on criteria of `personal attacks`, would allow similar attacks to go completely untouched in the recent HTML5 Builder posting.
Hypocrisy runs amok here. Posts are deleted because they are deemed commercial, while even more commercial posts are allowed to stay because of the owner's personal preference. People with an ax to grind are allowed to attack others - so long as they are the favorites of the owner himself.
Posting this with comments disabled does not count in your favor. Original post removed.
Originally shared by Simon King
Censorship and Attacks
I have found it very strange that the owner of this group chose to censor multiple posts about InstallAware over the course of the past two weeks.
I have found it even stranger that the same owner, who allegedly based his censorship of InstallAware on criteria of `personal attacks`, would allow similar attacks to go completely untouched in the recent HTML5 Builder posting.
Hypocrisy runs amok here. Posts are deleted because they are deemed commercial, while even more commercial posts are allowed to stay because of the owner's personal preference. People with an ax to grind are allowed to attack others - so long as they are the favorites of the owner himself.
I can't see any disruptions in advertising, my display is continuously plastered with tms posts.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Attila Kovacs, the TMS stuff is just as bad (I see four posts in just the first page or two of scrolling). I am happy InstallAware is gone (almost) though.
ReplyDeleteI don't mind relevant ads. Good to know what's around
ReplyDeleteBear in mind, there are so few ways for third party vendors to advertise effectively these days. Most online advertising is ineffective due to the rise of ad blockers (I use one myself). If we can't make our products known, we can't make sales, and the company/products die, and if that happens, so does delphi, as without a third party market the product would not be viable. As John Kouraklis said, relevant ads are fine imho.
ReplyDeleteIt's not easy to decide what's an acceptable signal/noise ratio for infotisement and advertisement, and of course personal preference plays in, so if you personally find that someone is posting too frequently for your taste, you can let them know in private or public with a comment.
ReplyDeleteIn the case of the above mentioned installer, the poster went very toxic on a negative, but IMO not unreasonable comment by someone else. I found it to be unacceptable. A following post by a no profile, no posts account was also removed. There was no protests, complaints or questions from any of these two accounts.
ReplyDeleteLars Fosdal I think you have done a fine job of striking a balance here. As Vincent Parrett has said, it is a challenge for third-party publishers to reach their market, and their demise would certainly mark the end of viability for Delphi.
ReplyDeleteLars Fosdal, I support your decision. Posts should contain relevant information directly related to the Delphi development.
ReplyDeleteI know personally the work involved with owning communities and can only say you're doing a darn fine job. No need to explain yourself, let alone feel the need to defend yourself.
ReplyDelete(On a side note: I too found TMS a little too annoying, as well as some other posters, but there's an excellent mute function for that.)
Lars Fosdal , i too support your much valued work! I too feel TMS has been round in excess lately, but not to the point where i would take any action.
ReplyDeleteLars Fosdal Good job! It is good to see relevant posts about products as a way of keeping informed, but it has to be relevant to Delphi Developers, as mentioned above.
ReplyDeleteI think minimal intervention is the best route. We can always hide/ignore/report posts that don't follow the guidelines. Occasional advertising is fine by me, so long as it is relevant to Delphi. Ultimately, it's Lars Fosdal's group, so he calls the shots. If Simon King does not like Lars' approach, he can always start his own group and people will vote with their feet. I for one am quite happy milling around here as I do find it useful and a friendly place to be.
ReplyDeleteWow don’t like your tone at all. Unsubscribing .
ReplyDeleteSo was it a problem with frequency? I can't even recall seeing any InstallAware posts. I'd just like to understand what happened
ReplyDeleteAgree with the post, but for a second I thought I was watching Judge Dredd or some like that, not a developer group.
ReplyDeleteLars Fosdal, why not let users use https://support.google.com/plus/answer/6320425?hl=en ? I guess Google is very good at blocking spam. And also, more free time for you :)
ReplyDeletesupport.google.com - Report abuse on Google+ - Computer - Google+ Help
David Nottage Post that led to ban: plus.google.com - InstallAware X8, Built in Delphi, First with Acrylic, and Dialog Editor Undo/...
ReplyDeleteEriks A. Well, it would be me or a moderator that would have to deal with that marked post - so no work saved, since we still have to decide if it is spam or not - or whether the flagging is appropriate or not.
ReplyDeleteI'm curious about something ... I've noticed several replies to questions I've posted that showed up to ME with a note "reply has been deleted for unacceptable content" or something to that effect. They were actually dimmed-out, and there was a way for me to make them visible. They contained links to other stuff. I personally saw nothing wrong with them so I enabled them to be visible.
ReplyDeleteMy question is this: are these sorts of "hidden" posts flagged automatically by Google? Or by an admin or mod? Or something else entirely?
I couldn't tell if they were flagged simply because of the external links, or if someone was just skimming and thought they might be "spammy" without looking closely.
If someone is posting a reply that's making a legitimate point, even if it may have a link to something dubious in it, as long as the link seems relevant, I'm ok with that.
Here's my take on 3rd-party posts in general:
ReplyDeleteThere have been a few products that I think have been posted excessively here, and they seemingly went quiet. If you have one product and you feel the need to make announcements about it every day, that's not kosher.
OTOH, TMS is in a strange position. They have a steadily growing library of products that have their own independent release schedules. DevEx has a bunch, but they all get released monthly. So TMS might post something daily on different updates whereas DevEx would post once a month. Maybe TMS could post a weekly summary? (I also get emails from them, so posting here is redundant. Stick to posting more major announcements here, perhaps.)
I happen to like seeing posts from vendors that announce updates. I wish there were more because I know there are developers out there building some kick-ass components but they don't know how to market and they're afraid of being attacked if they say anything at all. There used to be a steady stream of them on the Embt Forum for 3rd-party stuff, but that platform has been so flakey that I don't think I've visited in over a year. I don't know if it's even still alive.
Look, if you've got a major new release of something, I for one would like to hear about it HERE. However, if it's stuff that only existing users will care about, just email them directly, because nobody else is interested.
That said, there are a few folks who have been ... shall we say ... overly prolific. I cannot imagine how anybody could be cranking out a steady stream of free, open-source stuff week after week for months on end, with nothing else they seem to be doing. One guy in particular comes to mind ... three or four component updates daily. Whew! Sadly, none of them ever interested me. Over on the 3rd-Party forum, that was ok, although it was a lot of stuff to wade through.
People need to learn how to build a mailing list of others who are interested in their stuff, and email them directly. Flooding public spaces with updates that the same small crowd sees over and over is a great way to get them to just ignore your posts altogether. That's what happens on FB ... after a while I just block some people because of their steady stream of irrelevant nonsense.
Even if it's Delphi components, how many updates do you need to release of, say, a quadratic formula solver component every month? I can't tell you the last time I had to solve a quadratic equation, and I cannot imagine releasing more than one update every six months. What could possibly justify weekly releases of such obscure and otherwise "mature" logic blocks? I can only imagine the changes from one update to the next are miniscule, and if I wasn't interested before, I'm not likely to be after. Common sense needs to be applied. (Which is probably why we don't hear from these folks any more in this venue, thankfully.)
Then again, some of the TMS posts are general interest Delphi blog posts that happens to carry the TMS logo. I.e. Infomercials. It's difficult to draw a line here.
ReplyDeleteDavid Schwartz I don't think vendors are posting here soley for the benefit of existing customers, of course it's about finding new customers. Email marketing has pretty much been killed off by GDPR and related legislation (because people don't opt in when asked, as is required now).
ReplyDeleteI think posting ads is fine, as long as it's not the same thing every day, and is about relevant products, without disparaging other or making personal attacks. I know not everyone will say nice things about my products, as a vendor you have to grow a thick skin, and take on feedback, good or bad... just don't go on the attack when you don't like what people say.
I think we overreact and we come up with all sorts of arguments about the content, the frequency, etc. The situation with ads is no different to other ads for different types of services or products.
ReplyDeleteI really do not mind ads as often as the vendors think they need to post as long as the ads are relevant to Delphi.
If I want to know what exists out there (and I do!) I need to tolerate excessive amount of content. It can surely be annoying but it's the price we all pay for a wealth of information and accessibility--well, it's called information era and that's how business is done for both sides these days
The benefits I have seen from products I did not know exist or from offers I wouldn't be aware of outweigh any pain I have when I skim through posts on this group or delete email notifications.
BTW, Lars Fosdal does a great job with the admin of this community
David Schwartz I think some of these replies with links get auto-flagged by Google. I regularly have to approve posts with links from long-time members that have posted before - so sometimes I wonder if the auto-flagging actually works at all.
ReplyDelete