I've been reviewing the sequence of events, and posting history that's led up to this event and I had a number of phone calls to the members affected, together with a number of our admin members.
Going to the root of the problem - while the bans were acted out of good intentions in order to correct an systemic issue - they were not done right, and on behalf of those who were affected, my apologies.
There was very little transparency to how the bans were effected when there were more than just the 3 members posting on the cup holder thread? Why not the rest and why were they treated differently?
For that - I do feel that the action in terms of implementing the bans were not done right, and something which we will look to correct and not happen again. Sorry!
We suffer from a profiling and culture change over the past years (highlighted by Ken - http://www.bmw-sg.com/forums/lounge/77273-emo-still-tribute-many-bmw-sg-forumers-over-years.html) and I've been speaking to a number of people to find out a lot of the underlying issues that has been plaguing us. Also... it's easy to jump to conclusions to point fingers to certain individuals for causing them in the first place.
Here's a couple of things we'll be acting on to improve things from here:
1. A review of our warning/banning procedures and policies. However, the base rules over at (http://www.bmw-sg.com/forums/forum-...ons/3724-bmw-sg-forum-policy-please-read.html) still applies.
2. A newbies guide to use our forum efficiently (i.e.. Use the search function first, check in Google if something has already been answered, and try to use common sense). We'll need to update this thread (http://www.bmw-sg.com/forums/forum-...ations/7623-6-step-new-user-guide-bmw-sg.html) to insert in that 'search first' clause.
3. A restriction of members who register on our forums to sell items, and who are not contributing members. A forum is a community of users, not to be abused as a marketplace. The current classifieds section aim to serve long-term forum members, instead of the public. A time/post-earned access to the classifieds section will be implemented (i.e. a member must have 50 posts and have been in the forum for more than a month to gain access to post a new thread in classifieds section).
4. No over-the-board OT in technical/model folders (i.e. the 1,3,5,6,7,M series technical / general discussion folders). Do your best to keep OT to a minimum. In these folders, we will delete OT if we see them occur without any notification.
5. Our current meetup area is getting too stale and lacking. We'll be cancelling our monthly meetup in June in favor of something else - like a BBQ in June. All welcome. Rain or shine.
Anyone has other suggestions to add?
Going to the root of the problem - while the bans were acted out of good intentions in order to correct an systemic issue - they were not done right, and on behalf of those who were affected, my apologies.
There was very little transparency to how the bans were effected when there were more than just the 3 members posting on the cup holder thread? Why not the rest and why were they treated differently?
For that - I do feel that the action in terms of implementing the bans were not done right, and something which we will look to correct and not happen again. Sorry!
We suffer from a profiling and culture change over the past years (highlighted by Ken - http://www.bmw-sg.com/forums/lounge/77273-emo-still-tribute-many-bmw-sg-forumers-over-years.html) and I've been speaking to a number of people to find out a lot of the underlying issues that has been plaguing us. Also... it's easy to jump to conclusions to point fingers to certain individuals for causing them in the first place.
Here's a couple of things we'll be acting on to improve things from here:
1. A review of our warning/banning procedures and policies. However, the base rules over at (http://www.bmw-sg.com/forums/forum-...ons/3724-bmw-sg-forum-policy-please-read.html) still applies.
2. A newbies guide to use our forum efficiently (i.e.. Use the search function first, check in Google if something has already been answered, and try to use common sense). We'll need to update this thread (http://www.bmw-sg.com/forums/forum-...ations/7623-6-step-new-user-guide-bmw-sg.html) to insert in that 'search first' clause.
3. A restriction of members who register on our forums to sell items, and who are not contributing members. A forum is a community of users, not to be abused as a marketplace. The current classifieds section aim to serve long-term forum members, instead of the public. A time/post-earned access to the classifieds section will be implemented (i.e. a member must have 50 posts and have been in the forum for more than a month to gain access to post a new thread in classifieds section).
4. No over-the-board OT in technical/model folders (i.e. the 1,3,5,6,7,M series technical / general discussion folders). Do your best to keep OT to a minimum. In these folders, we will delete OT if we see them occur without any notification.
5. Our current meetup area is getting too stale and lacking. We'll be cancelling our monthly meetup in June in favor of something else - like a BBQ in June. All welcome. Rain or shine.
Anyone has other suggestions to add?
