I sort of believe in the old adage, "give an inch and they will take a mile". I don't wholly subscribe to it. It kind of goes back to my feeling that not all posters ought to be moderated the same way. I'll always moderate new posters, or posters who are mostly complainers, more than the best, and most productive, members of a forum. That's sometimes going to result in the complaint, "if he can do it, why can't I do it?" The answer is that the poster, I allowed, earned the right to post more freely. That extra freedom doesn't mean that a "star" member has infinite privileges.

I actually had one forum where one of the members was fairly productive in starting and participating in conversations, but was also mildly combative in discussions. Things hadn't gotten nasty enough that I thought there was any reason to intercede for the longest time. Eventually, this poster started telling other members what they could and couldn't do in the forum. Other members, that I valued far more than this one individual, started commenting on this and I had to publicly rebuke this poster and provide a friendly reminder that I was the forum owner and moderator and was the only one that had both figurative and literal control over the forum. That person didn't care for being told he wasn't in charge and left. That was fine because his participation had shifted over time from useful to being a nuisance.

I wholly understand that I'm only a member here and have no authority other than to suggest things. If I don't like how things are run here, I can always find another Poser community to interact with. I don't think that the situation here has hit that point, but there are a few rocky areas that need to be smoothed over.

Although there are some people that, given an inch, will take the whole mile, most people aren't like that. Most people will be happy with the inch. Not giving people an inch, when all they want is an inch, sets up an unfriendly environment. It's usually not too hard to figure out which are which and apply the appropriate level of moderation when needed. It won't always be fair moderation, but it will be judiciously exercised where needed. Moderating a forum is always tricky because there's a desire to keep everybody reasonably on topic, in a respectful fashion, within a forum while allowing discussions to be open and free. It's hard to find the right balance between the two.

I'm not sure how Renderosity can best balance its business needs versus its community. To some extent, the two needs don't always mesh well. Overall, I don't think that the business side ought to dictate how the community side runs. When a store opens up a community, they have to live with the reality that the community is not always going to agree with what the store wants. If a store doesn't like that, then it ought not create a community forum.

Since a Poser community relies on freebie and purchased content to create Poser art, restrictions on discussing those things aren't going to be appreciated. Poser users are interested in finding the best prices on the best products and, if the Renderosity marketplace isn't delivering on that, the marketplace is going to lose business. I can appreciate that Renderosity doesn't want to lose business. Is the problem that posters are taking business away from Renderosity or that Renderosity isn't doing more to keep that business?

No matter what anybody thinks about DAZ, it's hard not to give them credit for aggressively marketing their products and constantly trying new things to get customers to buy from their store. All the other Poser stores put together don't approach the effort DAZ puts into selling their content. DAZ's efforts don't simply help in selling more product. Those efforts are drawing away some of the best content creators from other stores that used to exclusively sell through those stores.

I look at Renderosity, and other Poser stores, and they're frankly not doing much to combat the business they're losing. Trying to restrict conversations in the forum isn't the solution. Feel free to delete posts by people marketing their own products. I'm less comfortable being told that I shouldn't share a bargain I find at another site. If other Poser stores have better deals than Renderosity, then Renderosity needs to find a way to provide even better deals. That's easier said than done. It's ultimately where the real solution lies. I might be wrong, but wasn't Renderosity the biggest Poser marketplace a little more than half a dozen years ago? If it wasn't, it was probably commanding a larger share of the market than it currently has.

My visual indexes of Poser content are at http://www.sharecg.com/pf/rgagnon