Quote - Randal. I know your meaning well but... Daz needs to look into the problems with the Staff. eg, the banning policy,

 

I was banned from your forums, on the very first offence, why? I blocked a moderators Email address. now lets be clear. I did not block his DAZ address. I blocked his PERSONAL address. I was told "Daz must be able to contace me by any means" and I was banned.

pardon? the fact this mod used his PERSONAL address to contact me for offical Daz business is not a security risk? how am I supposed to know he's a member of the daz staff? and thats not even counting the feelings of "who the hell do they think they are to tell me what I can or cannot do with my Email program?"

at that point Daz lost my trust and my custom.

roll n 2 years, and I watch a group being banned on a forum. no biggy. but when I see someone banned again for saying hello to someone (and the person that said hello got an email a few minuted later from a daz staff member asking if that was them!) what little trust I had dipped even further.

 

I know the Cult of daz will now attack me and tell me what I'm saying did'nt happen (sorry guys, it did and frankly shut up and rant elsewhere), but you Rand wanted honesty did'nt you?

 

I obviously cannot speak to this as I do not have firsthand knowledge of the situation. I am greatly interested, however, and I would appreciate a longer and more detailed explanation of your situation in email. Please contact me if you wish at randy@daz3d.com

I will say that our forums are ultimately a tool that should, in theory, improve our sales. We operate it in the hope that it will increase customer good will, provide a place of community and learning and a place to share... All with the intent of helping the company be more successful.

If it ceases to be those things, and becomes a negative to the company, there is no point in operating it. With that realization, we set about to decrease the negatives. As a part of that we hired new mods and CVs and right around the release of Poser, things started to get confrontational and the censorship started. Wrangling a messy beast like a forum is a terribly tricky process and even the best intentions can go awry. 

We just want it to be a nice place to go. We really don't mind dissent as long as its civilized and rational. We have banned Poser zealots AND DS zealots alike. Could we be better at it... Absolutely. This last couple of weeks we have had quite a few meetings about the forum situation and we have some ideas that may help it all work better.

One of the things on the table is a new social space that may come as a part of the new web store.

We are working with our mods to help them be more consistent and we hope to publish a clearer set of forum decorum guidelines so nobody will have to guess what is acceptable.