"Why are the mods so afraid to discuss that?"

I think because they never discuss anything. They made a "decision", a wrong and extremely stupid decision in this case, and prolly hope it will be forgotten very soon.

Oops, forgot the rules:

Rule 1: the "mods" are always right
Rule 2: in case the "mods" are not right Rule 1 will be applied automatically.
Rule 3: discussing TOS with "mods" is verboten and will lead to a permanent ban if you do not shut up after they told you so.

Ordnung muss sein! "Ich bin ein knoblauch" -in the kitchen of insanity, here money rules and therefore, I shall fall.
:R. Polanski/D. Hamilton/Zrincx.

Order must be! "I am a garlic" - Babblefish

And in light of the new guidlines post I'd say it proves the banned member was right to be confused at the warning and is owed an apology for this whole mess. It proves the TOS wasn't clear enough and the member didn't deserve the banning.

Will they admit it?

Just Ask Anton Kissel , or the great "Dodger"
or any other would be conqeror of the evil rosity,DAZ
Empire, about the public relations effectiveness of such crusades.

Since he works with us, we did ask Dodger. He says they do tend to create short term boosts of sales but they don't last terribly long. He imagines that when they're insincere this probably doesn't happen to the same extreme.

Anton seems to agree, as does Merrilyn, based on past correspondence.

All in all, working together is more effective over the long term, but really you should follow your heart. Enemies aren't a good thing, but sometimes you have them, and to pretend you don't and that they are your friends is just as smarmy as making fake enemies.

Truth may not conquer all the time, but you feel a lot better about it in the long run.

Ask Bryan Brandenburg about the public relations effectiveness of pretending you're friends with people you despise. Message edited on: 03/29/2005 15:18

"Bryan Brandenburg" Please elaborate. A quick search shows he has worked with Daz & Zyzote. Always happy to hear examples of hypocrisy gone sour :-)

OK, let's keep this civil, shall we?

"Ask Bryan Brandenburg about the public relations effectiveness of pretending you're friends with people you despise." I take this as referring to how hypocrisy "...pretending you're friends with people you despise." may not be the best course. I was asking for more details on just what the comment referred to. If that is being uncivil, sorry but I fail to see it. Maybe I've stumbled on some Bryan Brandenburg (whoever the heck he is) taboo but it's really getting hard to tell what will get you in trouble for saying here.

lmckenzie, Bryan wrote a book on how to become a millionaire in the computer biz. He is/was the founder and managing partner of Vertical Marketing Management Group (vmmg). He was the Chief Profit Officer at DAZ. He is currently the CEO of Zygote. He has more than 20 years experience in making money, often with concurrent companies, if you check the dates. In a capitalist society, he can be considered successful. I'll refrain from commenting and let him speak for himself: **************** "You'll learn how to calculate the lifetime value of your client so that you'll know how much you can spend to acquire a new client and make a profit over the life of that client." "This section covers the tools of influence; the things you can use that get buyers to say yes automagically." "How to maximize the profitability on every client" http://www.vmmg.net/ http://www.vmmg.net/products/purchase-million-dollar-computer-consultant.shtml ********** "What if you were able to have access to your competitor's web statistics? What if you knew how much traffic they had, the average number of page views, what other sites their visitors went to? What if you could tell how successful a campaign was or if their recent press release had any impact? Would that be a strategic advantage?" http://www.hotlib.com/articles/show.php?t=Internet_Nielsen_Reports ****** "As a manager of people you should pay attention to how you and the company are taking care of people from the perspective of Maslows Hierarchy of Needs. Almost all resistance and motivation issues can be traced to your employees not getting their needs met." http://www.vmmg.net/resources/employee_human_needs.shtml ************* "This formula allows you to accurately project what a customer is worth to you over their customer life cycle." http://www.successfuloffice.com/the-value-of-a-customer.htm ********* Resistance. Resistance is a trained reaction developed over many experiences with sales people. If there was no resistance, the customer would be buying everything that people were selling and would be out of business or broke. The best way to address resistance in a customer is not to push against it, until it has softened. The resistance is an adversarial position, so you must become their partner and trusted advisor. Give the general solutions to their problem with no expectations of reimbursement. Brainstorm and demonstrate that you have their best interests at heart and the resistance will soften and go away. http://www.theallineed.com/business/05013004.htm ******************** link with his picture: http://www.vmmg.net/news/zygote-media-group.shtml Google on "Bryan Brandenburg" with the quotes and you can find all sorts of nuggets. There are some that I'd love to follow up on, but this old beastie times out before the pages open, or I've already blocked the cookies and refused the spyware (the marketing/advertising sites). :sigh: There is one article where he talks about deliberately shedding the least profitable customers, so that effort can be concentrated upon the cash cows, but I can't find it now. Carolly

Sounds like a mixture of common sense, psychology and BizSkool 101. Applied correctly, I can see how he became rich.