We have a few vendors who frequent Jag-lovers, and they sometimes have special offers that may (or may not) interest members.
Due to the current rules, they’ve either been keeping mum about it, or they’ve posted to the model specific categories in violation of the rules.
I’d like to put the following suggestion to the members:
What if we created a new Category, we could call it “Jaguar Vendors” or some such, where vendors could post promotional messages?
Posting privileges in that Category would be restricted to vendors only. Everyone else would be able to read the messages, but not post. We could also ask the vendors to contribute to the maintenance and upkeep of the site.
Vendors could post about special offers (“Blinker Fluid $99 this week only”) or they could simply post a message about who they are, what they offer, and how to contact them.
Would that kind of vendors-only category with promotional messages be useful to the Jag-lovers members?
Might I suggest there be a limit on the size of each post. Vendors should post links to their catalogues or websites and not reproduce a 15 page sales flyer on JL. Just a suggestion to keep things tidy and easy to read.
I agree. A terrific idea. Keeping these vehicles on the road requires parts and services. It would be nice to find an occasional deal from the supporting vendors, if it can be done without turning J-L into a commercial site.
Jim
Here’s my fear. It will be all well and good when someone comes in and says, “Hey suspension parts are 20% off this month” or whatever. What will be less good will be when someone comes in to talk about their great services, and it so happens that someone here has purchased that service before and been anything less than thrilled with it, and they describe their experience. You’ll soon be getting requests to moderate posts out of existence from that vendor. I predict it will get messy.
Many years ago Jag-Lovers was caught up in a dispute between a vendor and a disgruntled customer. The vendor won and forced J-L to sift through the archive and strip out all postings (mail list in those days) related to the vendor or something like that. For a while each list had a monitor whose job was to be sure no one was bad-mouthing a vendor. This happened shortly before I joined so I might have the details off a bit. More vendors hanging around would mean more chance for this kind of thing to get started.
Recall Gunnar said it would be read only for non vendors. Someone bad mouthing a vendor elsewhere would run afoul of the no bashing rule and risk punishment. Why not give it a chance? It could always be shut off if it all goes bad.
Unknowingly I just posted a similar proposal to the thread on the E-Type list, with one difference. I suggested that any forum user be allowed to post replies to Promotional Messages in the new “shameless commerce” category to, for example, ask the vendor for more details about the muffler bearings they have on sale this week. I acknowledge the fears expressed here that this could lead to vendor bashing, and so maybe it would be better to not allow users to post responses. Of course, it wouldn’t prevent vendorA bashing vendorB - “don’t buy those Chinese-made butter-metal muffler bearings from vendorB - ours are better, cheaper, and made from margarine”…
Hi Ed, you’re wrong about this. We have never removed or edited anything, as we early on received legal advice that doing so would make us responsible and liable for the entire content of the forum. Yes, we have on occasion been at the sharp end of legal disputes, but remarkably none ever came to anything. Which likely says something about the sort of person or company that would threaten legal action against a peaceful entity such as Jag-lovers.
“…Why not give it a chance? It could always be shut off if it all goes bad…”
Clearly I chose my words badly John. I’m not saying don’t do it, actually I supports this action. I also support open discussion about vendors that have proven to be “faulty” at times, but was only trying to point out that one point Erica made, imo, was valid.
As you say John, give it a try and if it goes bad, take it down, although I would offer the notion that if said suppliers/vendors pay for the privilege and so help support JL in a substantial way, it might be harder to take it down, due to said financial reliance.
And while on the subject of vendor bashing, does this rule only apply to Jag part vendors? What about me saying, more than once, that I hate the Ford Motor Company due to the bad time I had with them. No-one has told me not to speak badly about FMC, or perhaps I missed the poke in the eye from admin? If it’s not ok to diss company X then it should be the same for every company on the planet, surely?
I just tried to find the JL location that talks to all the rules. I was hoping to see a link on the menu that said Rules…couldn’t find one and even though I did a search on “vendor bashing” I could only see postings from '03 and earlier. Couldn’t find “Rules” on any of the drop down menus.
They are here: I searched forum rules and it popped up. click on Terms of Service. Yesterday I suggested to the admin(s) that it was hard to find and maybe ought to be a sticky near the top of the page so no one could argue they didn’t know XXX was prohibited because they couldn’t find the rules. Maybe replace “Old Users - Read Here”
As I said, the events were before I joined the mail list in the late 90’s. You probably posted words similar to your clarification above and I retained the general impression but not the details. But, these days I’m lucky to remember anything at all
Well, I wont drag this along any further but I did follow your link John, read all the Terms Of Service, three times, and could not find any reference to vendor bashing. I followed a hotlink to Community Guidelines and nothing there either, so, if it’s there, by this post I would ask and propose that JL User Conduct as far as vendor bashing goes, be a LOT easier to find…and as I say, I still can’t see it…not saying it’s not there but I can’t find it.
Since @Longstone is forbidden by forum rules from answering your question on the public forum, perhaps you could send him a private message (just click on the avatar in the top left corner of any message from him), and then click on the envelope symbol. That way, the rest of us won’t be subjected to his shameless misuse of the forum we love…
I hear you, and I fear you may be right. But like Les says, we could give it a chance and see how it goes. We should probably also put up a big notice to members that Jag-lovers is not the place to solve vendor disputes.
As another reference I use Rennlist for the 911. Vendors such as Pelican Parts are contributors (financial) and get into interesting discussions with the group. They, Pelican, even provide “how-to’s” on their site which I have personally used. When things go wrong, bad parts or inaccurate/incomplete guidance etc, the vendors openly discuss the issues on the site and everyone wins. I think it really depends on if EVERYONE, JL users and vendors, are made aware of the environment before joining the forum. I can only say that it seems to work very well on Rennlist.
