Forum Needs Non-Public Customer Forum

[Andrew]

250,000 mg hahahahahahaha

that seriously made me laugh, thank you!

 

[Ruven]

We are acutely aware of our lack of interaction on the forums just recently. I took today off, as it's my birthday, but on normal days we are working flat-out to get XenForo ready for its stable release, fixing bugs and finishing features. The litigation is also occupying a lot of our time, as you can imagine. I know we haven't been spending a lot of time in the suggestion forums of late, but really that's because we're currently focused on finishing what we have before we embark upon another voyage of feature discovery for a future version.

Rest assured that the software is still progressing, and as more features are completed and bugs are squished the stable release grows ever closer. Once we are out of the pre-release stage and the litigation is taking less of our time, we hope to ramp-up our involvement on the forums once again.

I agree with you Kier. You guys have a ton on your plate.
I dont believe that anyone is expecting you to be in here all the time, ive joked in the past that i would rather you spent less time in the forums because that means you are spending more time working on XF

What i think people are talking about is your lack of comment on the latest legal developments.
While we know that its obviously a touchy matter and that you cant say much... but for the community and perspective customers a little goes a long way.

The constant deleting of anything that speaks on the legal issues is in itself an issue.
Its impossible to live with an elephant in the room Kier.
The community has the legal issue on their minds, and it can and will come up in normal natural conversation because its something thats alive in the moment.
Attempts at keeping that type of conversation at bay can only foster bad feelings in your customers.
Some of your works biggest supporters will have issue with this. And it will cause divisions within your loyal customer/designer/coder base.
Thats not good, but im sure you know this.

So why not make a quick statement that isnt buried in some thread?
Just tell us that you cant tell us much, but that things are progressing as planned with the software, that you are dealing with the legal issues and that there is no reason to worry. (none of this is breaking news, but coming as an official statement from the dev team goes a long way towards easing the mind)
Ask people to try and limit speaking about the lawsuit because those conversations will always take over any particular thread and end up derailing them completely.

Finally in the off topic forum open one thread, dedicate it to the legal issue, let people talk about it there, and if folks bring it up in other forums/threads then instruct your mods to move them to the dedicated thread.

There will always be people who still wont be satisfied, but you would have done more than enough for the large majority of folks who dislike pretending that there isnt a huge elephant at xenforo.com.

 

[ManagerJosh]

I agree with you Kier. You guys have a ton on your plate.
I dont believe that anyone is expecting you to be in here all the time, ive joked in the past that i would rather you spent less time in the forums because that means you are spending more time working on XF

What i think people are talking about is your lack of comment on the latest legal developments.
While we know that its obviously a touchy matter and that you cant say much... but for the community and perspective customers a little goes a long way.

The constant deleting of anything that speaks on the legal issues is in itself an issue.
Its impossible to live with an elephant in the room Kier.
The community has the legal issue on their minds, and it can and will come up in normal natural conversation because its something thats alive in the moment.
Attempts at keeping that type of conversation at bay can only foster bad feelings in your customers.
Some of your works biggest supporters will have issue with this. And it will cause divisions within your loyal customer/designer/coder base.
Thats not good, but im sure you know this.

So why not make a quick statement that isnt buried in some thread?
Just tell us that you cant tell us much, but that things are progressing as planned with the software, that you are dealing with the legal issues and that there is no reason to worry. (none of this is breaking news, but coming as an official statement from the dev team goes a long way towards easing the mind)
Ask people to try and limit speaking about the lawsuit because those conversations will always take over any particular thread and end up derailing them completely.

Finally in the off topic forum open one thread, dedicate it to the legal issue, let people talk about it there, and if folks bring it up in other forums/threads then instruct your mods to move them to the dedicated thread.

There will always be people who still wont be satisfied, but you would have done more than enough for the large majority of folks who dislike pretending that there isnt a huge elephant at xenforo.com.

Question: Where do you draw the line? Where does the line stop? It doesn't negate the fact that litigation has been known to disrupt sales. Take Toyota for example. All the recent bad press about their vehicles has slowed sales.

 

[Ingenious]

One thing in this thread has REALLY helped to put my mind at rest - Kier's post. At last, we have something tangible from the xF team they're still very committed to this and also that a lot of their time has been taken up dealing with this lawsuit.

In answer to some other points in this thread. I do read the vB licence-only forum and I have to agree with the comments above, it doesn't really do a lot that cannot be done in the normal forum. It seems to have just become a place for licence owners to slag off the product. I'm not sure such a forum would work here. Personally, I am strongly against any kind of hidden forum, it does not do a community any good. It's one reason a number of years ago I did not switch to IPB, because a huge amount of their content was hidden unless I bought the product (think it has opened up a bit now).

Regarding moderation, I am one of the members here who has had a post deleted with NO explanation to me. All I did was question the pre-sale (suggesting it would be good to be able to buy in advance or have a longer period that 1 day). The point at which member posts are deleted simply because they express an opinion not shared by the majority is the point it starts to become a closed, cult-like, clique experience. I hope that has been nipped in the bud here. Because it's future potential customers that are being censored.

Finally, it's worth remembering, you can please some of the people all of the time, or all of the people some of the time, but never all of the people all of the time

 

[HannahP]

"mjp said: Maybe there's a parallel forum universe I'm not privy to."

Well... that is a remarkable description indeed. I guess you are subconsciously referring to this site: http://xenfans.com/threads/the-ridiculous-post-deleting-and-thread-closing-on-xenforo-continues.203/

Kind of difficult to subconsciously refer to a site I've never read, but carry on.

 

[AnthonyCea]

Well the funny thing about all this Anthony is the fact that vB was using the non-public licensed customer forums as a tool and repository to "hide the truth" from the public when the rebellion started due to the new licensing scheme.

So that forum was used to censor content, to move entire critical threads out of public view and was abused by moderators.

 

[RickM]

Personally I feel the only forums that should be off limits to non-license holders is the mods/code forums. The style forum should be left public - why? Because it lets people see the kind of site they could have, and lets face it - even if they were able to download a style, its useless without XF.

Also, RE: Lawsuit: A Statement Regarding the...

 

[Nasr]

Unfortunately, what some members see as their right to express their opinions, others somehow see it as attacks on the trio. One has to be blind not to see how hard those three developers work to end up with a product like this. I mean it takes me hours just to change a few colors in the style. Now, imagine if I coded that?

Anyway, I think, out of respect and support for the guys, we should respect their wishes to refrain from discussing the litigation unless they release something about it. I think, most of us if not all of us, came in here knowing exactly what risks were there once we purchased a license and built a community with xF. No one coerced us to do anything. We willingly out of support or otherwise, purchased a license or more while knowing that there was a lawsuit against xF.

What's ironic is some people are now crying foul about the fact that their communities might be at risk if xF lost the case. Well, you went into this knowing that is a possibility. If you weren’t up to the task, why did you not wait until everything was out in the clear?

And, as many have pointed out, letting discussions on company site could be used against xF in court. We wouldn’t want to give IB anything to use in the lawsuit.

 

[Ruven]

Question: Where do you draw the line? Where does the line stop? It doesn't negate the fact that litigation has been known to disrupt sales. Take Toyota for example. All the recent bad press about their vehicles has slowed sales.

Ignoring it for as long as they did is what has hurt their sales.
Blaming the customer is what hurt their sales.
Denying that their method of handling the situation wasnt a problem on top of the original problem is what hurt their sales.

You see where i am going with this

 

[dutchbb]

IMO the staff here (both admins and mods) are doing a pretty good job running the XenForo community. I should know since I'm running a pretty busy forum for eight years now (without wanting to brag about it) and have been rather active here the last couple of months.

The feeling I get with some people who are complaining is that they always have to make such a big deal of things. So the staff do not want to allow certain discussions here, they probably have a very good reason to do so. I think every community has such specific rules, limitations or whatever you want to call them. On top of that this is still a business forum, and they have to make sure the business is protected from unnecessary speculations.

There is a case and no one can be sure what the outcome of that will be. I think it's important to just have patience and not to post a lot of speculation that will probably do more harm than good. Let's keep this a strong community and leave the internal problems and customer dissatisfaction to IB. Please do not let IB infect this place too. They already have done enough harm as it is.

 

[ManagerJosh]

Ignoring it for as long as they did is what has hurt their sales.
Blaming the customer is what hurt their sales.
Denying that their method of handling the situation wasnt a problem on top of the original problem is what hurt their sales.

You see where i am going with this

Then comes the matter of also being able to publically comment on the matter too. Sometimes cases are sealed so well you're not allowed to say a thing.

 

[Ingenious]

I can feel a group hug coming on

 

[Anthony Parsons]

I think this conversation need stay away from the lawsuit, as stated by staff already, the thread will only get closed and content removed, as no such discussion is allowed here, private or public.

There are fore and against comments to having a public forum, and even I as the initiator of the thread, agree with a comment posted, that having such a forum will actually only drive the same type of conversations that occur in the similar on other platforms... sure, it allows users to voice, but every thread ends up in a debate over who's opinion is right or wrong, when an opinion can't be either... hence its an opinion in the first place.

 

[AnthonyCea]

The lawsuit is being discussed in the off topic forum Anthony, in addition Kier made an announcement on it today.

 

[Anthony Parsons]

Thanks Anthony... seen the announcement, but not the other thread. Much appreciated.

 

[Ruven]

Then comes the matter of also being able to publically comment on the matter too. Sometimes cases are sealed so well you're not allowed to say a thing.

That is not how it works.
A court case being sealed doesnt require you to pretend something that exists doesnt exist.
You just cant speak to specifics, and nobody was asking for specifics.
And i get their position, in this day and age people are having their facebook comments used against them in lawsuits, so they do need to be careful obviously.

I think the issue is mostly that there are two extremes.
One group that wants no mention of anything related to a court case, and a group who wants to know every single detail in real time.
Both groups are wrong in my opinion.
There is a middle ground, and Kier's statement thread was the way you approach it.

 

[AnthonyCea]

There is nothing any one can post on the internet that will be used as evidence in this case, all of that is considered hearsay by all courts and means absolutely nothing unless the principals involved make the statements and admit some sort of guilt.

Hearsay is the legal term that describes statements made outside of court or other judicial proceedings. Unless one of about thirty[1] exceptions applies, hearsay is not allowed as evidence in the United States. The Hearsay Rule is an analytic rule of evidence that defines hearsay and provides for both exceptions and exemptions from that rule. There is no all-encompassing definition of hearsay in the United States. However, most evidentiary codes defining hearsay adopt verbatim the rule as laid out in the Federal Rules of Evidence, which generally defines hearsay as a "statement, other than one made by the declarant while testifying at the trial or hearing, offered in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted."[2] Historically, the rule against hearsay is aimed at prohibiting the use of a person's assertion, as equivalent to testimony to the fact asserted, unless the assertor is brought to testify in court where he may be placed under oath and cross-examined.

 

[Peggy]

I wouldn't go so far as to say that there's nothing anyone can say that could be used as evidence.

 

[---MAD---]

I wonder how long the law suit will drag on for..

 

[CFodder]

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