Uneven banning in wireless

Evil Al

Hi,

Sorry to complain, but irlrobins has been acting a little weird in his
banning of me in the wireless forum.

I was banned for answering a question in wireless (can't link to the
post because it's been deleted apparently...) in Dec 06. As I recall, I
told the posted that my company could provide the service they were
asking for. irlrobbins banned me for "advertising". I argued against
this vigorously on the basis that this was no more "advertising" than
the Fon employees who regularly pimp their product on wireless.

irlrobins made a few weird arguments, including one that Fon isn't
really a company but more of a philosophy or something (I'm sure their
investors and employees would be interested to hear that...). He eventually agreed to warn the Fon employees too, but did not ban them, or unban me. I really don't think I deserved the ban, given the massive amounts of naked promotion Fon guys were doing all the time (and given that I was genuinely responding to a genuine question).

BUT I kept my mouth shut and served out the ban. Then he
bans me again in the last month; when I asked him why today he said "Yea
u got unbanned, and posted a another pimping post for your company so I
banned you for good." In fact, a user asked a question about Trustive and Irish hotspots and I confirmed Bitbuzz hotspots provide Turstive roaming (actual post has been deleted). No pimping, no advertising.

As I PM-ed him today:
--
"This is the second time you've banned me for posting a legitimate response to a legitimate question, the answer to which happens to be "Bitbuzz". For some reason, others seem to be allowed to post info about other companies with impunity. Look at all the Fon and Smart employees posting about their products without a ban.

I have *never* engaged in anything like actual commercial posting; I have never started a thread saying "Bitbuzz is great". But when someone asks a question and I can provide genuinely useful information, I don't see why you smack me for it.

I took the last ban, but I really feel you're being unreasonable here. I provided useful info to a poster and got punished.
--

irlrobins seems to have some kind of a chip on his shoulder about my posts in particular... He refused to unban me, so I'd appreciate some assistance here.


Thanks.

Vexorg

When did you make the post? I have had a look back over the last month and could not find it.

Regarding Fon - Fon & Boards.ie ran a promotion where Fon provided free hardware to users to allow users to share their internet connection. The gave something back to the community and as a result interart morewithout specific examples of their promoting themselves unfairly - can you provide examples.

As for smart employees posting about their company products can you provide examples of these also.

Vexorg

Could you be referring to a post you made 3 months ago?

Evil Al

Vexorg wrote: »

Could you be referring to a post you made 3 months ago?

irlrobins told me he deleted both posts (convenient). It could have been 3 months ago; I only just noticed I was banned again this week since he never told me at the time.

Vexorg

Mods cannot delete posts only remove them from view.

If the majority of your posts in a forum promote your company I can understand how a mod may appear to be have a chip on his shoulder. It was Irlrobin who brought Fon activity in the forum to my attention last year and we bought asked them not to sour the relationship and to limit the replies to queries about their product.

Taking 3 months to realise you have been banned and raise a complaint does suggests you are not a regular user of the forum and that the ban does not have much impact on your use of the other 600+ forums.

I would still be interested in examples of both fon's and smart's employee's being treated differently.

Evil Al

Vexorg wrote: »

Mods cannot delete posts only remove them from view.

Sorry, I believed what he told me.

Vexorg wrote: »

If the majority of your posts in a forum promote your company I can understand how a mod may appear to be have a chip on his shoulder. It was Irlrobin who brought Fon activity in the forum to my attention last year and we bought asked them not to sour the relationship and to limit the replies to queries about their product.

That was as a direct result of the "discussion" we had after my first ban.

I should also point out that I wasn't promoting anything -- my post recent post (as I recall it -- can you send me a copy?) was pointing out that there can be BETTER VALUE in signing up to a roaming company INSTEAD of directly to us or other Irish companies. I mentioned my company partially in the interests of disclosure.

Vexorg wrote: »

Taking 3 months to realise you have been banned and raise a complaint does suggests you are not a regular user of the forum and that the ban does not have much impact on your use of the other 600+ forums.

I'm sorry, but I don't understand the relevance of this? Because I only use boards occasionally, it's OK for a mod with an attitude to PERMANENTLY ban me without (as I see it) a real cause?

Vexorg wrote: »

Iwould still be interested in examples of both fon's and smart's employee's being treated differently.

Yeah, was halfway through a response earlier and had to go.

I should emphasise that I don't think *anyone* was promoting themselves unfairly -- we were all answering legitimate questions about our companies. No-one deserved a ban IMHO, but I got repeatedly smacked.

Fon's posts include:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055024542
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054952049

At least one of these is nothing to do with Fon's "offer" to boards. And if irlrobins was trying to hit me up for a discount for the boards communities, why didn't he just ask? I would be happy to do that.

Most blatantly, the VERY SAME THREAD that got me banned originally included a pitch from Fon -- which was not deleted.
(http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054999744)

They posted a link, I posted a link, I got banned & deleted, they didn't.

Smart had lots of employee posts responding to criticisms and questions of their original broadband offer (all the contention stuff etc).

I should stress that I know the author of the above posts well, as well as some of the more senior people in Fon and Smart. I have a lot of respect for them and what they're doing, and I do *not* believe their posts were inappropriate in any way. BUT mine was no worse.

There are a bunch of other Bitbuzz questions I've seen that I'd like to answer, but I have a feeling irlrobins would use that as an excuse to bring out the banhammer...

IMHO, a heavyhanded and biased mod, who makes people reluctant to answer questions, will just drive industry people away from boards...

Evil Al

Sorry, don't want to hassle anyone, but have the admins had a chance to take a look at the threads in question?

Vexorg

Very busy at the moment, will take a look when I get a chance, I have explained that boards and fon had a relationship where free hardware was given to boards.ie users. We expect them to support the hardware and to answer queries. The first two posts appear to be part of the promotion.

We specifically asked them to tone down their promotion and just answer questions. The posts probably should have been removed - they had some leeway due to the promotion at that time.