Re: Short story-- (archive)

Hello Alan,
Fortunately the majority of the posters on this board, to my experience, are very independent free thinking individuals, most of whom are very successful as befits the image designed into the purpose of the E31 by it's creators. Unfortunately for you and Charlie it's not possible for some of them to just sit idly by without any knowledge of the circumstances and watch something that seems unfair and unjust happen to someone who is young, bright, energetic and creative. I have heard stories that Henry Ford and Bill Gates was somewhat uncontrolable and persistent in their youth, not that Philippe is going to be lucky enough or eventually diplomatic enough to be anything near a Bill Gates, but the similarity in drive and ability seem to be there.

You have explained the circumstances now, which obviously has satisfied anyone interested. If you did in fact inform him of his errant behavior and did offer him many chances to change, then if he did not, there is a lesson here that he obviously needed to learn on his way up the ladder, as we all done and learned at one place in time. We all live in glass houses. I still question the fact that if the posters had been made aware early on, that Philippe could have been persuaded by 'many here' to learn his lesson without additional hassle to you and without losing the benefits from the association of his site here. Perhaps that is always the requirement of those who are older and wiser while working with the young.

You have further stated that Philippe can feel free to e-mail Charlie concerning the ban. Therefore if in fact Philippe does this and genuinely offers himself and his behavior within acceptable guidelines to your web sites, that would seem fair and just. As in any peace talks or negotiations you should use a fair mediator to confirm the accepted or rejected terms and then to post this on the board for all to see, so that Philippe will then be regulated by all his peers here and if he fails to follow the proper behavior 'his peers will chastise him' without your involvement being necessary. I will offer myself as a mediator or parole warden if you will to Philippe, or I can suggest others perhaps more acceptable to you such as Stan or Len or Derek or someone you may choose to make it clear to Philippe what the rules are and post them to the board.

You have provided all that was asked for this morning and now I would say it's up to Philippe to express a genuine interest to continue here within the proper guidelines. I will send this to you as an e-mail as well. I hope this helps everyone involved.
Regards, Kurt

--Philippe crossed the line from providing helpful information to just posting spam to draw traffic to his site. He was asked (repeatedly) to please stick to on-topic posts and not to just make posts saying "come to my site", but he did not comply.

As for ways to contact Charlie or me, have I ever received an email from you to which I did not reply? Your comment seems to imply that this is the case. If it is, I apologize. I have a "real" job and can't devote 24/7 to the boards. When I'm not working 60 hours a week at my real job, I try to put in about 40 on the boards--and I know Charlie puts in something like 12 or 13 hours a day on the boards--and it still isn't enough. It certainly isn't even physically possible for us to read every one of the several thousand posts made on all the message boards every day, so email is the best means of contacting us.

Stan's post was right on target--Philippe could feel free to email Charlie about the ban to ask that it be reconsidered. Unfortunately, I saw that just last week Philippe had another board member make a post for him that was nothing more than spam linking to his site, so it looks like he hasn't learned.

I am sure he has a very useful and helpful site. That doesn't give him the right to post link after link to it with no other information in his posts--imagine if everyone with a helpful BMW web site did that here! We don't go around posting links to bimmer.org on other BMW mailing lists or web sites, and we ask that people use the same level of courtesy when posting here.

Alan

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