Know-How Exchange : Our Forum

What happened to Peter Hobday? When you check his profile it says he "no longer exists." I hope that's not literally true.

Anybody know about Peter?

Dear Beth

Clicking on Peter Hobday to view his profile I was greeted by the alarming warning message in Red, “Sorry, that member no longer exists” Have that all powerful “Us” group you refer to de-materialised him? Even if the poor fellow has had a contract executed on him, he would still exist, albeit as a corpse. If he was a Christian, he would, even then, continue to exist in another place. Most other religions have their own take on this.

I’ve not yet contributed to the supposedly offensive post, mainly because I’m not terribly good with copywriting, even though I am literate, poetic and can write good PR I just waffle too much.

I can’t see what all the fuss is about. No one’s been rude and no injury to body or feelings (Apart from exterminating Peter) has been occasioned. I’m probably not the best person to comment because being English, most subscribers thing that I’m still being terribly nice and gentlemanly and that my quirky responses can probably be put down to centuries of inbreeding and frustration at no longer being able to look forward to a seat in the Lords thanks to this damned government. Oops, sorry, there I go again.

As to the publicity on Twitter, I think that it is good. For heavens sake, marketers along with economists can both disagree with each other and hold such mutually incompatible views that their very existence is a tautology. Scientists aren’t immune to this and quantum weirdness through to cosmology generates heated debate in the various societies. It’s healthy. If our contributors think that the proposition is flawed, that is an opinion but they would be morally inept were they to answer the question without warning that they felt strongly that the person posting the question is based on a fundamentally flawed or a was a dangerously wrong strategy.

It’s a little easier for my because most of my marketing is based on software, statistics and analysis, but if some new member posts a question which is inadequately scoped, lacks detail and sets out some precepts which I think are wrong, I’d be off my trolley were I to answer the question when it was riddled with wrong assumptions. And I do get annoyed that the poster won’t abide by the rules – no profile, no website only one question old and expecting everyone to do an expensive professional job for free. “No I won’t expand on the data our premise is built on, my wife doesn’t understand me and if you don’t come up with a J Walter Thompson quality proposal by tomorrow morning, I’m going to throw all my toys out of the pram and eat Nanny."

Did the questioner thoroughly understand the market – maybe, but I’ve disagreed with many askers on questions and told them that they should go back to their assumptions and test them for short, medium and long term results. You can’t delete a discount (Unlike what you did to poor old Peter) once you’ve let the genie out of the bottle and some of the postings show a genuine concern over the long term implications and the future profitability of nosceo2000’s company.

Were any of the answers rude? No. A bit waspish some times, otherwise it’s all very Summerset Maugham. Why the strong reaction Beth – do you want us to tell people something we don’t believe in? I’ll do a client’s bidding, but I won’t lie to them and I will tell them where I think that their strategy is flawed. I guess that it runs in the family. My great uncle, Sir Stafford Cripps was kicked out of the British Labour party and out of high office because he fundamentally thought that some of his parties policies were barking mad and he refused to shut up over them. He was brought back into government by Winston Churchill, who disliked him intensely because a poll showed that he was the second most admired politician after Churchill. He went on the become Chancellor of the Exchequer and never once plastered over a disagreement over facts or policy for the sake of being nice to people.

What would I do if you took away the forum because a few of us are a little choleric in our answers from time to time? I’d probably contact 20 of my Expert friends and start up our own venture – I could throw about £500,000 at it this year and more next. Only this time round, we’d be the shareholders and we’d be the ones telling our rapidly acquired 340,000 subscribers, “Would you mind being a little more polite”

That translates as don’t do anything to potentially drive members away because we need them to add value to the site, and if it were our site we’d obviously not want that as it reduces our marketing income and devalues the stock.

Is that what’s happening to you – The hot breath of the Board on your neck because your peasants for hire are revolting (In both senses of the word)?

Would these comments fly in other places – well yes? Most IT forums use lacerating put-downs thanks to the anonymity of a web based forum. All the sites you have mentioned stretch to profanity through to (In the case of BeBo and FaceBook) un-witty exchanges to groom children for paedophiles. As for the sites my colleagues and children use, I’ve never seen such unadulterated filth as they get from various weirdo’s.

When I joined MP’s I was told that this was the politest place on earth to get your legs pulled because you have posted rubbish. Thankfully that’s still the case.

Best wishes

Steve Alker
Xspirt

lol - Steve Alker, you are too much. Both agreement and entertainment, thanks for your post.

Allen Weiss, it’s your site, your brand, what say yea?

Steveb

Censorship is the doom of a forum. If you don't like what is being said don't read it. Better yet, conduct yourself as you would like others to conduct themselves. Maybe it will rub off.

On linkdin an abrupt and slightly nasty poster created a post that said "Social Media For Business is Crap".

This opened a flood gate of positives and negatives. Some were slightly abusive, but overall the info was incredible. There were well over 300 comments. I have never seen that many comments for one marketing post.

Censorship is not a good thing.

We answer questions because we truly care. Since we aren't compensated for our time, we take our best shot in responding to the questions (which are usually incomplete and isn't quickly responded to by the poster) in one fell swoop. And sometimes we give too much information, the wrong information, focus on the wrong thing, assume something incorrectly, get led astray by others' postings, get attached to our answer, or try to focus on the problem (instead of the symptom like the poster is asking).

Everyone has their own style, and no one expert represents the whole of this community. That's the good thing - we have lots of voices/experiences/viewpoints to share.

My apology. I did do a Twitter search and must have either used the wrong terms or misread what I saw. You are absolutely correct, and my comments about your alleged post are wrong.