For discussion purposes what do you guys think? We had a couple of high profile one's of late and I have never thought it was something we should get into. Of course the site is "picking sides" if you don't ban someone but I hate to set a precedent where we start this stuff and then find out later is not something we should be involved with. Here's my concerns about it...
- How do we decide who is telling the truth? Some will be easy but some are quite complicated. What if the guy who isn't paying claims the guy he stiffed is a stiff as well. "If I'm banned he should be banned as well". Sounds like it might be an excuse but how do we know for sure? And how will we know next time and the time after and the time after....?
- What is big enough to count as far as being banned? I say this because I was talking to a guy this morning and he admitted someone else had stiffed on his site but that one wasn't "big enough" to be banned over. What is big enough and who decides this? Shrink could get stiffed for 50k and it would probably hurt me more to get beat out of a nickle. Who's to judge what's the cut-off in $$$ you beat someone out of in order to be banned?
- Is there a statue of limitations? We get a report a guy beat someone out of some money 15 years ago? Is he now banned permanently? We are now playing judge and jury, we'd need a whole mess of rules.
- Why limit it to just stiffs? Hell people have access to all sorts of information now. I can see it now - Let me get this straight Patrick. I stiffed a guy out of $500 and can't post any longer but XXX is a convicted rapist and that's okay? The site is cool with that but I have to go? Or wife beaters, murderers, forgers, extortionists etc.... We only ban stiffs but the other stuff is okay? If not where do we draw the line? Again just seems like we are getting into stuff where we don't belong.
I can go on and on but these are some of the quick concerns. It sounds good in certain situations but once you really try to implement something like this it can get quite difficult. Sites like these are just not equipped to decide who can post based on what they do away from the site. Normally the guy who gets beat out of his money wants someone else to blame for his actions and thusly the site is left to be the bad guy. Him buddying up with the guy, getting himself in a position to get stiffed etc... has no bearing on it. Of course the site is the one who is at fault. That's society these days, it's never them. In this case all a poster has got to do is be aware that every poster on these forums could take advantage of you if given the chance. My recommendation - keep your wallet in your back pocket and don't trust anyone over the internet. That would solve everything and then we don't have to make all these new rules for protecting our posters against the evil world that is out there. LOL.
No one here hates rats and stiffs as much as me but I can't see how we could make a policy of banning them and carrying it out fairly. Anyone else have any thoughts on this either way? It was a topic of discussion in the board room and wanted to see where others weighed in.
- How do we decide who is telling the truth? Some will be easy but some are quite complicated. What if the guy who isn't paying claims the guy he stiffed is a stiff as well. "If I'm banned he should be banned as well". Sounds like it might be an excuse but how do we know for sure? And how will we know next time and the time after and the time after....?
- What is big enough to count as far as being banned? I say this because I was talking to a guy this morning and he admitted someone else had stiffed on his site but that one wasn't "big enough" to be banned over. What is big enough and who decides this? Shrink could get stiffed for 50k and it would probably hurt me more to get beat out of a nickle. Who's to judge what's the cut-off in $$$ you beat someone out of in order to be banned?
- Is there a statue of limitations? We get a report a guy beat someone out of some money 15 years ago? Is he now banned permanently? We are now playing judge and jury, we'd need a whole mess of rules.
- Why limit it to just stiffs? Hell people have access to all sorts of information now. I can see it now - Let me get this straight Patrick. I stiffed a guy out of $500 and can't post any longer but XXX is a convicted rapist and that's okay? The site is cool with that but I have to go? Or wife beaters, murderers, forgers, extortionists etc.... We only ban stiffs but the other stuff is okay? If not where do we draw the line? Again just seems like we are getting into stuff where we don't belong.
I can go on and on but these are some of the quick concerns. It sounds good in certain situations but once you really try to implement something like this it can get quite difficult. Sites like these are just not equipped to decide who can post based on what they do away from the site. Normally the guy who gets beat out of his money wants someone else to blame for his actions and thusly the site is left to be the bad guy. Him buddying up with the guy, getting himself in a position to get stiffed etc... has no bearing on it. Of course the site is the one who is at fault. That's society these days, it's never them. In this case all a poster has got to do is be aware that every poster on these forums could take advantage of you if given the chance. My recommendation - keep your wallet in your back pocket and don't trust anyone over the internet. That would solve everything and then we don't have to make all these new rules for protecting our posters against the evil world that is out there. LOL.
No one here hates rats and stiffs as much as me but I can't see how we could make a policy of banning them and carrying it out fairly. Anyone else have any thoughts on this either way? It was a topic of discussion in the board room and wanted to see where others weighed in.
