Can I Just Say?

Re: Can I Just Say?

I actually agree with both Chris and John. I’m on this site at least twice a day usually to find that those questions I can answer are already dealt with. However, having had Servis, MFI, Sovereign & GBDAR shot out from under me – losing 70{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} of our workload and also putting together, with Bryan and Lawrence the next meeting perhaps your comments are alittle unjustified. The comments are noted.

Re: Can I Just Say?

Dont think any of us are dead wood Chris its just in comparison to the amount of time you put in makes us look a bit lacking really. I know you are involvled in a lot of other stuff as well and, to be honest, I dont know how you do it- and make a great job at doing it too.
Do you really think appointing new or more moderators will make a difference in the public forums?

The bottom line is time and how we best spend it on here.

Re: Can I Just Say?

The forums are a nightmare in many ways TBH.

Not for what they are per say, but what they can be.

The most common complaint is one of three when you tackle the thorny subject of why people don’t answer some of the stuff in there…

1. Someone answered it before me. (What about all the others?)

2. I don’t know the machine. (Neither does anyone else, doesn’t stop them)

3. Afraid that someone will make me look a prat by answering and being arsey

Now, numbers one and two I totally get as that’s just education and case of showing that the mods don’t know everything. Of course they do, but that’s not to be made public. 😉

No, the worrying one is number three.

It’s prats like Martin popping up with his holier than thou attitude about Queen’s English (which he screws up regularly anyway) or the self-righteous, condescending, “Ah, but that’s not what’s wrong…” or “Look guys we shouldn’t tell the public that..” posts that really put a lot of people right off.

The latter being the far harder one to crack as some people are afraid to post, not that they don’t want to do so. Encouragement is key here methinks.

But yes Chris, bits of dodgy glue and a fair bit of string on some fronts.

K.

Re: Can I Just Say?

Chris Hi

This piece of dead wood has better things to do than moan about the lack of involvement of other busy moderators @ 01.12am in the morning.

For the record, I became a moderator not to bask in the glory of helping some idiot I wouldn’t trust to boil an automatic kettle, let alone DIY repair a domestic appliance but to utilise some skills I have that have helped me in my businesses, to help others with theirs.

I hold an 1st Class Honours Degree in Law, with a speciality in commercial business law and through one of my companies (I own several businesses including Pubs/Restaurants, a Hotel, Brown Goods Repairs, IT repairs, Warehousing and Distribution businesses and others) and I assist some local Trading Standards Officers as an expert witness within our industry.

My involvement as a moderator has been to deal with primarily our trade members legal issues when and where necessary, which due to there very nature, can and are quite sensitive and therefore not for public consumption.

During this year (2008) alone, I personally have helped 14 separate trade members fight off legal threats to their businesses which if the claimant had been successful would have probably resulted in the closure of the business. That’s fourteen members that are still in business today employing both themselves and others as a result of my help as a moderator on this site.

I have also assisted in the debt recovery of nearly £80k to various trade members of this site by advising them and ensuring they followed the correct procedures and documentation paths necessary for debt recovery.

All of this I have done in my own free time, free of charge, quietly, discreetly and most importantly, confidentially for the members so as to help protect those members most in need and where the cost of a solicitor would have been prohibitive.

But you know what? your 100{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} right, I haven’t historically posted in the public forums nor do I intend to now, nor will I in the future. Those whom know me personally know I am not front line technical so I don’t want to take the risk of proffering the wrong advice to someone whom is not trained and in many cases not competent to be working on an appliance which often mixes water and electricity in the same two foot square box.

I have no intention of taking away the obvious pleasure and glory some get from monitoring the public forums and I freely admit the other moderators are both better and more technically adept at doing this than I will ever be.

If all the dead wood moderators were removed from this site, would it change anything for you? I don’t think so, you would still be doing the same fantastic job you are now at the same unearthly time for the same people.

Accordingly, ADMIN, please cut away this piece of dead wood as a moderator and then delete my user name and details from this site; I will not be back to this site again.

I for one am grateful to have a life outside of this industry and I intend to do better things with it than be insulted in this way!

Good luck to you all

Carl aka Jackal

Re: Can I Just Say?

I believe Chris has had a university education as well.

Sadly my only qualification is a 1st in common sense from the university of hard knocks.

A little common sense is what is required here. I don’t think that there is anyone here who thinks that Carl was anywhere near Chris’s thoughts when he posted.

Early hours of the morning, several posts unanswered, not sure of the answer to the question, all made more frustrating in view of the fact that one or two mods had been on the boards several times that day who would have been better able than Chris to answer.

I’m sure if we noticed the ‘Jackal’ prowling around the public forums 24/7 we would not expect him to answer any posts of a tech nature, even if there is a very good chance he would know the answer, his forte lies elsewhere.

OK, ‘dead wood’ was perhaps an unfortunate term and lumping all the mods together was a little scattergun but he is hardly likely to be so thoughtless as to name names is he?

I do hope that Carl reconsiders his decision. As I have a daughter who is a qualified solicitor with a top ten law firm I find his legal angle very interesting, helpful and informative. I have seen many occasions on the trade side where his help has been invaluable, and thats only the things we see on screen.

That said I do think use of the word ‘glory’ twice in Carl’s post is unhelpful, even mildly offensive. Those of us who have had the pleasure of meeting Chris know him well enough to understand that he will, like any normal person get pleasure from helping people, buy ‘glory’, I think not. 😥

In closing I think that a ‘chill pill’ is the order of the day. 8)

Jim.

Re: Can I Just Say?

I was so close to posting this but thought Id’ better not…

Every now and again we have this big debate on UKW (usually started by Martin or someone equally self-serving, no offence Martin) that we should not hand out any advice to members of the general public.

Woe betide the trader that dare cast light on a consumer problem without the silver coin to pay the ferryman.

Err, does that sound rather old and tired to you? It does to me.

Welcome to a new world.

The new world started about 1969 or thereabouts when the US military started playing about with an instant messaging service using text, a computer and some bits of copper. This was known as ARPA.

The real revolution started n the mid to late seventies when a bunch of snot nosed kids called Gates, Jobs and a few others started to piece together bits of technology that everyone poo poo’d at the time saying it’d never go anywhere. Well, Gates started Microsoft and Jobs started Apple. I don’t think that there’s much debate that the rest of the world was wrong with hindsight.

In the 80’s and early 90’s BBS (where I started on the “net”) became all the rage for gamers, aka, Bulletin Board Service.

Then some bright spark of an Englishman called Tim Berners-Lee came up with this madcap idea of HTTP, Hyper-Text Transmission Protocol to use as a locator for IP addresses all over the planet. You may notice that the long bit of text in the address bar above this post starts with “http://”, so much for a mad idea. That was around 1990.

Fast forward 18 years.

Almost every home has access to the internet.

Every business either does use the net or is about to die in the next few years.

It is THE single most important communication device bar the telephone (but it’s been around a bit longer so has a head start) and the most rapidly growing area of commerce, opportunity, communication and, most importantly in terms of this post, information.

Now what happens is this…

People go online and research simple faults to see if they can rectify them themselves at 1:10am in their underwear. They find out they can’t or that they’re technically inept to do so and look then for someone to sort the problem for them.

Who do they trust? The adverts Google serves up? The corporate sites, which are basically big adverts? Or, do they trust the people that helped them in the first place explaining the problem.

Who would you place faith in? I know who I do.

Next is appliances in our field, I’ll leave out the body of evidence from others. Again, who do people lace their faith in, the people that have to fix them, see them every day and know what ownership really costs or do they trust the adverts?

Then, all too often, after reading up a bit people go offline to actually buy things.

The point is that the Body Politic, us, steer people and show them the way. It’s not instant, it doesn’t happen by magic and there’s no magic cure for all that ails us but, helping by people we get repeat custom to our businesses on both sales and service.

You can either choose to help and profit or, bury your head in the sand just like IBM did in the 70’s. Look where it got them.

K.

Re: Can I Just Say?

TBH, Chris has already mooted Rob on more than one occasion.

Collectively we all sucked through our teeth at the time. 😉

He has mellowed a little since then but I am not sure how it would square with him as a company employee.

When you think about it, he does answer a lot of posts on both sides of the forum already, making him a mod is unlikely to get much more out of him and may put him in an invidious position.

Personally I would have no objections, all he really gets is the ability to edit posts 😯 , and access to the mods forum.

Jim.

Glory Seekers Inc 2IC. 😛