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My note to VS (that never got sent)


Bontz

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I tried to find a good email address for a couple of the guys pulling rank on VS Joe, but struck out thinking I had found them.  I don't know why I bothered to write this up, because I'm certain the VS team would just delete it anyway.  But for those who really want the full story of what went down the last week or so .... this is how it played out.  And this is what I tried to communicate with the "powers that be" at VS:

 

Gentlemen, 

Good morning.  I find myself in a situation I never thought I would encounter, attempting to reach out to Chairman and President level positions of a company that runs a snowmobile forum - yet here I am.  Vertical Scope's involvement with HardcoreSledder (HCS) has been one of ups and downs over the years, given how the site originated with a very passionate group of snowmobile enthusiasts, to being sold to a large corporation that ultimately owns the site and has been (to this point) very hands off.
 
Over the time Vertical Scope has owned HCS, the volunteer Moderator and Admin teams have essentially been told to continue running the site as we see best served.  And being a snowmobile site, the ebbs and flows of activity/traffic on the site correlated to snowmobile season.  The "General Discussion Forum" was one area of the site that seemed to keep a draw to HCS throughout the year, and it was mostly because of the very laid back (and ultimately minimal) rule set we had established.
 
All of that changed last week, when your Chief Community Officer, Joe Pishgar, introduced himself.  Never before have we seen this gentleman, as all communications with our team came through the VS Forums Manager team.  Mr. Pishgar took it upon himself to delete a thread that was brought to his attention by a complaint, and was already working its way towards disappearing within the site (basically it was on "page 2" and ultimately being out of site).  He claimed rules were violated - specifically the Terms of Use, and the subforum rules which included the verbiage of "personal insults" not being allowed.  Being a volunteer Admin, this action caught me by surprise as we've never seen such a hands on interaction from VS.  Knowing our General Discussion Forum has had MANY threads with name calling and personal insults over the years, I was surprised our team had missed those two words in that forum's rules reference.  So I edited the rules to remove "personal insults" because, honestly, nobody had paid attention to that (simply put, that forum was the playground of HCS and where people knew they had to "wear their big boy pants").  I communicated to the other volunteer staff what I had done, and somewhat jokingly debated with Joe that I failed to see what was wrong - comparing his version of the rules with the newly edited version of rules.  Going by our established rules, I chose to restore the thread which was previously deleted by Joe, and this was strictly done because this was a General Discussion Forum topic (meaning, no rules applied).
 
Mr. Pishgar emphasized the rules were to be followed, and that was the bottom line.  Several of us long standing members disagreed with him, because that forum has always allowed this type of "dysfunction".    Our team was especially frustrated knowing he had never been on HCS before and clearly didn't understand the culture of the site.  I'll be the first to admit, cooler heads could have prevailed with the follow-up private messaging, but him being an outsider really upset many of us (not just the volunteer staff, but members too).
 
Now, before I continue this novel ... where am I going with this?
 
I think it's only fair that you, as Mr. Pishgar's bosses, hear BOTH sides of the story.  He has now banned members who have been part of that community since its inception in 2002.  Members who have dedicated content, and YEARS of volunteer time in making the site enjoyable and successful.  When Vertical Scope was nowhere to be found shortly after the software upgrade earlier this year (we had a stretch where nobody signed on in almost 40 days), our volunteer team tried to resolve whatever we could.  In short, I'm asking for someone to review the actions taken by Joe, who's so new to the Vertical Scope business (July, right?).  I'm not asking to be reinstated as an Admin, or Moderator, but I am asking that the people who were banned over the past several days be restored and any future interaction with Vertical Scope be done by someone OTHER than Mr. Pishgar.  His latest actions have resulted in many long standing members to essentially revolt.  Take a look at the site for yourselves, and look in the General Discussion Forum at all the content that's been deleted, closed, and the list of banned users over the course of the past week.
 
Thank you for your time, and I appreciate your response.
 
Best Regards,
Chris (aka "Bontz" on HCS)
Edited by Bontz
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5 minutes ago, trdehmer said:

Want me to send that on your behalf?  :-)

By all means!! LOL   Otherwise, if you have the e-mails to Rob Laidlaw and Chris Goodridge at VS feel free to share (I think there's a few of us who'd like to share our "expereiences" with Joe and his ineptitude)

 

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The BBB is a good idea.  I'm just not sure how much time I really want to invest in that shit show.  Like I said in my letter, I really don't care about what happened as far as the "demotion" BS ... I just want all the guys who got banned over this douche's insecurity, be allowed back.  And the icing on the cake would be, the upline management team at VS would put Joe in his place.

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26 minutes ago, trdehmer said:

Looks like Rob is in the Caymans.....

You could email the business via the BBB

 

cgoodridge@verticalscope.com

 

Well, so far no bounce backs from their mail server.  I had used first name, last initial when I originally tried.  I suspect if it went through, I won't hear anything ... or will get some sort of generic/canned reply.  Whatever I get back (if anything) I'll be sure to share with the crew 🍻

Thanks Todd!!

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I am going to speculate that some cubicle dwelling VS corporate dweeb did a study and thinks that the membership will recover eventually under the new regime. As someone who’s been around the Internet forums and forum wars since the beginning, and someone who was blamed for the meltdown of the original HCS (Long story, not going there. 😆), this too shall pass.  John was a long term friend of the original founder Rob Lyons, and he has kept the tradition going with FreedomSledder.  I hope this site keeps growing, and you guys get all the forums you need.  
Driftbusta aka Wolfie:wolfie:

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I tend to agree Wolfie ... despite our common sense approach, it all boils down to what VS wants.  And my guess is they'll ignore any negative feedback they receive that targets their boy, Joe.

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2 hours ago, Bontz said:

I tend to agree Wolfie ... despite our common sense approach, it all boils down to what VS wants.  And my guess is they'll ignore any negative feedback they receive that targets their boy, Joe.

It all boils down to rules and terms of use......... 

handjob.gif

rulez.gif

user84561_pic9396_1302013350_thumb.gif

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2 hours ago, Bontz said:

I tend to agree Wolfie ... despite our common sense approach, it all boils down to what VS wants.  And my guess is they'll ignore any negative feedback they receive that targets their boy, Joe.

It amazes me actually. I never realize there was actually professional forum administrators, like this is actually a real job for these people?  I am going to go out on a limb here and guess this Joe guy has never even owned a snowmobile?

Edited by DriftBusta
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1 minute ago, DriftBusta said:

It amazes me actually. I never realize there was actually professional forum administrators, like this is actually a real job for these people?

Click the link it's the top people at VS and their "Job" titles.....lol

 

https://www.verticalscope.com/about/management-team/

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6 hours ago, Bontz said:

By all means!! LOL   Otherwise, if you have the e-mails to Rob Laidlaw and Chris Goodridge at VS feel free to share (I think there's a few of us who'd like to share our "expereiences" with Joe and his ineptitude)

 

Rob can be reached via message here:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-laidlaw-65218a17/

Chris here:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisgoodridge/

 

 

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I don't do linkedin, so if you wanna send it on my behalf ... have at it chief!  I think my earlier attempt today went through because I still haven't had an undeliverable error from their mail server.

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Googled Joe Pishgar today and did some reading about him.  Pretty impressive articles he's written about forum management.  I honestly think this is why Vertical Scope brought this guy in.  To clean up the forums VS runs to be compliant.  I honestly now believe it all stems from the breach a couple years ago to the new forum software.  Anything we send VS IMO will be ignored simply because HCS wasn't compliant to their new standards to protect their ass's.

Were we out of control in VS Joe's eye's?  I'm beginning to believe we were.  He made an attempt to give us a chance, but we got pissed off and did what we do at HCS.  Could it have been done differently?  Sure, but we went total HCS on this guy and IMO he put a stop to it.

HCS IMO will never be the same and a lot more strict rules will be put in place.  I could be wrong only time will tell.

 

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1 minute ago, A05GSHO said:

Googled Joe Pishgar today and did some reading about him.  Pretty impressive articles he's written about forum management.  I honestly think this is why Vertical Scope brought this guy in.  To clean up the forums VS runs to be compliant.  I honestly now believe it all stems from the breach a couple years ago to the new forum software.  Anything we send VS IMO will be ignored simply because HCS wasn't compliant to their new standards to protect their ass's.

Were we out of control in VS Joe's eye's?  I'm beginning to believe we were.  He made an attempt to give us a chance, but we got pissed off and did what we do at HCS.  Could it have been done differently?  Sure, but we went total HCS on this guy and IMO he put a stop to it.

HCS IMO will never be the same and a lot more strict rules will be put in place.  I could be wrong only time will tell.

 

That sucks because that's what made hcs a blast.  If you turn it into a strict rules forum,  it'll either stumble along with very few members or die completely.  

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15 minutes ago, A05GSHO said:

Googled Joe Pishgar today and did some reading about him.  Pretty impressive articles he's written about forum management.  I honestly think this is why Vertical Scope brought this guy in.  To clean up the forums VS runs to be compliant.  I honestly now believe it all stems from the breach a couple years ago to the new forum software.  Anything we send VS IMO will be ignored simply because HCS wasn't compliant to their new standards to protect their ass's.

Were we out of control in VS Joe's eye's?  I'm beginning to believe we were.  He made an attempt to give us a chance, but we got pissed off and did what we do at HCS.  Could it have been done differently?  Sure, but we went total HCS on this guy and IMO he put a stop to it.

HCS IMO will never be the same and a lot more strict rules will be put in place.  I could be wrong only time will tell.

 

So hopefully everyone will leave en masse and come here, or start their own sites.  Its been done multiple times.  I've kind of lost track of how many have tried.  

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Chris great job on the letter to reach out, in dealing with corporate the game must be played well to stay in the game.  It will be interesting to see how this all plays out with VS and how membership on this site is effected by the shift of possible HCS members. I also started on HCS back in 02 and remember well the early days. Things surely have changed, I continued to go to the site over the years because of the great snowmobile content and a  wealth of knowledge not only learned but shared. In all the years on the site it was only recently that I even paid attention or even looked at the general forum. For me and only speaking for me, that part of the site was of no interest.  Bashing everything and everyone in life is not one of my pastimes and for those that enjoy that , please carry on. I will continue to look for good Snowmobile content and information, that is the reason I joined the forum. With a TV in every room of the house all I need to do is turn one on to any news channel and the Bash Fest is on every channel. For me I will just stick to Snowmobiling. All the best to those that put years of their time and efforts to support the sport, and noted your personal thoughts are respected even though some may  not be shared. Please continue to be a Freedom Rider & RIDE ON !!!

Edited by WFO
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It's sad to see many great contributers go from HCS especially over a power stuggle with someone not familiar with the goings on   , but honestly the majority of threads started ended up with the same people slinging the same insults . For me this meant reading the first few posts of any thread and eventually ignoring the completely off topic mud slinging .

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