I am preserving this thread as the volume of deletions is high, and people unaware might think there is censorship going on. What is going on is there is a group of individuals who's goal is to take advantage of the VCA site's functionality and have the top threads all be negative, defamatry and smack talking. Their goal is to hijack every thread and turn it negative, making us look like we are in complete disarray and no one is happy about anything. This is an orchestrated attack, we have the emails, and many of you have seen the threads on other sites "bragging" about their raiding exploits. Identifying them is not helpful, they know who they are (and many of you know this).
1) We have been asked by MANY members and enthusiasts alike that they are tired of the negativity (you can see the many threads to this effect). We are where we are, it's not optimal, its getting better, but sad, coordinated attempts to smack talk and sow discord are not going to succeed.
2) Every one of these deletions is spawned by a member or enthusiast complaint. We are busy doing our day jobs, and trying to plan events, get magazines out the door, etc. We don't have the time to troll the forums looking for things to delete.
3) This action has unanimous authority of the entire VCA board. This is not one dude with a mission. Our board includes an individual who was mod'd by the previous regime, so we are VERY sensitive to these kind of actions
4) These deletions have a note to the thread owner (usually) but we honestly don't have time to write every poster in the thread (apologies, see # 2)
5) Every question that has been asked so far has been responded to. Multiple times, in multiple venues. We get you might not like the response, you might not agree with the repsonse, you might not BELIEVE the response (goodnees knows we haven't earned that level of trust yet, but we hope to) but no amount of smack talk, acrimony, bullying, etc. will change the response. The legal objection here is "asked and answered", or more recently "badgering the witness"
6) We are mod-ing people sparingly, our real hope is they figure out this is counterprouctive and actually try to be productive in their lives. We had to take the unfortunate action and mod one of the raiders this week. Given the over-moderation of the past, we take this seriously.
To the raiders: Your fail is obvious. Please, enjoy your Viper, if it's cold where you are, clean it, or help a charity. From the looks of the renewals just today, your activities may be counterproductive. We all find it very hard to understand why you would spend so much time on this, we certainly don't have time to organize raiding parties, because we are actually trying to build a fun, amazing club that does great stuff, the only thing we can think of is that you are profiting somehow from this, otherwise, it makes NO sense. We don't get it, as we don't make a dime from this, are you?
We are all here for the same reason, a ridiculous passion for an amazing car and camaraderie with other insane indivividuals who like the same things. We have been asked to provide a fun, safe, friendly atmosphere for enthusists and members alike to learn about their cars and have fun with them, that is our mission, and thats what we are going to do. If there are new, legitimate questions, or something we may have overlooked, there are professional, courteous ways to ask. WE have nothing to hide, we make absolutely zero from this, we do it because we love the car, we love the events, and we love the club and those in it, nothing more, nothing less.
The question here: why can't I post in regional forums. It's been answered, but it is what it is for now, and has always been that way, you must be a member to post in those forums. I have an agenda item in our in-person meeting tomorrow with the management company to see how we can expand this to enthusiasts. We kind of inherited this, we don't desire to disenfranchise. But change costs money, so we have to see if that's worthwhile to do. From your query, it's important to you, let's see what we can do.
Greg
