I posted to the welcome forum and right away, my post was edited. I mentioned another well known forum and the name of that was immediately removed. I am trying to understand the logic in this.
Isn't the idea of this forum (and all other forums, for that matter) to communicate the ideas we each have across our industry? I visit many forums. It looks like to me you are trying to protect your readership and keep them from going elsewhere.
this is a very bad thing. If we cannot freely express our ideas and where we might get those ideas, then we might as well give up. Right off the bat, you have made me not want to post here for fear of being edited.
If you are truly into creating a tool that Washington towers can use, then you need to quit worrying about them going elsewhere and just focus on moderating a good forum here.
If you go to that "other forum" and read some of my posts, (more that 1300 to date) you will realize that I am not one of those that you need to protect your readers from. I am not here to damage your set-up and/or lure your members away. I actually came here to post on the issues one of your members has with Tracker software. I have decided to wait and see what your response to this post is.
Bill
Hi SkyForum, thanks for the comment.
Your post was edited by one of our automatic filters. This automatic filter was setup after some people came to ITOW Talk and began posting for the sole purpose of getting more traffic to the other board. We allowed it at first, but threads became rather vulgar and inappropriate. They bashed us and promoted the other forum by posting huge pictures that slowed our board and so on, so we setup the filters which seemed to kill their fun.
I too regret having to do this, and I agree it does not foster the kind of interaction the industry needs, but unfortunately, because of some individuals, it seems necessary at the moment.
Perhaps in the future we will remove them.
I really cannot fathom any "another board" members coming here and doing that. I have been a member of that forum for the better part of 2 years. Maybe you need to take more direct action against those that would flame your space. Attacking the forum itself is like blaming the Army because a girl got raped by one of it's troops.
In order for forums to work, they need to be kept open. Ban the offending parties, don't ban the forum they came from. As far as the administrators from "another board" doing anything like that, you would be hard pressed to ever convince me that actually happened.
Just my thought on the subject.
Bill
I can't imagine how this could be attacking the other forum. We are not attacking the other forum; we are simply preventing our forum from being attacked. There are many other towing forums, but we have only had problems with the forum you mentioned. We also filter foul language and anything else that is disruptive to other members.
Many of our members are also active members of the other forums and this has never been a hindrance or a problem to communication in the past.
I didn't mean to imply that the culprits in this case were members of the other forum, and I certainly did not mean to imply that the admins of the other forum had anything to do with it. These people simply came here to cause problems; we have no idea who they are.
The facts remain that these people were disruptive and very persistent and this was one of the only effective ways we found to deal with them. You see, we can only ban fixed IP addresses and user-names. Anybody that connects with a dial-up connection (different IP address with each dial) can simply sign-up again with a different user-name, which made banning these people ineffective.
I think perhaps you are under the impression that we dislike the other boards and that's just not the case. We are simply keeping some people who were having a little anonymous fun at the expense of others in-check.
It's unfortunate that you have chosen to hold-back on helping others because of the polices of this board, because we always appreciate someone with your experience.
Different strokes for different folks, that why they invent the off switch too.
By the way Bill attachment box not on this post either.
Well, it's obvious you don't really get it so go ahead and remove my name. I won't be posting here. "another board" is a national board, you are a state board, there isn't even any competition between you two. One thing is for sure, you feel threatened.
I am not an idiot, you can ban IP's and names and it is effective. If you have an individual who is persistent, you can even go to his ISP and complain. Worst case scenario, you can just remove the offending posts. To ban the name of a forum with more than a thousand members and over 5 million posts is just ludicrous. You are cutting yourself and your members off from a tremendous information resource. There are other solutions. "another board" doesn't ban your name on their forum. I started a thread about this there and several people came forward and said they had experienced the same kind of stuff so they just didn't bother to come here any more.
I am taking advantage of the same solution, have a nice day.
Oh, if you wouldn't mind, I really don't want to receive any further notifications from your board in my email, so removal of my account post haste would be greatly appreciated.
You know, this does seem petty. But I just can't deal with being edited for reasons that make absolutely no sense whatsoever. It's too bad we got off to such a bad start.
Bill
It's ashame you feel so threatened. I've been with this forum for less than a year and found it not only fair but have gotten plenty of help where others wouldn't help. You seem to have a inferior type of complex. If you don't like it here don't keep whining about, we're happy with it. 
SkyForum: You have been removed from all future mailings, and post reply notifications. (unless you post again)
Hello all. havent been here in a long time but couldn't resist telling my story about the forum I think you guys are talking about.
I signed-up at that other forum and asked a question about equipment, well... nobody would answer my question... they asked me who i was and said "the elders of this board don't appriciate people who don't fill in their profile, we don't know who you are" So I never went back!!!! I enjoy my privacy and it apperantly boiled their water!
I also had to change my email address cuz I got mass junk mail after I signed up there.
So there it is, anyway...glad I'm back!!!