Your thoughts please! How can we improve...

I stand by what I say. People will have 10 pages of arguments on one transaction (usually negative), and then you'll have a couple completely different transactions scattered in between on the same thread. I'm not going to read 20 pages of comments to try to find the actual reviews a buyer has gotten. This is something that really needs to change. The admins need to find a way to organize reviews in a concise and clear way. Look at Arachnoboards. That's the way they need to do it.

Originally Posted by Eden Exotics

I stand by what I say. People will have 10 pages of arguments on one transaction (usually negative), and then you'll have a couple completely different transactions scattered in between on the same thread. I'm not going to read 20 pages of comments to try to find the actual reviews a buyer has gotten. This is something that really needs to change. The admins need to find a way to organize reviews in a concise and clear way. Look at Arachnoboards. That's the way they need to do it.

Many stand by what they say.

Reading or not reading is a person's choice for sure. I have been glad many a time for having read.

I do not think anyone here is preventing you from building your vision of a better Matrix. Want and need are not the same things.

Originally Posted by Eden Exotics

I'm not going to read 20 pages of comments to try to find the actual reviews a buyer has gotten. This is something that really needs to change. The admins need to find a way to organize reviews in a concise and clear way. Look at Arachnoboards. That's the way they need to do it.

It's your choice who you give your hard earned cash to. And if going through a few reviews on a seller is too much of a hassle just out of pure laziness, then whatever happens in the transaction happens. And the admins have way to much on their plates to micromanage pages together.

Alright, well I thought this page was for feedback, so that's what I'm giving.
I'm not saying people can't talk about a transaction, I'm just saying it needs to be more organized. There will be one thread, but people will be discussing several transactions at once, and it's really hard to decipher the overall reviews the seller has received. The admins don't have to do any extra work, just tell people they need to start a separate thread for each transaction. That way it will be easier to see how many positive and how many negative reviews a seller has received.
Anyways, of course the admins have the final word, but as a paying member, I think I have the right to at least give my two cents. This site is great, and this is really the only thing I don't like. It is something that is very frustrating though, and I doubt I'm the only one who feels this way.
Thanks for letting me voice my opinion.

Originally Posted by Eden Exotics

Alright, well I thought this page was for feedback, so that's what I'm giving.
I'm not saying people can't talk about a transaction, I'm just saying it needs to be more organized. There will be one thread, but people will be discussing several transactions at once, and it's really hard to decipher the overall reviews the seller has received. The admins don't have to do any extra work, just tell people they need to start a separate thread for each transaction. That way it will be easier to see how many positive and how many negative reviews a seller has received.
Anyways, of course the admins have the final word, but as a paying member, I think I have the right to at least give my two cents. This site is great, and this is really the only thing I don't like. It is something that is very frustrating though, and I doubt I'm the only one who feels this way.
Thanks for letting me voice my opinion.

Sorry, but that is not how the Board of Inquiry was designed nor intended. It's design was based on being person-centric, rather than transaction-centric. The threads are purposely about the people or business involved, and any and all transactions, facts, comments, and opinions about such a person or business were hoped to be contained with a separate thread. That is why you can see a GOOD GUY or a BAD GUY thread flip from one to the other as more evidence becomes presented about the subject of the threads. Personally, I believe this is in everyone's best interests that the threads not be straight jacketed in any fashion.

Obviously that design has not been 100 percent adhered to, simply because it has proven highly impractical to do so. It is nearly impossible to enforce without running afoul of a legal consideration that will be mentioned later. But in my opinion, most people will be more inclined to read a large thread about someone they are intending to do business with rather than dozens of separate threads. I know that I certainly would take the time, no matter what it was.

As for you feeling you don't have time to read all that you can about someone you are considering spending your hard earned money with, do you think that wise? Personally, I would want to know as much as humanly possible. There is a whole lot of trust involved when dealing with someone across the internet, so there are going to be a lot of cases where the only really true measure of the trust worthiness of someone will be the past experiences of others. You would chance missing something important because you were in too much of a hurry to spend your money?

Sorry if this does not fit into the methodology that you would like to employ, but this has been the way the BOI has operated from the beginning, and thus far I haven't seen any other method that will work, in my opinion, any better for all involved. And from the feedback I have received, I don't think most people really have any issues picking out the kernels of wheat from all the chaff that might result from such freeform discussions. It is left up to them to pick out those kernels, we don't tell them what is wheat and what is chaff.

Furthermore, no, we are not going to try to "organize" threads at all. That implies a lot of control and management, plus quite likely a bit of editing and massaging the input from members. For legal reasons, this cannot happen. Any time we would edit someone else's words, we then take on the liability of becoming co-authors of their words. That would open us up to some substantial legal liability if lawsuits would result from such threads. I am emphatically stating that I have absolutely no intention of walking face first into that sort of situation.

Sorry, I think you still aren't understanding me correctly.

I really do not need a personal attack saying I'm lazy or whatever you're implying. It's not that I don't want to take the time and do the proper research, it's that I think it's hard to really get an accurate view of the person the way the BOI is set up. There can be a huge emphasis on one negative review, and the positive ones get lost. I get lost in all the comments (many of which have NOTHING to do with the person in question). I want to be able to see how many people had good experiences and how many people had bad experiences, and then go read about those experiences further to get the details on EACH one. A lot of times you will see just one thread for the person/business that's negative, but maybe there's only one negative review about them, and several positive. It's kind of easy to miss this though when there's several pages. Even if you go through and read each comment, it's still easy to get lost. I guess what I'm expected to do is get out a piece of paper and try to organize it myself...

And I don't think you understand what I mean by "organize" I am NOT talking about editing. I am talking about making it clear what reviews are positive and what are negative, and which transactions the comments are referring too.

You don't have to listen to me, but I do want to to understand what I'm saying and not misinterpret it. And again, as a paying member, I have the right to respectfully make a suggestion. I guess it will be the last time I do though...
I won't say anything more about it, but I just wanted to make myself clear.

Originally Posted by Eden Exotics

Sorry, I think you still aren't understanding me correctly.

I really do not need a personal attack saying I'm lazy or whatever you're implying. It's not that I don't want to take the time and do the proper research, it's that I think it's hard to really get an accurate view of the person the way the BOI is set up. There can be a huge emphasis on one negative review, and the positive ones get lost. I get lost in all the comments (many of which have NOTHING to do with the person in question). I want to be able to see how many people had good experiences and how many people had bad experiences, and then go read about those experiences further to get the details on EACH one. A lot of times you will see just one thread for the person/business that's negative, but maybe there's only one negative review about them, and several positive. It's kind of easy to miss this though when there's several pages. Even if you go through and read each comment, it's still easy to get lost. I guess what I'm expected to do is get out a piece of paper and try to organize it myself...

And I don't think you understand what I mean by "organize" I am NOT talking about editing. I am talking about making it clear what reviews are positive and what are negative, and which transactions the comments are referring too.

You don't have to listen to me, but I do want to to understand what I'm saying and not misinterpret it. And again, as a paying member, I have the right to respectfully make a suggestion. I guess it will be the last time I do though...
I won't say anything more about it, but I just wanted to make myself clear.

I believe I did understand you correctly. And I also believe that I answered you as accurately as possible. Unless the members themselves used some sort of indication in their own posts as to whether their input was positive or negative in reference to the topic of the thread, staff here would have to do that job for them. THAT would require editing a post in order to do that function.

Any member can put a post icon on every post they make, and if they wished to do so, they could use the "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" post icon as they felt was needed to express their side. However you would STILL have to search through the thread to find them, and you still would not know whether the icon applied to NEW input or OLD references to someone else's original input. Or whether it just applied to what the member felt about someone else's input, positive or negative. There is just no way programmatically to do something of that nature. At least not in any way economically or practically feasible. To REQUIRE something of a complicated nature for each and every post would just become negative incentive for anyone to post ANYTHING at all. What you are asking for is a fool proof and effective means to do something that is inherently going to be ineffective and subject to errors that WE would be blamed for when things went wrong. And who do you think they would want to fix (edit) any such mistakes that they made because of the complexity that was introduced?

Sorry, but you have apparently fallen into the trap of believing that any suggestion you make MUST be the best thing since sliced bread, and the staff here (usually meaning me) are just a bunch of buffoons and morons for not agreeing with your suggestion, much less understanding it. This happens quite often here. Often with the people making the suggestions getting offended as a result and leaving in a huff, claiming to never want to make another suggestion again because they were rebuffed.

I took a long hard look at the way I wanted to design the BOI. I consulted legal advice as to what was the best way, legally, to allow people to express statements that could be damaging to other parties, even if the facts, opinions, and details show that the damage is justifiable, even necessary for the good of this industry. I constantly try to think of ways to improve this design, and even in the earlier stages experimented quite a bit with different methods to see if something else would work better. What you see now is what exists after all that effort. Sure possibly someone else will come up with a better idea as a suggestion, so I do read them all. I certainly don't think for a moment that I have thought of everything, but I sure as heck have tried to.

So what do you suggest I do in situations like this? Just ignore the suggestions that I know from experience will not work or or be beneficial and then get the member going away in a huff because they felt ignored? Or answer their suggestion with my reasons why I feel it will not work as they envision or why it would ultimately be detrimental, and have them go away in a huff because I am apparently too stupid to understand what they are saying?

Originally Posted by Eden Exotics

Alright, well I thought this page was for feedback, so that's what I'm giving.

Suggestions and feedback are welcome. That's what this thread is for, please don't feel attacked.

So what do you suggest I do in situations like this? Just ignore the suggestions that I know from experience will not work or or be beneficial and then get the member going away in a huff because they felt ignored? Or answer their suggestion with my reasons why I feel it will not work as they envision or why it would ultimately be detrimental, and have them go away in a huff because I am apparently too stupid to understand what they are saying?

Exactly. We want the feedback because an idea may be presented that is new or innovative. Members should also understand that things are set up and working here for a reason. A lot of the time the response to their feedback is an explaination of why their suggestion won't work. I guess that is seen as immediate dismissal of their ideas?

Personally about this latest issue, I prefer when multiple deals are all in one thread. Can there be lots of un-needed opinions or discourse cluttering up the threads? Yes, sometimes. But sometimes that same banter exposes the original poster as biased, hiding facts or misinformed which turns around the original intent in the thread (some bad guy threads end up with the seller/buyer being the good buy and vice versa).

There is simply no way to please everyone.

~You take the good, you take the bad, you take em both and there you have, the facts of life.~