You had it down, I've read all the rules. It wasn't policed very well. I know it takes a lot of time and effort to do this.
For instance third part quoting was not aloud. Yet it went on forever in mine and others. Lynn Peterson kept quoting other people. Well after a few hundred pages people starting believing Lynns lies. One of the people that Lynn was putting words in her mouth was getting pissed but was too afraid or didn't have time to battle with everyone got fed up and final posted. She posted that she had a great transaction with me and what Lynn was sating was not true. It's quite obvious that Lynn is regular on the BOI and sucks up to you that he was aloud to do this for many post. Once called out by the person that he was miss quoting, no one said anything to him on the post. All the bullies stick together. Many other accusations and false statements with out factual info were allowed to be posted. It was a joke. This happens on most of the BOI's
I believe you are mistaken. Third party quotations are not prohibited here.
ANONYMOUS third part quotations, however, are. Now, being prohibited does not mean such statements can or are removed, it only means that infractions are incurred for each incident noticed by the moderators, which can lead up to the person engaging in such practices being banned. It is not good policy, neither ethically nor legally, for staff here to edit anyone's posts. Particularly when in a thread taking place in the BOI. So IF an anonymous third party post had been made and IF it had been made aware to a moderator, I'm pretty sure that an infraction would have been incurred by the person making such statements. But see below about infractions concerning their visibility to the general public.
As for "sucking up to me", that will not get anyone any perks here. Most people here I have never met in person, and wouldn't know them if I tripped over them at the local mall. I don't give anyone any leeway with the rules, regardless of any such perceived "sucking up". If you believe I can be bought for merely a paid membership donation, I'm sorry you think of me as being such "cheap meat". If you believe that someone you don't care for, or because of what they said about you, has gotten away with anything for that above reason, sorry, but you are not properly interpreting the facts of the matter. The easiest way for me to remain neutral in matters here is for me to just not really give a personal damn either way about the involved parties. Which, since I retired my own reptile breeding business, is extremely easy for me to do. Not knowing either party helps immensely in this regard. Honestly, it would be extremely difficult for me to get any more neutral than I already am. But to be frank about it, excuse me if when someone threatens me with a lawsuit or any other type of threat if I might not be quite as neutral in that case and about that peson as I might have been otherwise. After all, regardless of rumors otherwise, I am merely human. But even then, I still don't get a chip on my shoulder about them. But neither would I ever be inclined to offer them any favors, neither.
And finally, in reference to your claim about "false statements and accusations being allowed to be posted", well, that might be true. I "allow" false statements as well as true statements to be freely posted, simply because I have no choice. I am unable to tell one from the other, and any attempt to do so would not be prudent, simply because they would just be guesses on my part. Just who exactly would be well served if I were inclined to do that in BOI threads?
So in my shoes, how would you go about determining which statements and accusations are false, and which ones are truthful? How would you go about determining who is lying and who is not? Personally, I freely admit that I am not able to do that myself. And I certainly have never claimed that I could. Oh, I will often have my personal suspicions in those threads that catch my attention, but I am certainly not going to ACT on them as administrator of this site. I may say something as a private individual, but that is about the extent of my involvement. I certainly am not going to censure nor ban someone simply because my personal opinion is that they are a liar.
So my stance all along has been to just stay out of the way, and out of the middle of situations from a management standpoint, and let members post what they will, and leave that sort of determination up to the readership. They need to make that sort of decision, I cannot make that for them.
My transaction was pretty simple and straight forward. Mike and I went into an importing deal together. Equal profits, equal risks. At no point did I say I would assume all the risk if we got screwed over. Well, ultimately we did get screwed over by the exporter. Even though I was not obligated to pay anyone back, I did. I paid Mike and one other party the money they invested in the transaction. But I ended up being the scammer, Lier with no integrity. lol
Facts are Ive never screwed anyone over. Its the mismanagement of the BOI that let it spin to what it was. The bottom line is. Its a great idea, You have all the correct rules/guidelines in place. Its Just not policed and rouge.
I realize you are using your own situation as an example, but please refrain from inadvertently making this thread about you. This is not what this thread is about.
As for policing the rules, I never claimed that all of the rules would be 100 percent enforced. Matter of fact, I couldn't even claim they every post made on this site would even be read by one or more of the moderators, much less myself. Heck, I don't believe I have personally read more than a fraction of the threads posted in the BOI. Point being, if the moderators don't know about a perceived infraction, they can't do anything about it. Even so, there is always the potential that something YOU may see as an infraction, might not seem so in their eyes. And even if it is, infractions made on someone here are not publicly visible to anyone other than staff and the person receiving the infraction, so you would never know whether or not an infraction had been earned by something you made a report about. Unless it was an infraction worthy of an immediate or cumulative ban, of course. Otherwise, you really have no indication whatsoever about how effectively and uniformly rules have been enforced here, now do you?
