Keeping a tighter reign on your forum members behaviour

[willow1872]

When i first joined Hostgator a year ago i came to the forum with a couple of questions and spent a couple of hours searching for answers. I decided at the time not to post my questions because there were a number of posts from Senior forum members which were offensive, abusive, demoralising and simply rude to various newbies asking common questions.

In the end i decided to submit a support ticket for two reasons:

1) To find the answer to my questions

and

2) To express my horror that HostGator staff continue to let these Senior forum members speak to their customers in such a way.

Infact, after reading these posts i very nearly cancelled my account with HostGator because i felt that if HostGator staff were OK with their members being treated like this then what does this tell me about the company i was about to move my business to! I should also point out that i am not talking about the odd one or two posts here but rather hundreds of posts from a select number of Senior members!

A couple of months ago, again while searching for an answer to a question, i found a couple of posts from people needing help with CubeCart, something i am very experienced with so i thought id help out with some advice for something that one of my businesses revolves around and since then i have had other questions that i needed answers to so i stuck around.
I have since been on the receiving end of this behaviour myself over the last week and atleast one member of HG staff has viewed and replied in the thread and yet nothing is done about it.

Now i know that HG value their customers, having been on the receiving end of Personal Messages and MSN conversations with Brent which clearly shows that HG customers are a priority so why is this behaviour continually overlooked?

Now please dont reply with comments such as this is a 'Community Forum' and not for official HG dealings because if that were the case then HG staff would not be posting in the forums.

Please sort this out before you lose any more potential customers.

[atlan]

Agreed! 100% agreed.

[SwollenCranium]

Originally Posted by willow1872

members which were offensive, abusive, demoralising and simply rude to various newbies asking common questions.

Please sort this out before you lose any more potential customers.

So on 29 November 2007 you stated : THIS

And today you are saying things are out of control ?

I looked at ALL of your posts and can only find ONE thread where your statements in this thread fit the situation.

In a span of 45 days, approximately, we went from GREAT to a gang of noob bashing ingrates.


Odd.


******

This 'NOOB' proclaims loudly : I don't need a protector.

[willow1872]

Originally Posted by SwollenCranium

So on 29 November 2007 you stated : THIS

And today you are saying things are out of control ?

I looked at ALL of your posts and can only find ONE thread where your statements in this thread fit the situation.

In a span of 45 days, approximately, we went from GREAT to a gang of noob bashing ingrates.


Odd.


******

This 'NOOB' proclaims loudly : I don't need a protector.

What are you talking about? You refer to 'we' as being HostGator which totally confuses me because i posted a positive review on my account with HostGator which has nothing whatsoever to do with forum members

It would seem to me that you didnt even read the post as you seem to have included yourself in something you cannot be involved in because youve on posted 8 times. Why you feel the need to include yourself as one of the Senior Abusive members is beyond me but if thats what you want to do then thats entirely your choice

[SwollenCranium]

Originally Posted by willow1872

What are you talking about? You refer to 'we' as being HostGator which totally confuses me because i posted a positive review on my account with HostGator which has nothing whatsoever to do with forum members

It would seem to me that you didnt even read the post lol.

Yeah .. I read it.

I also read nearly every pertinent thread on this forum BEFORE I made MY first post, a practice most new members in the E-world fail to do.

You stated :

2) To express my horror that HostGator staff continue to let these Senior forum members speak to their customers in such a way.


That seems to me like a bad review of Hostgator and it's staff members.


I guess I'm just too stupid to discern the difference.

No big deal ... I'll move along now.

[Keith W]

Originally Posted by SwollenCranium

Yeah .. I read it.

I also read nearly every pertinent thread on this forum BEFORE I made MY first post, a practice most new members in the E-world fail to do.

You stated :

2) To express my horror that HostGator staff continue to let these Senior forum members speak to their customers in such a way.


That seems to me like a bad review of Hostgator and it's staff members.


I guess I'm just too stupid to discern the difference.

No big deal ... I'll move along now.

Good to hear that you did your research and read the OP's post, shame you did not understand or comprehend the information in them though.

I agree with the OP, the two are unrelated

[willow1872]

Originally Posted by SwollenCranium

Yeah .. I read it.

I also read nearly every pertinent thread on this forum BEFORE I made MY first post, a practice most new members in the E-world fail to do.

You stated :

2) To express my horror that HostGator staff continue to let these Senior forum members speak to their customers in such a way.


That seems to me like a bad review of Hostgator and it's staff members.


I guess I'm just too stupid to discern the difference.

No big deal ... I'll move along now.

2) To express my horror that HostGator staff continue to let these Senior forum members speak to their customers in such a way.

If you had read the thread in full then you should have seen that i was referring to when i had just signed up with HG a year ago or did you miss the part where i said

When i first joined Hostgator a year ago i came to the forum with a couple of questions and spent a couple of hours searching for answers. I decided at the time not to post my questions because there were a number of posts from Senior forum members which were offensive, abusive, demoralising and simply rude to various newbies asking common questions.

The way the forum is run and how people are addressed on the forum, particularly new members such as yourself reflects on HostGator as a company, like it or not.
Let me ask you, seeing as you are a new member, and lets pretend that you have no experience whatsoever with hosting or website coding and you then post a couple of questions which have been asked a few hundreds of times and the Senior forum members replied with things like, "do a search, you newbies piss me off" or "are you too thick to search google, this is the basics of webhosting". Would you feel welcome? Would you feel like you actually want to ask more questions? Or would you feel like its not worth it?

[SwollenCranium]

Originally Posted by willow1872

Let me ask you, seeing as you are a new member, and lets pretend that you have no experience whatsoever with hosting or website coding and you then post a couple of questions which have been asked a few hundreds of times and the Senior forum members replied with things like, "do a search, you newbies piss me off" or "are you too thick to search google, this is the basics of webhosting". Would you feel welcome? Would you feel like you actually want to ask more questions? Or would you feel like its not worth it?

I would have responded to the member that disrespected me, I would not have made a thread asking the staff to handle my business.

You and I obviously are of different backgrounds and we react differently to things such as what you are complaining about.



I don't wish to have a drawn out argument about this... I hope you find resolution to your difficulties.

[YukonMaster]

Personally, I think the things said in here (the forums) that aren't an answer to a question, should be taken with a grain of salt. There are some dicks in this forum, but you learn to get along with them, because for the most part, they know what they are talking about.

But to each their own.

[atlan]

Originally Posted by YukonMaster

Personally, I think the things said in here (the forums) that aren't an answer to a question, should be taken with a grain of salt. There are some dicks in this forum, but you learn to get along with them, because for the most part, they know what they are talking about.

But to each their own.

Personally, as someone who has run some very large forums in the past, posts made that aren't an answer to a question and display nothing but negativity towards the posts/persons within the thread should be deleted. If this continues, then a PM is sent to the individual warning that forum access may be taken away.

These do not have to be admins, but forum moderators who can move threads to the proper forum and monitor posts which display repeated, unnecessary posts towards users/HG customers.

I'm sure many of those who talk about how many posts they have would not have nearly as many and some of them may no longer have access to this forum.

[ldearing]

im happy with talented, knowlegable, and helpful people that may be a bit blunt or abrupt for some tasts... as was posted above...you get used to it and you find "these senior forum members" give a great deal of themselves over time.

i would say personally i have only see three or for objectionalbe people here over the last two years.... and they certainly were not "senior members"

in short.... for me.... i like it just the way it is.

[GatorWesley]

We'll be looking into this further, thanks for the suggestion.

[willow1872]

Originally Posted by YukonMaster

Personally, I think the things said in here (the forums) that aren't an answer to a question, should be taken with a grain of salt. There are some dicks in this forum, but you learn to get along with them, because for the most part, they know what they are talking about.

But to each their own.

We shouldn't have to get along with them, we should be able to use the community forum as it was intended - a medium where fellow HG customers can come to gain answers to their questions without bothering HG Support over it.

Everyone here should be over the age of 16 and thefore should be classed as an adult and should therefore treat everyone with the respect that adults should have for each other. Newbies should not have to come here looking for help and in return they get abuse because it reflects badly against HG. We all gossip and so what do you think happens when these newbies are members of other communities where they are spoken to with respect and someone asks about experiences with HostGator. Those newbies are then gonna relay the experience they had here which may inturn put people off of joining HG.

Im assuming that is a bad thing? Right?

Originally Posted by atlan

Personally, as someone who has run some very large forums in the past, posts made that aren't an answer to a question and display nothing but negativity towards the posts/persons within the thread should be deleted. If this continues, then a PM is sent to the individual warning that forum access may be taken away.

These do not have to be admins, but forum moderators who can move threads to the proper forum and monitor posts which display repeated, unnecessary posts towards users/HG customers.

I'm sure many of those who talk about how many posts they have would not have nearly as many and some of them may no longer have access to this forum.

I completely agree. It doesnt take a minute to send a PM to these people to tell that their actions are not acceptable and if continued they will be removed. I sincerely hope that HG dont have the attitude of 'let the get away with it because we need their custom' but im sure now that its been brought to light that HG will do something about it

[Sam]

Originally Posted by willow1872

When i first joined Hostgator a year ago i came to the forum with a couple of questions and spent a couple of hours searching for answers. I decided at the time not to post my questions because there were a number of posts from Senior forum members which were offensive, abusive, demoralising and simply rude to various newbies asking common questions.

In the end i decided to submit a support ticket for two reasons:

1) To find the answer to my questions

and

2) To express my horror that HostGator staff continue to let these Senior forum members speak to their customers in such a way.

Infact, after reading these posts i very nearly cancelled my account with HostGator because i felt that if HostGator staff were OK with their members being treated like this then what does this tell me about the company i was about to move my business to! I should also point out that i am not talking about the odd one or two posts here but rather hundreds of posts from a select number of Senior members!

A couple of months ago, again while searching for an answer to a question, i found a couple of posts from people needing help with CubeCart, something i am very experienced with so i thought id help out with some advice for something that one of my businesses revolves around and since then i have had other questions that i needed answers to so i stuck around.
I have since been on the receiving end of this behaviour myself over the last week and atleast one member of HG staff has viewed and replied in the thread and yet nothing is done about it.

Now i know that HG value their customers, having been on the receiving end of Personal Messages and MSN conversations with Brent which clearly shows that HG customers are a priority so why is this behaviour continually overlooked?

Now please dont reply with comments such as this is a 'Community Forum' and not for official HG dealings because if that were the case then HG staff would not be posting in the forums.

Please sort this out before you lose any more potential customers.

I hope i'm not one of these rude Senior Members..

If i am, please let me know.

[willow1872]

Originally Posted by Sam

I hope i'm not one of these rude Senior Members..

If i am, please let me know.

Not that ive noticed

Hi,

Thank you for the suggestion, willow. This thread has gone a bit off track, and I'm going to close it. We will be looking at the options available to resolve this. May I suggest in the interim that you report posts that go over the line (there should be a little button to do that on the top right of a post), or message a staff member such as Wes, myself (or any gator you see online) to take a look. Thanks for the feedback.