Brian Scherzer
11-06-2007, 06:00 PM
I have addressed this multiple times, but it keep coming up. I'll state it again, however, in the form of an announcement. There is more than one reason why we try our hardest to keep this stuff off of the board. Possible legal issues are only one reason, but it is the one that people keep bringing up. Let's discuss this for a moment before I go on to the main reasons we don't allow this stuff on TGP.
Discussion sites like TGP are pretty well protected by law from being successfully sued by someone for what members write in their posts. The odds of a lawsuit are small and we WOULD likely win....if we can afford to hang in there financially through the lawsuit, the counter lawsuit, and then the appeals process. Prior to any appeal, we're already talking about $50,000 as a rough estimate. Most rational people would not sue if they knew that they were going to lose. Not all people are "rational"! Remember the Washington D.C. lawsuit by a judge vs a dry cleaner.......who wanted 64 million dollars for a lost pair of pants? All you need to do is talk to lawyers who will happily tell you that frivolous lawsuits happen all of the time. As an administrator of TGP my main duty is to protect the website and make sure that it continues forward. I would be failing in my duties, in my opinion, if I don't consider the general welfare of the website and make that my primary duty. I find that most of the people over the past couple of years who advocate that TGP take more chances in potentially legal situations tend to be people who are not Contributing Members. That says a lot to me.
There are other, more important, reasons we don't want "deals gone bad" posted on TGP. This has been posted many times before. Back when I ran the PRS Forum, I allowed people to post about deals gone bad until one situation came up that made me rethink it. A person blasted a particular guitar store in his posts there, stating that he had bought a guitar that was faulty and the store wouldn't make good. That lasted for about a week, with MANY people posting on the thread that they would boycott that store. I finally got an email from the store owner, who was confused and said that he had no idea who the person was and that no such situation had happened. I didn't believe the store owner because the person who was complaining appeared to have all of the details and seemed totally above-board. To make this as short as I can, the store owner pleaded with me to look into the situation. I spent MANY hours trying to find out who the person really was and when I did, the person came clean. He had never purchased anything from that store, but had a friend who did, and the friend wasn't happy with a guitar that had been purchased. However, the friend had put a pretty decent gash in the guitar (which wasn't the problem that the friend had complained about) and wanted to return the guitar for a full refund because the guitar didn't sound like he wanted it to. Of course, the store refused to take it back for a full refund because of the gash. The "friend" had emailed the store, threatening to post bad things about the store "all over the internet" (these emails were forwarded to me by the store) if the store didn't give a full refund.
The gist of this is that the store's reputation was badly damaged for no reason by my allowing the thread to continue for over a week......because the thread starter seemed believable. I ended up taking a day off of work to "investigate", which cost me money and time, and it took all of that to get to the bottom of the facts. I felt badly for the store owner, but nothing that could be written was going to undo the damage completely. I decided at that time that I would never be a party to this kind of thing happening again.
Obviously, there are many situations where the member has actually been screwed over by someone and the claims being made would be based on real facts. However, I don't have the time to investigate every claim of a deal gone bad. I would guess that we receive at least several emails or PMs every month asking us to get involved in these kinds of things. If we allowed it, that number would quickly increase. We're just not set up to do this. I certainly have no intention of giving up my job to do TGP "investigations" full time, and I have no intention of ever allowing another false claim on my websites to destroy someone's reputation. THESE are the primary issues, not fear of a lawsuit....although there is concern of that.
What I am posting here may not hit folks right. Some of you may feel that it is the "duty" of TGP to allow warnings to others of deals gone bad so that nobody else is messed over. For quite a while, we made an offer that we would allow posting of names and details if a member would go to court.....it could even be small claims court....and present us with proof of a judgment in their favor. Only ONE person ever chose to do that....and we allowed that thread to stand for a long time until everyone who had paid money to the builder got their money back or the item they paid for. If *you* aren't willing to go out and get things straightened out yourself (meaning any TGP member who has a problem with someone), why is it expected that *I* am going to put my butt on the line?
It's too easy for people to slam others on the internet without any basis in fact for what they write. It happens all of the time. I'm just not going to let it happen here. I freely admit that I don't have the time or inclination to act as judge/jury or as a private investigator. I have never accepted such a duty and, if this rubs people the wrong way, I am still not going to sacrifice my free time to satisfy someone else's needs.......unless they are willing to go to court and get a judgment. In that situation, we will allow posting about a deal gone bad. Every reason that you might give me for why I shouldn't ask the member who was screwed by someone else to go through the legal system to protect themselves should also be applied to me! The person is too busy to take it to court? I'm too busy to put a lot of time into settling someone else's problem. The person doesn't have money to fight it out in court? Neither does TGP! The person states that they didn't lose enough money to go to court over, but it's the "principle of the thing" that needs to be addressed on TGP by outing the dealer or other party? Well, if it's not enough for *you* to take your time, why is a different standard applied to my decision to not pursue it or allow it to be dealt with here? If this doesn't make sense to some members, there is nothing more that I can say that would satisfy them. In that case, TGP probably isn't the discussion site for them. Plain and simple, we don't allow posting of personal or business disputes here on TGP unless the person is willing to furnish us with proof of a judgment from a court of law. That judgment releases TGP and me from having to decide anything. It is the court that has decided who was right and wrong and I don't have to spend my time trying to investigate, or having to worry that someone is going to sue us out of existence.
Discussion sites like TGP are pretty well protected by law from being successfully sued by someone for what members write in their posts. The odds of a lawsuit are small and we WOULD likely win....if we can afford to hang in there financially through the lawsuit, the counter lawsuit, and then the appeals process. Prior to any appeal, we're already talking about $50,000 as a rough estimate. Most rational people would not sue if they knew that they were going to lose. Not all people are "rational"! Remember the Washington D.C. lawsuit by a judge vs a dry cleaner.......who wanted 64 million dollars for a lost pair of pants? All you need to do is talk to lawyers who will happily tell you that frivolous lawsuits happen all of the time. As an administrator of TGP my main duty is to protect the website and make sure that it continues forward. I would be failing in my duties, in my opinion, if I don't consider the general welfare of the website and make that my primary duty. I find that most of the people over the past couple of years who advocate that TGP take more chances in potentially legal situations tend to be people who are not Contributing Members. That says a lot to me.
There are other, more important, reasons we don't want "deals gone bad" posted on TGP. This has been posted many times before. Back when I ran the PRS Forum, I allowed people to post about deals gone bad until one situation came up that made me rethink it. A person blasted a particular guitar store in his posts there, stating that he had bought a guitar that was faulty and the store wouldn't make good. That lasted for about a week, with MANY people posting on the thread that they would boycott that store. I finally got an email from the store owner, who was confused and said that he had no idea who the person was and that no such situation had happened. I didn't believe the store owner because the person who was complaining appeared to have all of the details and seemed totally above-board. To make this as short as I can, the store owner pleaded with me to look into the situation. I spent MANY hours trying to find out who the person really was and when I did, the person came clean. He had never purchased anything from that store, but had a friend who did, and the friend wasn't happy with a guitar that had been purchased. However, the friend had put a pretty decent gash in the guitar (which wasn't the problem that the friend had complained about) and wanted to return the guitar for a full refund because the guitar didn't sound like he wanted it to. Of course, the store refused to take it back for a full refund because of the gash. The "friend" had emailed the store, threatening to post bad things about the store "all over the internet" (these emails were forwarded to me by the store) if the store didn't give a full refund.
The gist of this is that the store's reputation was badly damaged for no reason by my allowing the thread to continue for over a week......because the thread starter seemed believable. I ended up taking a day off of work to "investigate", which cost me money and time, and it took all of that to get to the bottom of the facts. I felt badly for the store owner, but nothing that could be written was going to undo the damage completely. I decided at that time that I would never be a party to this kind of thing happening again.
Obviously, there are many situations where the member has actually been screwed over by someone and the claims being made would be based on real facts. However, I don't have the time to investigate every claim of a deal gone bad. I would guess that we receive at least several emails or PMs every month asking us to get involved in these kinds of things. If we allowed it, that number would quickly increase. We're just not set up to do this. I certainly have no intention of giving up my job to do TGP "investigations" full time, and I have no intention of ever allowing another false claim on my websites to destroy someone's reputation. THESE are the primary issues, not fear of a lawsuit....although there is concern of that.
What I am posting here may not hit folks right. Some of you may feel that it is the "duty" of TGP to allow warnings to others of deals gone bad so that nobody else is messed over. For quite a while, we made an offer that we would allow posting of names and details if a member would go to court.....it could even be small claims court....and present us with proof of a judgment in their favor. Only ONE person ever chose to do that....and we allowed that thread to stand for a long time until everyone who had paid money to the builder got their money back or the item they paid for. If *you* aren't willing to go out and get things straightened out yourself (meaning any TGP member who has a problem with someone), why is it expected that *I* am going to put my butt on the line?
It's too easy for people to slam others on the internet without any basis in fact for what they write. It happens all of the time. I'm just not going to let it happen here. I freely admit that I don't have the time or inclination to act as judge/jury or as a private investigator. I have never accepted such a duty and, if this rubs people the wrong way, I am still not going to sacrifice my free time to satisfy someone else's needs.......unless they are willing to go to court and get a judgment. In that situation, we will allow posting about a deal gone bad. Every reason that you might give me for why I shouldn't ask the member who was screwed by someone else to go through the legal system to protect themselves should also be applied to me! The person is too busy to take it to court? I'm too busy to put a lot of time into settling someone else's problem. The person doesn't have money to fight it out in court? Neither does TGP! The person states that they didn't lose enough money to go to court over, but it's the "principle of the thing" that needs to be addressed on TGP by outing the dealer or other party? Well, if it's not enough for *you* to take your time, why is a different standard applied to my decision to not pursue it or allow it to be dealt with here? If this doesn't make sense to some members, there is nothing more that I can say that would satisfy them. In that case, TGP probably isn't the discussion site for them. Plain and simple, we don't allow posting of personal or business disputes here on TGP unless the person is willing to furnish us with proof of a judgment from a court of law. That judgment releases TGP and me from having to decide anything. It is the court that has decided who was right and wrong and I don't have to spend my time trying to investigate, or having to worry that someone is going to sue us out of existence.