Removal of Commercial Forums and overall Changes.

[Baily9531]

I trust that ELR won't be counted as commercial?

I had a pm from Matt earlier today, stating that the ELR forum section would be staying, but in a different section, as he doesnt see us as a commercial venture. People may or may not agree, that we are or not, so ive let Matt know that if it is going to cause upset to take the ELR section away also. Im hoping people dont see us as commercial, and the forum will stay.

[sp762]

I'd second the idea that matt will post the list when he's decided it. I'd also like to add that I think discussion of commercial routes would actually be encouraged to a greater extent, because the site would have no ties (implicit or explicit) with commercial organisations.

I'd also like to just briefly respond to 3DRailHound's note:

Mate. Thanks for going to Microsoft and getting us halfway decent tools to use. If I had known you were responsible, I would have thanked you sooner.

[BTW - next time you're over there, could you ask them for the other half? ]

I don't think this exercise is about ego (or Id, which is what I think you mean) it's about the practicalities of running a forum and having a life at the same time.

Identity management has been a long running issue for the site, and this should go a long way to fixing that. Removing the commercial sites will allow the membership to be critical or laudatory without causing Matt grief with addon producers.

Cheers

[phill70]

Phil

>>Matt,
No one has said anything about no talking about commercial routes on ukts(well apart from one) so when activities are uploaded here, i cannot see a problem with providing helpfull support for them, ether from the manufactures forum or from here.<<

Hang on a minute ?, surely Matts post about closing commercial forums will remove the places where the manufactures hang out, where will you go to talk about SVR, L2B, NVR, you cant do it here as Matt has closed the forums where those guys actually help and assist in issues to do with routes.

Or did l completely miss the boat here all along ?.

My understanding is that all the forums that come under the heading of Commercial forums will be closed, a short list is Making tracks, Bluearrow, Firelight, Raildriver and the others listed there in.

If you remove the official commercial forum you are forcing users to post in the general forums concerning commercial wares which is exactly what people didnt want 18 months ago and thus the commercial forums were created to stop in your face commercial posts within the general forums.

How can a commerical guy walk into an open forum after his bespoke commercial one has been closed and answer questions that are being asked by the community.

Now l'm really confused ?.

Best regards

michael

Michael
What is the problem with the manufacturers setting up their own forums then, as most if not all of them of them have websites ?

[allypally]

I must agree that I dont see the ELR as commercial, since the authors will make no profit, indeed I see it as a charity venture more than anything.

[sp762]

I'd personally like to see commerical people making announcements about new products in the forums... perhaps we could have a commercial discussion forum... since the site isn't bound to any particular company, it would be entertaining...

[bigvern]

Phil

>>Matt,
No one has said anything about no talking about commercial routes on ukts(well apart from one) so when activities are uploaded here, i cannot see a problem with providing helpfull support for them, ether from the manufactures forum or from here.<<

Hang on a minute ?, surely Matts post about closing commercial forums will remove the places where the manufactures hang out, where will you go to talk about SVR, L2B, NVR, you cant do it here as Matt has closed the forums where those guys actually help and assist in issues to do with routes.

Or did l completely miss the boat here all along ?.

My understanding is that all the forums that come under the heading of Commercial forums will be closed, a short list is Making tracks, Bluearrow, Firelight, Raildriver and the others listed there in.

If you remove the official commercial forum you are forcing users to post in the general forums concerning commercial wares which is exactly what people didnt want 18 months ago and thus the commercial forums were created to stop in your face commercial posts within the general forums.

How can a commerical guy walk into an open forum after his bespoke commercial one has been closed and answer questions that are being asked by the community.

Now l'm really confused ?.

Best regards

michael

This (and your earlier post on P2) Mike, brings me back exactly to what happened on the Crotrainz forum. Barney and I closed the BVE section, because of the problems which were being caused. When people started posting about BVE in the General section, or even on the portion of board set aside for MSTS, they were locked or deleted. That just pissed the good regulars off who got fed up with coming to a board that consisted of locked or heavily moderated threads all the time. In no time at all, we were down to a handful of posts a week. BVE (at the time) was what they wanted to talk about, we failed to service that need - even with good reason - which (amongst other factors) killed the board. We also had problems with attacks on moderators including malicious emails and even attempts to blame personal attacks via email between people who happened to use the forum, on the fact the forum existed!

Although I stated initially I support Matt's decision and a restricted forum is better than none at all, you do need to be very careful where this goes. What happens if someone starts bad mouthing a particular contributor's freeware work, over someone elses? Do we then ban discussion of freeware, in which case we might as well shut up shop and delete MS bloody TS altogether.

There will be instances (as with TS Tools recently) where users have a genuine problem with getting their goods/code and the only place where they can get together to thrash this out is on here? What about TMTS, an upcoming product but it is a commercial entity open to the same issues which have beset the commercial forums - i.e. there are other rival products in the making and just as easy to call "foul" as with the MSTS stuff. So does the TMTS board stay, or does it go.

The demise of MLT a few weeks ago brought forth the view that the walls are closing in on MSTS and maybe even our entire hobby. The wrong steps here will hasten that as there is no doubt UKTS is an anchor of the UK (and even wider) train simming scene. There is a strong sense of deja vu here and I would hate to see the UKTS forums go the way of the board Barney and I attempted to keep going so please, please Matt think it through very carefully.

[johndibben]

In answer to one concern, donationware has been considered as seperate to payware. Donationware as a step towards payware is yet another matter.

Can't really see payware driven underground as payware has to be public.

Now there's a number of freeware forums on this site which are 'underground' which IMHO is a great shame. Even as mod, I had no access to them. It's a terrible state of affairs that they were felt needed to best further their efforts.

It must be clear by now that there's an awful lot going on which isn't in public view.

I think that's awful when we want to show MSTS is still alive.

The need for private forums, possibly because of the 'noise' caused by the trouble-makers with many usernames is against everything I believe in and I would guess the beliefs of many others on this site..

[mickoo]

Glyn,

>>Michael
What is the problem with the manufacturers setting up their own forums then, as most if not all of them of them have websites ?<<

Nothing at all...except that you distinctly said chat about commercial routes on UKtrainsim, then went on to say that help would be available from there own sites ( vendors new forums ) 'and' on these forums.

You really cant have it both ways, either your here to talk freely about commercial items or your not, if you can talk freely here then why close the commercial forums ?.

Best regards

Michael

[JonathonAG]

Glyn,

>>Michael
What is the problem with the manufacturers setting up their own forums then, as most if not all of them of them have websites ?<<

Nothing at all...except that you distinctly said chat about commercial routes on UKtrainsim, then went on to say that help would be available from there own sites ( vendors new forums ) 'and' on these forums.

You really cant have it both ways, either your here to talk freely about commercial items or your not, if you can talk freely here then why close the commercial forums ?.

Best regards

Michael

Michael is right, we have an OPEN FORUM where we can talk about anything we want while it is hosted by a train website, so if we are allowed an open forum that has nothing to do with trains, why aren't we allowed commercial forums where it is about trains?

[NeutronIC]

ELR won't be included in this, and Spooners forum will be renamed so that it covers specifically their first product as that is donation-ware - if future products go along the same path then each will looked at with their own merits, if indeed spooners want us to host a forum for them, but commercial endeavours will not be included.

I see no issue with people talking about commercial products or for commercial members to respond to anything they want to. I too have absolutely no problem with commercial groups posting locked announcements in fact I would encourage it and a read-only forum could be created specifically for that purpose with one member of each group as a representative able to post to the forum.

Why close the commercial forums if it's ok to talk freely? It's a matter of defining boundaries.

People have complained about freeware in the past and some people get over it, some people withdraw their files, some people just leave in a huff, I don't see any change happening there.

I am late for work (9.20am) so I will go in to more detail later with regards to numerous posts that have been made when I have a moment.

Brad: Even with the support you have given the site in the past, which is much appreciated, I still feel completely free to comment on any aspect of your public presence, if I feel something is a bit expensive why should I not say so? If you re-read the announcement carefully you will note that I did qualify my comments by saying that I had the loco's and found them to be stunning examples so I feel I was balanced in that respect. This does just tend to be another example of sensitive commercial groups who don't want to hear a bad word about them or they'll feel hard done by for "all the support they have given".
Again, i'll re-read your post and comment more completely and objectively when I get back from work this evening.

Matt.

[mickoo]

Vern,

I have to agree, these actions will factorise the community, theres no doubt about it, how bad is any ones guess.

You have a strong faction that clearly wants there 'domain' back, the founders if you like, the freeware guys and the free chat that went with it ( thats a myth actually, just because payware doesnt post, it does not mean he doesnt read ! ).

You also have a faction that wants to know everything freeware or payware and are happy to discuss what ever comes along in a big community.

Personally l think the payware guys will migrate out to there own communities, there membership much lower and thus over time will wither away, by the same token payware guys are not going to come here as much, why should they ?, they have there own community as such this community will be lighter on postings and eventually wither away.

Like it or not this is a dog with two ugly heads, cut one off and the other will surely die, what we need is half dog half starfish .

Concening MSTS, l'm ofthe same opinion as yourself, 5 weeks ago l had to rationalise my spare time, payware planes or pay/free trains.

I shelved all my plane work, semi retired from plane making and the community to make one last contribution to MSTS trains, l firmly belive that if l dont do it now then l will never get another chance.

As you say the writing is on the wall, make hay whilst the sun still shines, the irony of all this is that in about 12 months time all this will be academic and futile, not even CFS2 lasted this long, mind to be fair its still trundling along but not as a main concern.

Kindest regards

Michael

[phill70]

Glyn,

>>Michael
What is the problem with the manufacturers setting up their own forums then, as most if not all of them of them have websites ?<<

Nothing at all...except that you distinctly said chat about commercial routes on UKtrainsim, then went on to say that help would be available from there own sites ( vendors new forums ) 'and' on these forums.

You really cant have it both ways, either your here to talk freely about commercial items or your not, if you can talk freely here then why close the commercial forums ?.

Best regards

Michael

Michael
would you rather then that UKTS Forum only supports freeware then ?
Please Re-read Matt's post.
and when MSTS came into being, did microsoft do much in the the way of support ? i think not, and thats why train-sim.com, trainsimfiles, and after ukts came in to being. it was all about users helping each other out with their problems however small or large, thats what i think most people have forgotten, it does not really matter if its a freeware or commercial product, there will be someone here that can sort it out.

[mickoo]

Matt,

Thanks for taking the time to reply, work ?, thought you were on holiday, ahh well thats life .

This comment about nails it home for me

>>Why close the commercial forums if it's ok to talk freely? It's a matter of defining boundaries. <<

Maybe l got this all wrong but this is not about commerical interests or voicings or what gets said where, this looks like a sub domain control issue.

An anology would be a 16 year old Youth who thinks he can do as he wishes in his own room within his fathers house ?.

One step further, its several 16 year olds who are saying the same under one roof then also complaining about each other...so the father has taken all the doors off...kewl .

Best regards

Michael

[mickoo]

Glyn,

Of course l dont want UKtrainsim to be freeware only, and l dont speak with a vested interest either, people should be able to talk about anything free or pay, how ever closing down commercial forums is sending out the signal that such communites are not wanted.

Believe me !, l have read Matts post several times over and in print too...holds it up to screen...see ? .

What utterly confounds me is that the whole reason the commercial forums were set up was because of a huge and l mean massive row from freeware guys and long established members who objected to seeing commerical guys posting, granted some was tactless but certainly not bad enough to warrant almost out right banning of anything commercial.

Matt in his best efforts to keep the peace then set up commercial forums to keep the in your face commercial posts away from the general masses...because that's what they had requested.

Now it looks like its going full circle and those posts, now hopefully in moderation are all going back into the melting pot.

All very strange to the untrained eye .

Best regards

Michael

[nwallace]

Reading the forums recently I realised how few of those who traipsed in here from Trainsimfiles there are left active on the forums.