(09-12-2014, 01:49 PM)wsn03 Wrote: Maxpower said: "Quite honestly if you were a person looking to become involved with or visit the TT and you clicked the forum button to find the organisation being slagged off, you would begin to wonder why they allowed this to happen and it would taint your first impressions of the TT. "

I'll add to that. Sponsors are customers of the DED. If I had a forum on my website calling my paying customers everything under the sun, I'd pull the plug without thinking. Like I've said before, commercially the forum became an own goal.

The truth still hurts though!
If they addressed some of the issue or concerns that were raised, or even acknowledged some of the concerns insetad of burying there heads in the sand, and pretending they were correct on EVERYTHING,then maybe they would have some sympathy.
You own goal analogy is correct though. But its a bit like your own football players scoring the own goals and instead of dealiing with the offending footballers, you stop all the fans watching the match just so they can not see what to complain about.

There was a fairly recent interview with Mr Philips in BSN which gave an approximate breakdown of how the TT brings in revenue.  At least for now, it would appear that the return for the government from visitor spend is still greater that the revenue from sponsorship.  Visitors are no less customers of the DED than the sponsors are. 

I've spent my whole working life in customer related stuff of one sort or another and I've never come across anyone that shows such disdain towards it's customer base as the DED does towards people that contributed to iomtt.com.  This includes people that help to run the event (marshalls) and people that help to publicise it (photographers/journos) - help that is given entirely at the individual's own expense.

Disagreeing with someone is not the same as 'slagging off'.

As an operator of several forums, I find the attitude of the owners closing the forum down because of people posting content they don't agree with, astonishing.

A forum is a sounding board for the opinions of everyone and heavy censorship is one certain way to kill any worthwhile debate, stone dead.

Every forum gets 'bucket mouth content' but this is dealt with by an efficient reporting strategy where either moderators quickly remove the offensive posts or posts are automatically hidden when a certain number of trusted members report a post. Anyone posting offensive content is quite rightly banned from the forum and such action will have the full support of the membership.
Posting comments which others disagree with usually results in a full and fruitful debate where everyone can add there bit and a consensus can be reached.

If there articles and comments which the forum organisers feel their organisation is shown in a bad light, it is up to them to defend their corner by correcting any inaccuracies but if the negative comments are legitimate, their time would be better spent addressing those problems and using the forum as a sounding board for ways to improve the situation, rather than throwing the toys out of the pram and pulling the plug.
There is a huge resource of knowledge and experience within the ranks of the motorcycle community and any organisers of associated events should be taking advantage of them rather than doing their best to alienate their target audience.

A few years ago I was chatting to someone who is a competitor, a chief sector marshal and a former director of the TTMA, about the marshal's forum. He was quite open about the fact that he and other members of the heirarchy were set against the very existence of that forum, which also eventually closed, after receiving very little support from the Marshal's Association.
There was never any badmouthing or criticism against anybody, from the small number of posters and it received many thousands of hits on most subjects, so it was a popular site and no threat to anybody.
Living on a small island must breed paranoia, I reckons!

The marshas forum went to Between-the-Hedges, and I tried to go on there tonight Stu and it looks as if it has gone down or they have banned me I can't tell which, as it just comes up some jargon computer lingo saying some thing about access denied.
Ah well all change

In an interveiw pulblished in the TT Supporters club magazine this year, when questioned on the subject of the negative comments on the forums, Paul Philips replied that they took no notice of what is posted.
I found that statement alone extraordinary. When pressed on the subject, he said that they gather opinions from 'targeted markets'. I have yet to here anyone who has been one of these 'targeted markets'.
Does anyone else know of anyone that were 'targeted'?
He went on to say that the people who were complaining on the forum were a 'vocal minority'
Lets just examine that statement for a moment.
If you take the amount of visitors that visit the TT every year ( 30 thousand?) then it is true that when compaired to this amount, then the people who were posting complaints on a variety of subjects, are very much in the minority.
However, if the DED are going to use that anology, then compaired to the amount of people who were complaning on the forum, the DED's Motosport Dept was very much the vocal minority.
There ineptitude to grasp this basic concept is another thing that I find extraordinary.

Lets face it the DED do what they want and if someone threatens the perks and freeloading they have off the back of this event THEY get the sack.... I seem to remember having a rather in depth discussion about that one last year at Rhencullen this year mate :-)

(18-12-2014, 02:27 AM)v12al Wrote: Lets face it the DED do what they want and if someone threatens the perks and freeloading they have off the back of this event THEY get the sack.... I seem to remember having a rather in depth discussion about that one last year at Rhencullen this year mate :-)

Ha, Ha, We certainly did
Welcome to the forum mate, its like a breath of fresh air over here!