After you've had some time to read in the Staff Lounge and interact with some of the older hands, plus starting to run your forum, is the job more or less than you expected?

Jim calls these forums a community thats a joke.

Well here goes.

My name is Irving Graham and I run a webmasters site stickysauce.com. Myself and a friend Chris Richardson set up stickysauce about 7 months ago, we worked night and day on the site, we probably re-designed it about 20 times until we were happy with it, a lot of you can probably relate to this. We wanted stickysauce to be one of the best resources around for webmasters. Chrissy was getting to grips with designing sites so we decided to build some web templates for our users to download, we put the templates on stickysauce and got some great feedback which in turn inspired us to build more, these templates were free to any webmasters that were not to good a designing. A few weeks passed and we then got a email from one of our users telling us our templates were for sale on ebay we did a bit of investigating and found the source who had placed them on ebay, i emailed this guy and kindly asked him to remove the templates, I got nothing but verbal abuse back of this guy, he threatened to hack our site low and behold the site did get hacked it was down for 3 days the whole server had to be reformatted. I suppose you could say this was our own fault or was it, any way the abuse continued we eventually joined ebays vero programm and managed to get the offending auction closed but by now our templates had exchanged hands many times.

I had been visiting gethighforums for a while getting loads of tips and info to help building the site i thought there was a real sense of community . I looked up to Jims world as a great example of how to build webmasters sites.

I emailed Jim and asked for his advice with regards to this guy, i did not know where else i could turn for advice. I got no reply from Jims world so i just thought he must not have got the email and left it at that.

About a couple of weeks later i got a email from the same guy who had stole the templates, in the email he told me to have a look at a certain site and then show it to my children, I was obviously outraged by now this guy had involved my family I was convinced this guy was a sicko, this had me really really upset i did not know where to turn for help so i came to get highforums and thought i would get some good advice here for dealing with this guy and his sick ways. I posted my story on the boards only to find this guy also visited the boards and started yet more abuse on the boards he then became cheeky to other members of the forums, he also said these boards were crap and stuff like that. The thread was only rightly deleted.

Again I emailed Jim begging for advice on how to deal with this guy, I thought Jim was so knowledgable that he could surley help a fellow webmaster. But yet a again not even the balls to reply. Even if Jim had of replied and said I cant help at least i would have then know to try and get advice some where else.

Jim you call this a community is a community not a place where fellow webmasters can get help and advice if so then this is no community.

We finally got some advice on how to deal with this guy and his constant abuse and we have not heard from him since.

Everything was fine, stickysauce was doing well, the odd template sale was still appearing on ebay obviously from people who had bought them of the abusive guy who stole them in the first place, but we had it under control all we had to do was inform ebay and they would close the sale immediatley.

Last week I was looking through dmoz template listings and came across this site http://www.5dollartemplate.com/

Low and behold my templates, i emaild this woman and asked her to remove the templates she told me she bought them on ebay and gave me the url i immediatley had the auction closed, I then provided this woman with proof they were my templates but she still refuses to remove these templates she more or less told me to f??k off.

I got so fed up with this situation i decided to get rid of all my sites and sack the Internet completley, the 8 months of hard work down the drain i even listed the sites for sale on these forums, I just could not go on with the net anymore, i emailed paypal and explained the situation to them about this lady selling my work again to no avail.

I am now asking you Jim will you help me or not as the way i feel i just want to give up, if this happened to you Jim i am sure you would tap into the power of this so called community and have these sites boycotted.
I dont want to give my sites up, why should i, but i am so disalusioned with the whole thing.

Please put yourself in my shoes if i am wrong i will be the first to admit it will any one help me to get this woman to remove my templates and to get pay pal to cancel her account .

I look forward to your reply. Irving

In the United States I think we, as Americans, are actually among the most selfish, self indulgent, and greediest people that have ever walked the Earth. And among the laziest too.
Americans don't care about anybody except their immediate families, and as far as Americans are concerned anybody else can drop dead. Literally, a hundred people could die of starvation in Mexico and Americans would laugh it off and go party-on, but if one of our own family members is killed then we want the whole world to drop what they are doing and pay attention. Why are we so hypocritical?

Not only that, but in the United States we are also envious of all our neighbors that have more material wealth than we do, and we look to keep lesser people out of our social circles if they don't prove materially worthy enough.

You are in dispute with Ebay - you dealt with them.

You are in dispute with another site - rather than firing off a legal letter to their host you send a private mail to this sites owner asking for help. If it is that important to you - hire a lawyer.

I have never had a problem with copyright theft after sending a letter to the hosting company.

You expect - no demand help from the owner of this site - did you offer to pay for his time or cover his costs ?

Deal with it and stop whinging.

Charlie

We talk about you!

Seriously, the Staff Lounge is a place where the Moderators can post spam and rude behavior notes, get feedback on something they think is over the line but want other input...

Sometimes we discuss "news" about the industry that we've seen elsewhere and it doesn't sound right so we try to find out before it goes into the public forums. Accuracy is a critical function for all moderators. No just for the person asking for or giving information. These forums go back several years and people read the 'old stuff' in huge numbers. Leaving inaccurate info can have long term effects. Sometimes we discuss how to correct some bad info with hurting anyone's feelings.

And sometimes we get really silly. Just like in here.

And, as important as any other reason, the Moderators network. They share info about jobs and contracts or find ways to work together. They can do this because the Lounge is a closed environment and working together in the Lounge doesn't start people spamming like it does out here.

Realizing how well that worked in the Lounge is what led directly to the Sell My Site and the Paid Help Forums here and at GHT. Those have been unbelievably successful with our community and by having rigid rules it has not led to any more spam than we normally get.

And no, I'm not saying it becanse I'm one of them.

Seriously, first thing that hits you is the realization that the moderators are extremely dedicated, caring 'forum moms' and that I'd have to match that level.

Another neat thing, is being able catch the moderators off-guard without the "Moderator" or "Administrator" hat on. You'd never see moderators fooling around in public forums, and it's neat to be able to link moderators and the usernames to actual live person behind it with distinct personality.

I thought a community was a place to get help support and answers.

I am sorry we could not meet your unrealistic expectations (i.e. provide accurate legal advice for resolving a commercial dispute). In any event, your lawyer, fully acquainted with all the facts and evidence, would be in the best position to provide you with accurate advice. We aren't lawyers, we are Web people.

Anyone running a forum should -- must -- have a private place for moderators to discuss, argue and learn out of the public view.

>>"Please put yourself in my shoes if i am wrong i will be the first to admit it "

Jim will speak for himself (when he rightly deletes this thread) but I just want to get this straight. You expect Jim, a person in another country that you've never met and have no relationship with, that probably gets 200 emails a day, that has a site about web related issue, to drop everything he is doing to help you with your LEGAL problems? Is that right so far?

Then, at the same time that you make a post to try and make money for yourself by selling your stuff on HIS website, you consider it perfectly OK to start a thread with the this sort of subject line and go on about how this community is so unfriendly.

Buddy, let me tell you - "YOU ARE WRONG".

Get yourself a lawyer and find somewhere else to whine. Nobody needs you around here. I think you'll find that most of the community around here would agree on that point.

Thanks for all the tips and advice.
Irving
p.s. I can not afford to hire a lawyer.

I am really glad I am from the UK, no wonder you Americans are so disliked. I dont think one of you lot are capable of helping any one unless your gaining.

Weird....at 2:28pm you post an apology then 3 minutes later, later you make a post which you know will offend a large percentage of the people that visit here.

Wait....I think I understand...One of your personalities seems OK but as far as I am concerned the other one doesn't have anything productive to say and can stop posting here. I think you might need some more professional help of a different sort.

I don't have much sympathy for your situation and I think it's pretty obvious why you haven't come to a successful resolution to your problem if you use the sort of approach you have tried here.