17 Oct, 2007, Guest wrote in the 101st comment:
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If you can call a haven for trolls something that works :)

The listing is pretty much a separate entity and stands on its own as far as I can see.

To answer Kiasyn, I usually buy or renew my domains 2 years at a time.
17 Oct, 2007, David Haley wrote in the 102nd comment:
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It works in the sense that it's a big community, but I'm not sure that necessarily correlates with being a good community. For example, Gammon's forums are a fairly small community (at least, in terms of regulars), as are these, but typically you get rather good content. (At least, according to my purely subjective definition of what "good content" is…) But, clearly, they did at least something right to attract that many users. (Or they just got lucky?)
17 Oct, 2007, Cratylus wrote in the 103rd comment:
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Quote
If you can call a haven for trolls something that works :)


I think TMC is not especially guilty in this regard, and that's
my point. I knew someone from another country who planned
to work for her newspaper as a journalist in the United States, and
her parents were horrified and beside themselves. They were
certain she would be raped and killed, because that's
the sort of story they often heard about the US: visitors from
their country being victimized.

The US is just like any other place in this regard. Maybe better in some ways,
maybe worse in some ways, but certainly not a haven for rapists
and killers. Just because they exist here in the same proportion as they
exist elsewhere doesn't mean the US doesn't work.

Similarly, TMC has some people that sometimes express their opinions rudely.
So what? When they victimize a visitor they often get bopped on the
head for their trouble. Perhaps if a moderator "moderated" their post
that might be more "efficient" (read: making the trains run on time), but
allowing the community to police itself (which in my experience really
does happen) is just as effective. The instances of people making posts
insulting each other with no other merit whatsoever are very low.

I don't think it makes sense to act like TMC is some kind of cesspool filled
with turd-slinging monkeys. The vast majority of posts are perfectly
civil, and those that are not are mostly justifiably not, and those that
are unjustifiably uncivil tend to attract the attention of elders that pass
painful judgment on the offender.

In my opinion, yes, that "works". There is a lot more signal than noise.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net
17 Oct, 2007, Guest wrote in the 104th comment:
Votes: 0
Cratylus said:
I don't think it makes sense to act like TMC is some kind of cesspool filled
with turd-slinging monkeys. The vast majority of posts are perfectly
civil, and those that are not are mostly justifiably not, and those that
are unjustifiably uncivil tend to attract the attention of elders that pass
painful judgment on the offender.


I' not acting like it's a cesspool filled with turd-sligning monkeys. I'm plainly saying it is, without hesitation. It's been like that for a very long time and I'm absolutely certain I'm not the only one who's been noticing it. It's been getting considerably worse as time goes by. The sad part is, the regulars don't see it happening. Frog in a boiling pot syndrome. Self policing doesn't work when the cops are on the take and participating in the crimes. It's anarchy, pure and simple.

On the flipside, as we all witnessed when me and you went back and forth about moderation policies on TMS, it's equally bad when the staff takes things too far and imposes draconian rule. Yes, I'm aware it's probably an irony to some that I'd say that, but you can go to far with moderation. I think at this point it's pretty clear TMS has. It's a prime example of what happens when the cops have too much power.

Around here on MudBytes I think we've struck a balance where people feel free enough to express their opinions, but aren't given free reign to turn it into a Jerry Springer show in the process. As far as I can tell, it seems to be working.

( btw, how'd we get to 104 posts on this :P )
17 Oct, 2007, Kayle wrote in the 105th comment:
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Samson: Seems like topic drifts mostly.


David: Apology was your third post on the issue, you have two posts inquiring about it on page 6. Your apology is at the top of page 7. At least, if your using the same amount of posts per page as I am. Which I believe is the board default.
17 Oct, 2007, David Haley wrote in the 106th comment:
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Kayle: well, if you're going to insist on the topic… my first post was "why?", and I have trouble seeing how my second post could be interpreted as not being an attempt to be conciliatory. I figured that it was important to explain my intent behind the question, because it clearly offended Samson, which was certainly not my goal. Clearly, that attempt failed, unfortunately, at least for some people (and more unfortunately, for the person for whom it mattered most that it succeed). In any case, I certainly don't see a repetition of the question, and instead see a post that starts and ends with an apology for offending, which was not my intent. Now, unless there is more to be said about the issue, I think it should be "taken offline", as they say…
17 Oct, 2007, Guest wrote in the 107th comment:
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You don't know me very well at all if you think your insistence on getting an answer offended me. It just irritates me when you send a clear signal that you don't want to inject something into the discussion only to have someone come back and ask you to explain it again.
17 Oct, 2007, David Haley wrote in the 108th comment:
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Yes, sure, but to be entirely fair, you should note that your initial post, the one after which I asked the question, made no mention that you had no desire to talk about it, merely that you had a personal opinion. I took that to mean 'subjective', not 'I don't want to talk about it' – an interpretation that IMHO is a reasonable one. You will also note that I neither asked you again nor asked you to explain yourself, but instead went through the explanations of intent, namely why I asked the question in the first place, that I described above, in my reply to Kayle. To repeat myself briefly, after you objected to my question, I explained why I felt the question was relevant, and in two posts apologized for asking something that apparently 'irritated' you. (I'm not sure what difference you establish between "irritate" and "offend".) I am not sure why this isn't clear.
09 Mar, 2008, Guest wrote in the 109th comment:
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[Ritual of thread necromancy]
[The spell succeeded! The thread is alive!]

Well, you know what they say… if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. No, I'm not talking about Behr Culture I'm talking about 1and1.com. Apparently I've now been with them long enough to get bitten by something I was afraid might happen. Every domain I had registered there was configured for automatic renewal. I spotted this 2 weeks ago and used their pissy interface to stop that. Most of the domains won't need renewal for awhile anyway. Their system interpreted the submission as "renew all domains immediately". Uh…. Hello? That's *NOT* what I asked for dammit!

So yeah, direct disregard for a customer request involving substantial amounts of money. This is a Bad Thing™

On the recommendations previously posted, I'm giving gandi.net and dynadot.com a try on two domains. I'm already not exactly thrilled with gandi.net and my reservations against dealing with overseas companies are already coming to pass. The dynadot.com procedure was a lot smoother and more friendly, and they're in San Mateo, CA. For what that's worth to people.

I'll let you all know how it goes. I'm still marginally pissed off that I'll need to also pay for domain privacy, but even at $2 more per domain, dynadot.com comes in $3 cheaper than gandi.net does with free privacy.
11 Mar, 2008, Guest wrote in the 110th comment:
Votes: 0
Well apparently 1and1.com didn't like it much when I informed them I was unhappy about being charged for auto-renewals I didn't ask for. They've broken my nameserver settings on the domains, making it impossible to fix some problems I discovered. So I'm initiating transfer of everything I care to keep to netfirms.com for the .com and .net domains, and dynadot.com for the .org domains. These gandi.net people can kiss my American ass for botching a transfer and then refusing to refund the money!
11 Mar, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 111th comment:
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Dude, you're acting as if the problem is somehow due to them not being an American company, despite having had so many problems with American companies. :sad:
11 Mar, 2008, Guest wrote in the 112th comment:
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Yeah, well, tell that to them. When I asked for a refund on the failed transfer they said no. Their reason? The currency conversion back to USD would be too much hassle for them. Uh… yeah. Like it wasn't a pain in the ass for *ME* going the other way? I'm entirely justified in having said before I don't like dealing with overseas companies, and this right here is a primary reason. If something goes wrong, they're all too happy to keep *YOUR* money but won't give it back when something goes wrong because it would cost *THEM* too much to reconvert it back!

And FYI, before you make a bunch of ridiculous assumptions about how many American companies I've had issues with, you should keep in mind that as it turns out, 1&1 Internet Inc. is a US subsidiary of Schlund+Partner AG - based in Germany. My bust for not having caught that sooner, but it certainly seems to explain why they were so harsh in their response to my getting upset at being billed when I didn't want to be.

So can you provide me anything to suggest this wasn't caused by dealing with fubared overseas companies? I seem to be having a lot better luck with Netfirms.com up in Canada for instance. Not overseas, but surely not US either.
11 Mar, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 113th comment:
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Like you haven't had this kind of trouble with US companies, like, oh, say, RegisterFlies. I had all kinds of trouble with them myself, refusing to reimburse bad transactions; I eventually had to bring it to American Express's litigation department.

Look, I'm sorry you're having so much trouble with your domain names, but it's entirely unreasonable to blame it on overseas companies when somehow the rest of global commerce (there's a little bit of money in that, you might have heard) seems to get along just fine. :sad: It's not as if all non-US companies are perfect, but it's not as if all US companies are perfect either. You'd need a lot of evidence to suggest that you are somehow better treated by US companies.
11 Mar, 2008, Guest wrote in the 114th comment:
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I have all the evidence I need, thank you. Your insistence that I haven't been screwed by overseas companies is lacking in proof. Twice burnt, etc. The Registerfly thing came out of nowhere for a hell of a lot of people, but despite the mess that was I managed to escape with nearly all of my domains intact. I can't help the fact that I can now see dealing with overseas companies is like dealing with Registerfly. But hey. If you don't like what I have to say, you can ignore it, or you can provide proof I'm an idiot who doesn't know what he's talking about. Since it's my money and domains being affected, I fail to see how you'd arrive at such proof.
11 Mar, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 115th comment:
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Sheesh, calm down a bit. I didn't say you haven't had problems. I said that it's inappropriate to generalize to overseas companies in general. Plenty of people have had problems with US merchants, and it would be similarly inappropriate to generalize to all US merchants. I speak up because I don't like you badmouthing things of which you have a relatively local experience (i.e., just yourself). You got unlucky; that is unfortunate, but the vast majority of transactions occur smoothly.

If your proof is so definitive, maybe you should just list it and end this once and for all. I don't see how you expect me to provide proof of your experience without having access to it, but what I can submit is that somehow the world economy manages to do pretty well. So there is at least a tiny reason to believe that, I dunno, commerce works just fine even with foreign companies.

If you had limited your statement to the fact that you prefer to deal with local companies because it is easier to bring them to court in case something goes wrong, I would be perfectly happy. But you are not content to do that; instead you bad-mouth foreign companies as being somehow less competent or trustworthy than US companies. That is insulting and unreasonable.
11 Mar, 2008, Guest wrote in the 116th comment:
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It's only insulting and unreasonable if it's not true, and I've yet to see anything suggesting it's not true. I am not going to calm down as long as I have people like you who come out of nowhere with ridiculous accusations and attacks when all I'm doing is confirming my suspicions about dealing with overseas companies. Nothing you could possibly do at this point will change that opinion unless you happen to work for one of these companies and can get me my money back.

And besides, since when is it your job to be champion for the foreign commerce people anyway? It doesn't affect you, why the hell are you even getting involved?
11 Mar, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 117th comment:
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Samson said:
It's only insulting and unreasonable if it's not true, and I've yet to see anything suggesting it's not true

Hmm. I guess that every rare instance of global commercial transaction is just a lucky shot, against the vast majority of cases of Samson dealing with foreign companies.

Samson said:
Nothing you could possibly do at this point will change that opinion

Yes, well, that much was already a given.

Samson said:
And besides, since when is it your job to be champion for the foreign commerce people anyway? It doesn't affect you, why the hell are you even getting involved?

You're saying something that is blatantly false and damaging to the US's image. So, of course it affects me. It makes perfect sense to fight things that make me look bad by extension. I also am not happy to let such a false statement go by unchallenged. How odd it is that you, the champion of speaking opinions, are so eager to not have me speak mine here.
11 Mar, 2008, Darwin wrote in the 118th comment:
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Ok, Samson's gotten screwed/burnt by foreign companies. All of them, or just a tiny fraction of them?

Samson, are you saying that you expect to be treated this way by every foreign company? Is there some Anti-Samson trend going on overseas that we don't know about?

It's been my experience that I've had just as much luck with foreign companies as I have with domestic companies. I can't say that either one will screw me more or less than the other. But, then again, I am not the target of the overseas Anti-Samson campaign.
11 Mar, 2008, Guest wrote in the 119th comment:
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David, it's been pretty well established by now that you're beign argumentative for the sake of being argumentative. I doubt very much that my distrust for overseas companies has any affect on you whatsoever. Unless as Darwin puts it, there's some kind of overseas "we love David" thing going on I should know about.

And you're in no position to call me on expressing my opinion when you're sitting there trying to shut me up about it to begin with. Just because you don't agree with my assessment of things.

Darwin, so far it's not looking too good on the overseas company front. The ones I've been dealing with so far haven't proven themselves worthy of my business, and as is my right I intend to express that displeasure to any and all who will listen so they themselves don't get burned.

And I'd appreciate it if both of you would stop putting the word "foregin" in where it doesn't belong. I've been pretty careful to mention that my disgust up to this point is with "overseas" companies. Overseas as defined by general consensus to mean "not in North America". If that distinction is lost on either of you we really have nothing more to discuss and my warning against dealing with them stands.
11 Mar, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 120th comment:
Votes: 0
Samson said:
I doubt very much that my distrust for overseas companies has any affect on you whatsoever.

By stating it, you are playing up a very common stereotype of Americans. That stereotype affects me because I am an American. While I know it is a lost cause to have you come around, I see value in at least showing that you are not the common case. Besides, I think that what you're saying is blatantly and completely wrong, based on little more than a few instances of bad luck. I hardly view it as a fault to speak out against things you find to be completely wrong; you of all people should understand that.

Samson said:
Unless as Darwin puts it, there's some kind of overseas "we love David" thing going on I should know about.

I think it's rather amusing how you try to turn around this rather resounding criticism of your position. Yes, you should know about the "we love everybody but Samson" campaign that the rest of the world has.

Samson said:
And you're in no position to call me on expressing my opinion when you're sitting there trying to shut me up about it to begin with. Just because you don't agree with my assessment of things.

I'm not sure how correcting you is the same thing as telling you to shut up, but, … ok … You on the other hand challenged my very right to speak this opinion because I am not the designated "champion of overseas companies" or however you put it.

Samson said:
And I'd appreciate it if both of you would stop putting the word "foregin" in where it doesn't belong. I've been pretty careful to mention that my disgust up to this point is with "overseas" companies. Overseas as defined by general consensus to mean "not in North America". If that distinction is lost on either of you we really have nothing more to discuss and my warning against dealing with them stands.

So what exactly is it about the Atlantic or Pacific that provides such bad mojo? Are the undersea cables the source of all your frustrations? Do they detect Samsonite (heh) transactions and corrupt them, letting other ones go through unscathed?
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