Vendor Forums

[Ron Earp]

Due to a recent misunderstanding about forums for vendors I thought it'd be a good idea to clarify our vendor forum policy. Vendors who advertise on GT40s.com have the option to purchase a vendor forum for their use. A vendor forum is not included in the banner advertisement package and it never has been. If a vendor owns a vendor forum, the vendor is not the administrator of that forum - s/he cannot delete posts or alter posts. Only the four independent admins can do that and they are not at the beck and call of a vendor. A vendor can choose to have a closed vendor forum and select members that can participate, but thus far this has never been requested on GT40s.com and I think most people view Closed Forums as rather secretive.

From the admin side of things the vendor forums present an interesting problem. Vendors come and go, as we have seen, and then GT40s.com forum has an orphan subforum(s) that are not factory supported but are housed in the factory support area. Right now we have this situation with the Roaring Forties subforum and the GT40 Australia subforum. Both used to be supported at one time, but neither appear to have any factory support at the moment. They do have member support though, and they have some good information, so I've left them active and have not dispersed the threads. I will be re-visiting this issue though in the near future.

To avoid this orphan problem in the future the one-time vendor forum price was raised considerably for 2007. And, it comes with a condition that if the vendor goes out of business, or quits supporting the forum and users, then the forum will be removed and topics will be dispersed. While it might seem a bit draconian I do want to keep the forum active and not have "dead" subforums on the site. Basically it raises the price and responsibility of admission into a dedicated forum to those vendors that are quite serious about contact and support and lowers the chances of GT40s.com having orphan vendor forums.

I apologize for the long-winded post on vendor forums. I think this has been a gray area with respect to understanding the mechanics of how they work and I hope this sheds a bit of light on the situation.

Ron