DeLuxe January 2011 Product Announcements

[CBQ Fan]

Their attitude really leaves me wondering.  I understand not wanting announcements from those not directly related to the product but why you can't have an open discussion about a product boggles me. If they just want you to be able to announce it than make a way for you to either lock it or have it locked when it gets posted.  I mean seriously, bumping the post come on..... How can you expect people to announce something and not discuss it.

[TiVoPrince]

Atlas  
likes to keep all marketing postings on thier forum thier own, as is thier right as owners.  Graciously allowing product announcements by other companies is a good thing for prestige.  Allowing other companies to conduct product research, gauge markets and conduct development on the atlas forum would be madness.  Announcements mean that investment is already there and there is little downside for atlas unless (in an unlikely event) that a product happend to be in direct competition with an atlas product...

[John]

Atlas  
likes to keep all marketing postings on thier forum thier own, as is thier right as owners. 

Quite frankly, I don't know why Atlas even puts up with the whole thing.

Other manufacturers who have online forums control (censor) content and generally limit discussions to product support issues. I doubt you would see some of the discussions that you see with the ABoard on the Bachman forum.

There are plenty of other online forums that allow a pretty free flowing discussion (and some that don't).  We should happily follow their rules and not have a sense that we are entitled to do anything else.

[CBQ Fan]

My thought is if you are going to let it be posted the members should be able to have general discussions about it.  I understand marketing polls and things like that being banned.  If your going to be that picky then just drop the posts all together.  I really like all the vendor communication that goes on here!! ;D

[John]

I really like all the vendor communication that goes on here!! ;D

Then again, we aren't running a hobby company either ..

[Dave Ferrari]

My thought is if you are going to let it be posted the members should be able to have general discussions about it.  I understand marketing polls and things like that being banned.  If your going to be that picky then just drop the posts all together.  I really like all the vendor communication that goes on here!! ;D

Brian,

I welcome the opportunity to post our product announcements on the Atlas forum even with the restrictions imposed as I believe there are some people who post and lurk there that are not members on other forums. And after all, it is their forum, and there are costs associated with running it. I think if they did NOT allow announcements it would reduce the traffic and that hurt everyone. As of right now, there are 755 views on the thread there.

I do think some discussion would be good as long as it was geared towards "non-threatening" topics. But that would take resources to police and, as I said above, it's there forum. It's basically an application of "Rule #1" (it's my railroad and I'll run whatever I want...) to their business and their forum. I respect their position (hey, I used to work there!) and KNOW that my "bump" violated the rules that basically say "There's no reply at all" (are you reading this Phil?) to announcement posts. No flame war here, just my opinion.

Dave

[Robbman]

After saying  "If you have a question, ask the manufacturer directly, not through this forum" all of seventeen million times, I don't blame Atlas for locking manufacturer announcements from here on out.

[TrainCat2]

Dave,

Two rules to keep your thread open. 1) Add "All questions are welcomed by email directly to us. Please don't post the questions here as to upset our gracious host". 2) NEVER reply to your post for ANY reason.

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