Dear Moderator

[graham]

[ QUOTE ]
Thats your choice but I think we need to wait till the morning.

[/ QUOTE ]

At last a voice of common sense. Lets wait and see if a compromise can be reached before throwing all the toys out of the cot.

 

[trouville]

Im in shock!!Why has he been banned??Has he??From all the posts ive read(all) i cant find EXACTLY whats wrong.

It it this
l]


if so what is going on with the forum moderators.Used to be fine

A forum that objects to such a great contributer is sick,we NEED more like him

 

[graham]

I dont think he has been banned .His posts are still there.One person complained that his posts were being used as advertising and one of YBW staff agreed.As far as I know no action has been taken as yet.

Personally I think when this is looked at in the morning or monday a compromise will be reached.I certainly hope so.

Time now to wait and see IMHO. I think YBW will be under no illusion about the strength of support we have for Simon.

 

[trouville]

Perhaps the time has come before the downturn for a new forum venue??There must be web designers hear that could host us??What if the powers that be never haveing seen the forum,want a cost reduction

Commies with an owner or main shar holder do it all the time /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif

 

[JKay]

ave a chill Mr Trouville /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gifrelax and lets see what happens

Cheers Joe

ps we need one of your fables to help us calm down........

any tips to get the Ladies /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

 

[FullCircle]

Ye Gods, I turn my back for five seconds.....

This is multiple posting because I posted this phrase teice in the last 2 weeks

Lighten up..... this weekly fable has been a feature of the forum for longer than I have.

 

[jac]

Put my vote with the weatherman.

Ban the moderators and their BLATANT attempts to sell us IPC products. You'd almost think that they were paid by IPC.

 

[nct1]

Leave Simon alone

 

[danfoley]

Is it me or has everyone gone mad? We very much like Simon's weather posts but as a courtesy to YBW and to discourage unscrupulous advertisers we ask that, in return for links in your signatures you link to YBW from your site. Simon's not the first person we've asked to do it and won't be the last, I've obviously missed what all the fuss is about, a cookie for the first person to tell me what it is!

 

[Aardee]

Weather, short days, skint.

Where's my cookie??

 

[jimi]

Well Simon's been posting in that fashion for years, Piers du PRE who's also been a user since 2001 pops over from Mobo to SB and moans, a moderator immediately replies apparently backing Piers's complaint and the fear is that SB regulars will lose a very valuable resource.

 

[captainslarty]

Like I said before peeps.
Easy way is BAN all advertising links for any items for sale or services.
If he wants to post weather, so be it, but not links for money making.
Not picking on this weather bod, it should go for ALL posters with sigs.

If that was done across the board then no worries.

Dont see what all the fuss is about.. its not the forecast, its the links.

 

[danfoley]

[ QUOTE ]
Well Simon's been posting in that fashion for years, Piers du PRE who's also been a user since 2001 pops over from Mobo to SB and moans, a moderator immediately replies apparently backing Piers's complaint and the fear is that SB regulars will lose a very valuable resource.

[/ QUOTE ]

Fair enough, but Louise just read the thread because she was interested in it, as she's relatively new she asked me what the rules were on forum advertising. I explained, we were looking at Simon's site out of interest and I noticed there wasn't a link and asked Louise to ask Simon to put one on. Didn't realise it would cause such a fuss, it's just part of the day job!

There's no suggestion Simon should stop posting, and as long as he hasn't been traumatised by this incident he's welcome to continue. Oh, and it wasn't anything to do with the mobo user.

 

[danfoley]

[ QUOTE ]
Weather, short days, skint.

Where's my cookie??

[/ QUOTE ]

/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif On its way!

 

[jimi]

[quote Oh, and it wasn't anything to do with the mobo user.

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh look ... /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif theres a squadron of pigs doing barrel rolls outside my window! /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

 

[danfoley]

[ QUOTE ]
Weather, short days, skint.

Where's my cookie??

[/ QUOTE ]

Here you go

 

[Aardee]

All of a sudden I'm not so hungry...you might at least have blown the fluff off it. /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

 

[danfoley]

[ QUOTE ]
[quote Oh, and it wasn't anything to do with the mobo user.

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh look ... /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif theres a squadron of pigs doing barrel rolls outside my window! /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

[/ QUOTE ]


You have a point - I refer you to the other thread!

 

[lenseman]

[ QUOTE ]
Here you go

[/ QUOTE ]
That one is salty !

When you found it on Blackpool beach, weren't you supposed to declare it to the Receievr of Wrecks? /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[simonjk]

Dear all,

I'm posting this on the discussions relating to this topic, so apologies for the cross-post.

Thank you for your support, it is overwhelming and I appreciate your kind comments. I had not realised how welcome and respected the Weekend Weather Forecast is.

I didn't want to wade in with an off the cuff response, so have thought about this and amended it accordingly. It is rather long, for which I apologies.

Also, I have PM'd most of this to Dan for him to talk through at IPC. He has kindly PM'd to say he won't be able to come back to me until, probably Saturday. I feel though that in light of the support you have given me and the comments made that I should express an opinion today, rather than tomorrow.

Firstly the current position is thus:

1. The Weekend Weather Forecast was posted as normal yesterday, with the usual 'ad-link' at the top.
2. A complaint was made about the advertising from a forum member.
3. Louise contacted me by PM to state the position regarding advertising and aked for a reciprocal link to be put on my site.
4. A link has been added to YBW.com from Weatherweb.net.
5. I have not been threatened with being banned from the forum.
6. I posted to ask how popular the Weekend Weather Forecast is as I would have stopped if others felt the advertising was too much.

So, onto where we go now.

I've posted to the forum since 2003, and as has already been said there was limited, but understandable, suspicion at first as to why I should post free weather forecasts when the tide (excuse the pun) was against this. Over time I believe that the forum has come to respect the forecasts, musings and additional information I give, and in return the forum have encouraged and provided feedback to me on new projects such as Weatherweb.TV, and have 'allowed' my links back to my site. As I said in my previous post, I enjoy doing the forecasts and conveying my thoughts about the weather, and if you learn something in the process about this wonderful black-art, so much the better! I learn too when you tell me the forecast was wrong.

In my opinion this has worked well, and when forum members have wanted something a little more specialised, they have got in touch.

As stated in my previous post, Louise was nothing but courteous and was only doing her job. It's easy when you are not up to speed on things to tread on a hornets nest and suddenly, wham! It blows up in your face (can hornets nests blow-up?). So, Louise, this is nothing against you.

I guess the problem YBW have is that the Weekend Forecast is clearly one of the most popular parts of the forum. They don't know a lot about me, apart from what they see on the site, and have not sought to find out more. YBW have their own commercial weather service and it is understandable that they want to promote that (although I don't think they would do that to the detriment of the forum and have allowed me to post freely for several years). Anyway, what I offer is totally different to the YBW weather service. Mine is a personal forecasting service; I give the computer produced stuff away for free (basically because that is all it is worth and you can get it anywhere), then sailors pay for the human value-added parts of the forecast. This is something YBW do not offer at the present time (to the best of my knowledge, but I'm open to offers).

Weatherweb.TV is also causing some problems just now as many sites are feeling threatened by it; especially those that do not have resident forecasters, but rely on models of some sort to sell weather forecast data. This is to the extent that I have been 'approached' regarding commercial development of the service. I am not suggesting for one moment this is the case at YBW, but it does set the issue of weather, commerce and promotion in some additional context.

So, I have PM'd Dan to suggest ways in which we can work together on this. I have suggested that there be a separate forum dedicated to the Weather Forecast (someone said SimonJK's Weather Lounge, and that is fine with me). Here we could talk all things weather. We could discuss about services on offer to sailors, what's good, what's not, who charges, who doesn't etc... The Weather Musings could find a home here, and if strange weather events happen to you they could be discussed too. However, I have said to Dan that weather is how I make my living, it's what puts food on the table and so I have to get a return somehow. This would be from sailors using me, as they do now, when they have an extra requirement. My book, The Sailor's Book of the Weather comes out in April and it would be great to get a deal for YBW members...there's lots that we could do to make a cracking weather forum.

I have been invited to join BlueMoment forums as well as others, and very encouraging they have been too! It is at their invitation that I will be posting there and I welcome the opportunity to do so. Whether I can continue to post at YBW without complaint and in the knowledge that this debacle won't happen again is really up to the forum moderators and YBW.

Thank you all for your support.

Simon