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5,373 Posts
I've been following a few threads on other web sites about how horrible we are here at the Forum and how extreme and unreasonable our rules are. Once again, here they are:
Rule #1 - This is a "friends and family" program
This forum is provided free of cost to all visitors participating in the enjoyment and promotion of flyfishing, which we feel is an important influence in keeping people tuned into natural resources, promoting friendships, and passing on these things to the generations to come. We expect that people uphold this by conducting discussions in a manner that would be suitable for sharing with their own families.
Rule #2 - Respecting sponsorships, and spam
Since our life blood is sponsorships, we must keep advertisement meaningful in our community. Avoid spamming by openly promoting non-sponsors in a way that directly advertises their businesses unless you have consulted with a moderator or administrator first. If you want to promote non-sponsors in this manner, you will be asked to email the business to suggest sponsorship of our community (CC: [email protected]).
So basically we respectfully request that you not walk around in the house with your shoes on, and if you are planning to walk around with your shoes on, at least ask, or let us know so that we can go around later and sweep up. Translation: please don't do it, but if you do it please take a few additional moments to help us out. Talk about a slack policy--Is this really that unreasonable?
We have thousands of registered members, and only a very few ignore these simple requests.
Keep two things in mind: I've been running this site and the old ISC site before it for 4 years now. I have had to delete less than 10 posts in that time. I have had to edit (for either use of profanity or inappropriate use of direct links--I have never edited content, nor will I ever edit content--and I have always notified the member that I made the edit, with an explanation of why) less than 5 times. There is one reason why these numbers are so low: we have great members! So a big Thank You to everyone who visits and participates here--you make it very easy!
I also want to address one other thing: there have been suggestions made that we are profiting from these sites and that's why we take such an "aggressive" stance about non-sponsor promotion (see "Rule#2" above for this "aggressive" stance). None of us has made so much as a penny from running these sites. Everything that comes in goes directly into keeping things running around here. Some months we dip into our own pockets and hope that next month another sponsor will join us and take that burden away. And we're just talking about keeping the lights on, never mind the fact that everyone connected with the Forum works for free--no one draws any salary for the work that they do here. These sites look great and are fun to participate in because a small group of dedicated flyfishing enthusiasts work their butts off so that the Forum exists and continues to grow. Call us stupid if you like, call us dreamers, call us bad businessmen, but please don't call us jerks, or hypocrites, or any number of other nasty names. It hurts, truly it does. I mean, here I am at 1:30 in the morning trying to make things right around here, and wondering why I bother when with the flip of a switch I can simply go back to being a Dad and a school teacher with a whole lot less headaches. Don't worry, that's not a threat--the Forum and Speyclave aren't going anywhere, we will simply weather this storm yet again--but this sort of thing takes its toll on people, especially when our motivations are pure and intentions honorable.
As for me, I'm just a guy with a flyrod who thought it might be fun to make a website where he could hang out with his friends and talk about speyrods and steelhead, and it turned into the speypages and the speyclave. Along the way I wrote a few articles, took a few pictures and taught a few classes to help some friends out at a fly shop and I suddenly woke up one morning to find I'd become an "expert" without even knowing it. Now because of these things and the fact that the sites have become so popular and well-known I walk around with a big target on my back for anyone with a chip on their shoulder.
"Expert"? Truth of it all is that there's a ton of things I don't know about Spey casting and I'm happy to admit it; I make lots of bad casts and in between I make the odd good one; I have to work really hard at this stuff because I'm not athletically gifted and this casting stuff doesn't come easy to me; at best I'm probably a solidly average fly fisherman and that's why I didn't get any fish on the Dean this year; heck, I'm happy to admit that I got skunked on a great steelhead river, even if it means some people will wonder about my angling skills; I like to teach Spey casting because I like meeting other people who like to fish and I think I might be able to help them better enjoy their sport, but I'm probably about as good a casting instructor as I am a caster or angler. The short story of it all is about the only thing I'm an expert at is being me, and sometimes I even wonder about that. I don't take any of this stuff too seriously, except maybe the "let's have fun!" part.
And these days I'm kinda wondering where all the fun went.
So flamers and trolls and other assorted grumps and character assassins, go ahead, take your shots--call me a sap or a whiner or whatever. Register under phony names and lob your grenades from the anonymity of the internet. But walk a mile in my shoes and I guarantee that you'd have quit a long time ago.
To the rest of you, the people here that make it all worthwhile--I like this place and the people I meet here, my brothers and sisters of the angle. It is an honor to run the site you choose for all spey, all day. It is an honor to ask and answer questions and participate in discussions we seldom find anywhere else. Let's get back to the fun stuff real soon!
Rule #1 - This is a "friends and family" program
This forum is provided free of cost to all visitors participating in the enjoyment and promotion of flyfishing, which we feel is an important influence in keeping people tuned into natural resources, promoting friendships, and passing on these things to the generations to come. We expect that people uphold this by conducting discussions in a manner that would be suitable for sharing with their own families.
Rule #2 - Respecting sponsorships, and spam
Since our life blood is sponsorships, we must keep advertisement meaningful in our community. Avoid spamming by openly promoting non-sponsors in a way that directly advertises their businesses unless you have consulted with a moderator or administrator first. If you want to promote non-sponsors in this manner, you will be asked to email the business to suggest sponsorship of our community (CC: [email protected]).
So basically we respectfully request that you not walk around in the house with your shoes on, and if you are planning to walk around with your shoes on, at least ask, or let us know so that we can go around later and sweep up. Translation: please don't do it, but if you do it please take a few additional moments to help us out. Talk about a slack policy--Is this really that unreasonable?
We have thousands of registered members, and only a very few ignore these simple requests.
Keep two things in mind: I've been running this site and the old ISC site before it for 4 years now. I have had to delete less than 10 posts in that time. I have had to edit (for either use of profanity or inappropriate use of direct links--I have never edited content, nor will I ever edit content--and I have always notified the member that I made the edit, with an explanation of why) less than 5 times. There is one reason why these numbers are so low: we have great members! So a big Thank You to everyone who visits and participates here--you make it very easy!
I also want to address one other thing: there have been suggestions made that we are profiting from these sites and that's why we take such an "aggressive" stance about non-sponsor promotion (see "Rule#2" above for this "aggressive" stance). None of us has made so much as a penny from running these sites. Everything that comes in goes directly into keeping things running around here. Some months we dip into our own pockets and hope that next month another sponsor will join us and take that burden away. And we're just talking about keeping the lights on, never mind the fact that everyone connected with the Forum works for free--no one draws any salary for the work that they do here. These sites look great and are fun to participate in because a small group of dedicated flyfishing enthusiasts work their butts off so that the Forum exists and continues to grow. Call us stupid if you like, call us dreamers, call us bad businessmen, but please don't call us jerks, or hypocrites, or any number of other nasty names. It hurts, truly it does. I mean, here I am at 1:30 in the morning trying to make things right around here, and wondering why I bother when with the flip of a switch I can simply go back to being a Dad and a school teacher with a whole lot less headaches. Don't worry, that's not a threat--the Forum and Speyclave aren't going anywhere, we will simply weather this storm yet again--but this sort of thing takes its toll on people, especially when our motivations are pure and intentions honorable.
As for me, I'm just a guy with a flyrod who thought it might be fun to make a website where he could hang out with his friends and talk about speyrods and steelhead, and it turned into the speypages and the speyclave. Along the way I wrote a few articles, took a few pictures and taught a few classes to help some friends out at a fly shop and I suddenly woke up one morning to find I'd become an "expert" without even knowing it. Now because of these things and the fact that the sites have become so popular and well-known I walk around with a big target on my back for anyone with a chip on their shoulder.
"Expert"? Truth of it all is that there's a ton of things I don't know about Spey casting and I'm happy to admit it; I make lots of bad casts and in between I make the odd good one; I have to work really hard at this stuff because I'm not athletically gifted and this casting stuff doesn't come easy to me; at best I'm probably a solidly average fly fisherman and that's why I didn't get any fish on the Dean this year; heck, I'm happy to admit that I got skunked on a great steelhead river, even if it means some people will wonder about my angling skills; I like to teach Spey casting because I like meeting other people who like to fish and I think I might be able to help them better enjoy their sport, but I'm probably about as good a casting instructor as I am a caster or angler. The short story of it all is about the only thing I'm an expert at is being me, and sometimes I even wonder about that. I don't take any of this stuff too seriously, except maybe the "let's have fun!" part.
And these days I'm kinda wondering where all the fun went.
So flamers and trolls and other assorted grumps and character assassins, go ahead, take your shots--call me a sap or a whiner or whatever. Register under phony names and lob your grenades from the anonymity of the internet. But walk a mile in my shoes and I guarantee that you'd have quit a long time ago.
To the rest of you, the people here that make it all worthwhile--I like this place and the people I meet here, my brothers and sisters of the angle. It is an honor to run the site you choose for all spey, all day. It is an honor to ask and answer questions and participate in discussions we seldom find anywhere else. Let's get back to the fun stuff real soon!
