Don't like spam? Be careful...

[East Hill]

Hey mimitabby, that would be great! It certainly would not be today (raining like cats and dogs), but I'll pm you later and see what we can come up with.

I have now been un-banned, but in order to restore myself I had to clear all the cookies identifying me as East Hill (I have the same user name) and register under a different name. I contacted one of the mods, who looked into it for me. The mod reported back that I had been banned by mistake by one of five brand new moderators. That moderator contacted me via the alternate username and apologized. I never did hear back from either of the two forum members whose e-mail addresses I had. Only caligurl offered any assistance! Sad...I don't think any of you on this forum would have hesitated to contact me to find out what had happened and offer assistance.

East Hill

[55/Rad]

East Hill;

On behalf of the moderators at BikeForums.net, I apologize for the manner in which your situation was handled. I'm glad to hear that it was resolved and that your membership was restored. I'm sorry for any inconvenience this may of caused you.

BF is a huge community - the largest cycling related forum on the net. As such, it's quite the challenge for the moderators to keep up with every issue and situation that arises - I promise you we are doing our best and strive to improve every day.

95% of everything we deal with as moderators involves eliminating spam and dealing with the offender. 99% of those times, the spam comes from a first time poster who has just registered. And with several dozen offenses occurring each and every day, the action of banning the offenders becomes somewhat mechanical. This process requires several steps to complete and unfortunately, once in awhile, we mistakenly ban the reporter rather than the offender. This is what happened in your case - apparently a misplaced keystroke. I promise you there was no intent to cause harm to you in any way - we value our contributing members very highly. It was merely an honest mistake.

There are many fine cycling forums for you to choose - including this one. I only hope that you will continue to make BF part of your rotation.

Again with our apologies - all the best to you.

Jerry Grant
55/Rad
Bikeforums.net Moderator

[mimitabby]

well, that took a lot of class!
(the apology!!!)

[caligurl]

rad's a good guy!

[Triskeliongirl]

I agree. We have to understand that most of the moderators on all these forums are volunteers, just trying to help out the community. We are all human and sometimes mistakes happen. Lets thank our moderators, not just for apologizing when appropriate, but for all the work they do on our behalf. That also includes the folks that serve on boards of our bike clubs, as ride starters and leaders, etc. So often on a club ride someone will criticize something about the route, instead of thanking those folks that took the trouble to put a route together for them to follow in the first place, often pre-riding it to check for hazards, etc. So, on this eve of thanksgiving, lets thank all the unsung heroes that make our community work (and especially Susan for creating this wonderful website!)!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[East Hill]

I agree, moderators are very important and for the most part, unsung heroes. I suspect that many of us have functioned, or do function as moderators on other forums. I also would suspect that virtually all of us have acted as volunteers for various drudgy bits that no one else wanted to do, but which had to be done. Bake/candy sales anyone ?

The problem at the other forum has been straightened out, many thanks to 55/Rad! I certainly didn't enjoy being the test case, but I know that when upgrades occur on websites sometimes very unexpected things occur.

I remember when one of my other favourite (non-cycling) websites went through some upgrades. Many on that site are OAPs, and not a few still have trouble remembering to tick the box indicating that they wish to be notified of responses by e-mail. Er, and that would include me, even though I am not quite to OAP status.

So, three cheers for all those long suffering moderators/administrators/site owners out there, and even for those not in the US, let us give thanks that someone is out there to help us indulge in our favourite hobby no matter what it is!

East Hill