Re: Xpress Forum
Greg, you and I both know that my banning, and that of several others, had nothing whatsoever to do with foul language, personal attacks, etc.
You may choose to resolve the issues I and others have raised by burying your head in the sand. But the world is much bigger than your forums, and you need to consider what is being said in areas you don't control.
Two cases in point:
1) The sketchup forum is one that you pointed to from the X-CAD site, as an example of what is being said around the net. The person there who started the thread on X-CAD, and assured the skeptics that it appeared to be legit, has issued an apology to others on the forum for his part in directing them to X-CAD and their subsequent disappointment!
That is not good.
Other commentary there is overwhelmingly negative, not just this one poster.
And none of the negative posters there has posted here, at least that I recognized.
And you can't control what is said there.
2) I heard about X-CAD in a usenet newsgroup. During the initial discussion, one poster, who I will call "Joe" said
All things point to this software being put out by Alibre. As such, it
should be quite capable and about on par with the PTC software you are
familiar with (BTW, it was ProDesktop Express).
Later, when someone expressed concern that it was an email harvesting scheme, Joe said
Not to worry, the company's legit. I, and many people I know have been signed up for weeks. No problem.
I returned to the newsgroup to tell about Design Xpress, and when one person expressed mistrust of any company that would "forget" to mention that it was ad-supported, I defended Alibre (see, we banned folks are not totally evil<g>) pointing out how loyal current customers were. This led to the follwoing reply from Joe:
> Existing customers
> appear to be fiercely loyal,
So are AutoCAD users, Intellicad users, Turbocad users, ProE users, Solidworks users. The list goes on. It is par for the course in the cad world. Doesn't mean much. Alibre, to me, was a pretty strait up company and I had considered their software. After this ad campaign of theirs, they have been dropped from consideration.
Quite a turn-around!
Again, this is not someone who has posted here, at least with a moniker I recognize.
And you cannot ban him from talking with the "many people he knows who have been signed up for weeks".
No question that you have every right to ban me--it's your playground. But pretending that the problem is with only a few malcontents, and can be solved by banning them is no way to resolve the problem, IMHO. Nor is wrapping yourself in a cacoon of customers whose loyalty is so great that they can't even see the issues and who assure you there is no problem. (There is none, for them.)
Integrity is important to a lot of people. And whether the perception is justified or not, a perceived lack of integrity needs to be addressed, not hidden from.
Regards,
Alex