dorf wrote on Nov 15^th, 2005 at 1:50pm:


I think "them" must be Daniel (admin), Dave and DaveM in this context.  As to passwords I thought you did have some difficulty with this matter in the past but that may have been under another forum user name?  Perhaps you have now learnt the lesson on that and so have adopted a memorable password for dorf

Since we now have a Global Moderator concept in the forum it seems clear that the software must also support Section Moderators as well?  So my vote, based on considerable experience, would be to only make DaveM a moderator of the Geographical Requests and Cheap Call Providers sections whilst allowing Dave to be a Global Moderator.  It is just that when moderating in the more political forum section (Geographical Numbers Chat) DaveM often seems to find it hard to separate his own personal views from the independent and impartial judgement that a moderator is clearly required to demonstrate.  Whereas if you need someone who knows how to work the system to track a geographical number down then DaveM is clearly a veritable technical expert.

I hope this clarifies the situation.

Come-come NGM. Are you seriously suggesting that I would have more than one forum user name currently in use? How on earth could that be and why would it be likely? I think we must separate fantasy from fact surely?

You aren't starting to stalk me like someone else did you, or trying to expose me are you? Shame on you!  

I do admit however, that 3 previous user names which I used on this forum I had to abandon, because my auto log-in became corrupted in all 3 cases successively and I had not noted the passwords. The e-mail addresses which I had registered with became defunct because I changed my isps. I was therefore unable to retrieve my password on each occasion due to this via the forum auto function. However, I paid the price dearly, since I ALSO LOST THE COUNT OF ALL MY PREVIOUS POSTINGS towards my membership grade! So if it had not been for that I would at the moment be a "Supreme Member" up there with you! 

So don't chastise me too greatly for my oversight. I have indeed already paid a great price for it. The punishment has indeed made me repentant and I now do not forget my password. Mind you it was a near thing when I got ejected! 

NGM,

I was not suggesting that it was of any concern to me to make posts so to get to the top level of this or any forum. It certainly is not. However what is of a concern to me is when rules are suddenly changed and one is precipitously with no warning nor any explanation downgraded, as if one's previous contributions were no longer so important. So when you state "I must say I had no idea that it was so important to you to be near the top of the tree in terms of numbers of postings in the forum as this ...." that is not so and the idea which you had was slightly askew to the truth, from my point of view.

So my point is that the level of achieving the level of what you previously referred to as the "glass-ceiling" is not of any importance; after all there is no reward nor any physical recognition of any sort for it. However, to be suddenly downgraded for no stated reason without prior warning is one thing only - a snub, whichever way you look at. Anyone with even a modicum of intelligence will interpret it as such if it is perpetrated on them.

To attempt to illustrate the point - many years ago, when I was promoted into my first management role I subsequently experienced a snub. After about 6 months the previous encumbent of the role which I then held decided that he wanted to return to the company. The company re-employed him, did not inform me and then slily gradually began to pass my responsibilities one by one back to him. I left shortly afterwards and found myself a better job!

In my opinion, if it was decided to increase the number of postings required as the threshold for each particular level of membership, which was a good idea since many of them were too low, members should have kept their previous status, regardless of whether or not they had met the newly imposed thresholds. It is that which concerns me - not reaching any particular coined or designated level. 

dorf wrote on Nov 15^th, 2005 at 3:14pm:


Dorf,

I do not think most forum software, especially the Freeware YaBB forum software, is clever enough to do what you would like it to.  Namely impose a new hurdle to pass to graduate to the next level for all forum members who have not yet got there whilst still allowing those who had got there under the old targets to retain their position.  Also if one takes an analogous but reverse situation such as as New Labour moving the goalposts so 50% of GCSE and A level students get an A it is true they do not then uprate my old C grades at O level to the A grades they would now undoubtedly be worth if they were to review the matter retrospectively.  But in my opinion this would in fact be a fairer situation were it to happen as it would also if my 1985 university degree grade was increased from a borderline 2:2 (about 1 mark short of 2:1) to the high 2:1 it would now be worth in modern currency.

Clearly what has happened here is that Daniel has changed the name of the top class of ordinary forum membership from Superior Member to Supreme Member and also changed the number of posts required.  But perhaps Daniel didn't even do this and it was in fact Carsten, Spike and co over at www.yabbforum.com who have made these changes in YaBB v2.1  And perhaps Daniel has not chosen to or is in fact unable to change where the bar has now been set to qualify for these various classes of membership.

Assuming that there may not be an option to add extra classes of membership then as the posts total grows the only option is to raise the level of posts required before a particular membership level is granted.  Now of course in a school exam scenario you would still have the old qualification in your file but in this web environment, which does not repspect history or yesteryear, if a new pass level is required then we must all fall into line with it.

If you do not like it I suggest you make an On Topic post on the matter over in Site Related as I fear that if we continue the discussion here it will not be long before Dave and/or DaveM appear in this thread blowing their moderator's whistle and demanding that we continue this discussion elsewhere and not in the Future of 0870 thead.

Being a Supreme Member I can honestly say it is no different a feeling from being a Superior Member or even a Senior Member was.  The only matter which I do probably derive some small satisfaction from is having the most posts in the forum.  But as I said before I do hope that other forum members would not hope to takeover that mantle by cheating with short posts and would only get there because they have even more than I to say than I do about all matters related to legitimate discussion in this web forum.

I also concur with the Clr with respect to the lowering of educational standards and thresholds which has occured. I can give him an even better example: I took a DMS when was at a standard which required either 3 years part time or one complete year full time. They have now reduced the same qualification to 1 year part time and 4 months full time and abolished the two stage examination hurdle which previously existed, so that there are now no examinations at all. They then claim that standards have not been lowered!

However, I still do not feel that the issue of downgrading on this forum is the same as that with educational standards.

Nevertheless even though the Clr may concur with my point about future strategy for fighting the NGN scams, my post was also initially a question:  " Surely we need to be objective and now consider what, when the inevitable occurs, we can do next?"

So what suggestions are there for what we can do next, when as sadly anticipated Ofcom will again fail to perform their principal duty, being to protect the Citizen Consumer, and will again cave in to the requirements of the telcos, ensuring that all the scams can continue in a slightly different but unfettered form, to the continued detrement of the Citizen Consumer?

Quote:
If they started listening to us consumers more and actually started doing something about it rather than have consultation after consultation and only coming up with very, very short term answers to our concerns then we would have nicer words to say to them

Can I remind those that haven't already sent in their responses to ask why the ASA guidelines on the issue of 0845/0870 description and not remaining silent on the call cost only applies to non-broadcast adverts and not TV (broadcast) adverts?

This doesn't make sense why guidelines that Ofcom have said they are working with ASA/CAP with should be only adopted by ASA's non-broadcast area and not the TV (broadcast) area.  A TV advert has a much wider coverage than a non-broadcast advert like magazine or paper so if anything it should apply to them more than the non-broadcast side of the ASA.

Cricketer,

You can read the brief key points and/or summary of the 'NTS - A Way Forward' Consultation here, and the 'Providing consumers with improved information about Number Translation Services (NTS) and Premium Rate Services (PRS)' Consultation here.

Both links above should provide you with details you require a response questionnaire & coversheet and also the email address.

There is no preferred answers because ofcom may not treat the response seriously because they'll know it's just been copied from this site as they (ofcom) do read/monitor this site.  Basically though, if you are unhappy at paying more than geographical rates for these numbers and in fact in most cases earning the company (and government department in some cases) you are calling a revenue of upto 4p/min from the call, then I'm sure you could put in your own words whether you are happy with this.

I plan on letting ofcom know that I'm not happy with this and want all non-geographical numbers to lose their revenue sharing and any company that does still want to use these "stealth" premium rate numbers should move over to 09x numbers where us consumers get clearer pricing, call queuing is prohibited so you are not paying a fortune to be kept on hold for over 20+ minutes before finally getting to speak to a human being, etc.

If you have any further questions then post here and we'll help you any way we can.