Vendor's section???

[JIP]

I know we have had a couple occasions where we have had vendors come on and make posts about their products. I know also there was one sort of who was basically drummed out of here for being a schill. I think it is time we welcome people like that here. I think it would be nice to add a section specifically designed for representatives of companies to come in and post either talking about a new product or whatever. I see just today someone came here asking for people to come and try a new alpha version of new software this would be perfect for that section. So what does everyone think especially mods of course will this work? and if so how?. Feel free to tell me this is a stupid idea or it is totally unfeasable I'm a big boy I can take it it is all just a suggestion.

 

[derekclapham]

JIP,

Being the person who posted the post about the alpha version earlier today I may as well comment.

I'm a little different to other vendors who may want to post, because I'm actually a photographer who found a problem within the industry and decided to try and solve it.

I think it's a good idea to allow vendors to post about their products but I also think it should be met with some caution. If a vendor is constantly harping on about their product and doing so quite frequently, it would probably become annoying and create an increased workload for the mods. Also, after a while no one would read the posts and hence the topic would be defunt.

Having said this though, I have met a number of vendors and photographers who have something to sell that are "harping" on about a good product and they were worth chatting/listening to.

It's a difficult one, but I personally think it's worth considering.

I'm relatively new to this forum but over time I'll continue posting and replying to topics about general photography when I feel I have something beneficial to add.

Just my 2c.

 

[Big Mike]

This could certainly be a good idea.

One problem that jumps to mind is the issue of responsibility. As in, should the forum (owner, admins & mods) be responsible for the quality or reliability of the vendors that are posting?

The easy answer is put up a disclaimer and say that we have no responsibility and it's buyer beware (just like it is for the buy & sell section).
However, we still don't want a bunch of sleazy vendors trashing up our forum and ripping off our members.

There will need to be some level of moderation and that's where it starts to get sticky. How much is enough, how much is too much? It's sometimes hard enough trying to make sure that the vendors who actually advertise on the site, are legit. And that's another question...the forum relies on money from advertisers...so will free vendors postings hurt the forum's bottom line?

Lastly, there is a list of vendors in our 'Links Directory', which can be found on the panel bar at the top of the forum.

 

[JIP]

Thinking a little more into it I guess one issue would be this being free ad space for anyone. This was more of a late response to the issue there was a while back with (and we all remember) a person who was sponsored by a camera company and would start posts promoting products by that company and trying to pass them off as just some guy who liked those products. So this was meant to be a space for things like that.