Reply #89 fjackass's post
I read, but didnt not have time to reply to these issues during the week - but thought I'd give my thoughts on what seems to be the two important points being raised by these pictures.
1) What constitutes "permissible" photo graphs to post on this forum. Obviously pictures taken without permission is wrong, that's fine. The question whether you need the WG to give a "share pictures" permission is more difficult. Personally, I have in the past only gotten the "take pictures" permission and never asked for the "share pictures" permission, which some here seems to think means only for my own consumption. If that is in error - would be good to know.
My personal opinion is that it seems unnecessarily obstructing the spirit of the forum, which is to allow us to get honest views about the WG before we visit and spend our money. To go through the process of asking for "share permission" with each WG you visit is counter to that, because WG would be much less likely to allow sharing after a bad service (since they now know the picture is going to be used for a not-great review) and thus would just skew pictures, which make a big impression, to good reviews. I mean, even asking for pictures skews that, but asking for sharing permission would make it worse. Overall, it would not help present a fair view of the field of possibilities.
However, this is only a really small gripe, and if twice and the other mods are coming up with some rule, I'd be happy abiding to either side of the decision.
2) What type of access should forum members be giving to WG and their agents to the information available on the forum. As many people stated, this is hard to police, but its important to distinguish "hard to police" with "just go a head and do it." For example, even making up reports and/or lying on reports is "hard to police" - DaBestHK does his best to try to identify it, but I am sure some get through, its the nature of the internet. Now does that mean we should just say "ahh, well, its hard to check and monitor, so I bet everyone is doing it, so it should be okay to go ahead and stretch the truth." That seems like a terrible conclusion.... Just because its hard to check doesnt mean its right and doesnt mean, again, it doesnt hurt (or helps) the spirit of the forum.
The whole RA system (vs just paying a fee to access all content) makes it harder for agents and WGs to get access to the data, which though sucks for me to ramp up, is a good thing. The forum I used in NY (TER) is a subscription based forum that WG, agents and hobbyests had access to. It lead to some glaring conflicts of interest and issues that I have fortunately seen very little of at 141, for which I am glad.
The primary problem with this is grade inflation - giving WGs access to the data available here makes it uncomfortable to post negative reviews. Most of TERs reviews end up being 9s/10s (Doesn't Feel Like a Service), which is completely crap, as most providers do a 5-7 job. So we are left to guess which of the 9-10s are real 9/10s and which are inflated. This means we likely just stick to the "good" providers we have discovered ourselves, which just further forces better and better reviews of these girls (since now 1) we go to them often, 2) hope to make them happy, and 3) know they may see our reviews).
There is nothing wrong with making WGs happy, and we should try to make sure they are treated fairly and with discretion, but again, like above, it really defeats the purpose of having a reviewer forum, since there is now incentive to bias reviews.
Personally, I have a much stronger view on this than I do for issue 1), and would much prefer any discussions on the forum to be kept among the customers, and not given to the providers. I agree its hard to police, definitely more so than fake reports, but we are all beneficiaries of the forums data, so let just attempt to do as little as possible to undermine its quality.
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