Clarification of forum contributors being banned

Persistent behaviour
many public warnings before.
In his last post he did write something to the affect of : I know i am crossing the line etc…so he knew he was in breach of the forum rules and he intentionally went ahead.

I agree, we welcome anyone comparing our products to competitors. Thats not a problem.

That was out of the blue… Catman has been very helpful to the community and the one time he “broke” the forum rules he was booted? I say “broke” because like many others have mentioned, you’re going to naturally draw comparisons to competitors by links etc. There’s been plenty of time’s where others users (including) myself have talked about competitors and possibly moving over, if that’s the case ban us all. It’s users like Catman that keep this forum a helpful place for other users and Ezlo. There aren’t many more of us day-to-day forums users left, and to be honesty I feel like any day I could be banned for some poorly interpreted rule. Just remember even if one user is banned, the amount of times that one user could’ve helped dozens of others is now gone. I don’t need any clarification from anyone on what happened because I am always on the forums reading almost every post, and I’ve seen Catmans post and all he has posted were helpful things and was always kind as well.

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I don’t like this vague public warning. If i mess up can i have an official Private PM? so i know for sure i have a strike.

Edit/ A reminder
A Miracle on 34th Street

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He knew he was Treading on ice when he posted it…he said so himself…with a link to a forum that rafael and himself setup…So they are using our forums to drive traffic to their own forums by trying to inject links in our forums (wasn’t the first time this happened!) (here is the post below)

A simple removal of link and a warning would have been the option. Then if he did it again a ban.

I think he was frustrated with the outages causing issues and poor WAF.

catman is a member of that forum, he does not run it or any of the hardware. I don’t believe he was trying to drive traffic there, he was simply giving people an option.

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Don’t know what their procedures are? but if it’s not currently happening, a clear formal warning to a user via private message about “unacceptable” behaviour on the forum.

3 strikes / warnings for the same type of offence and your out, seems fair.

My 2 cents.

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The funny part is that you’ve created that forum Melih, when you silenced Rafale for… whatever reason you’ve “found” then.
That forum is a direct result of your actions.

And now the users that built this community (i am not one of them, see above people that actually matter) simply ask you to be fair and don’t ban them for interpretable reasons without a heads up.
Are you able to commit to that? It’s a yes/no question, if you don’t mind.

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Forum rules are set out clearly and we are very fair. We only ban spammers and persistent repeat offenders.

Well said @rigpapa, i totally agree with you, especially on the warnings notice. IMO eZLO is in transition period and needs all of its Vera based customers.

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Catman as per his admission was no longer a “vera customer”.

So, if I advocate people to come to Vera from another forum, will I get a reward?

FFS! I advocated 10’s of people to come to vera! And all we get is a lot of bla bla on ezlo.
On a forum that’s called community.getvera"!

We come here for Vera, not for ezlo beta stuff.

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I am saddened to now see that @catman is banned. Seems we are losing some of the healthy feedback one would expect in a forum of this caliber. My expectations continue to diminish with this harsh backlash.

@melih please read and reread the @rigpapa response more closely as it contains the thoughts of many here that have high hopes for your company’s success.

Give us your best as it reflects the company’s culture as a whole in these forums.

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I wholeheartedly concur with all of the above community members’ responses, which I consider sage advice, and share everyone’s disappointment and astonishment at @catman’s sudden ouster (no matter the reason). I considered his input far more consistently useful than my own!
Not taking sides even, but hasten to say every draconian ban witnessed here serves only to stifle my enjoyment and willingness to assist or participate with nearly as much enthusiasm as before.
This forum was fun for me until about four months ago, when the convivial tone changed dramatically. Now, I tread very lightly indeed! Who’s next, I wonder?? :frowning:

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I concur with the general feelings already expressed. We’re losing very talented people for border-line situations. @catman was one of the most supportive people.

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I have not been on the Vera forums in close to a year or more. I think I briefly popped in when they announced the company was acquired. Since, I’ve had to contact support multiple times due to “problems”. Quite frankly I’m seriously dissatisfaction with how things are being handled. If they’re going to change everything why even buy the company? All these up charges for interface home pages & services is simply ridiculous. I worked for an alarm company where recurring monthly revenue (RMR) is what drove the company as does most companies. It never works out and you loose customers. Mostly because they’re concerned about money & how to get more vs providing a solid product. From what I have experienced the past several months they have A LOT of work to do and should not be asking for any kind of funds or alienating anyone. This platform is what pretty much started or perhaps defined the home automation trend. To take the people who have stuck by it, modified it and fixed it and treat them poorly is shameful. Just yesterday posting about our problems with Vera/Amazon/etc we were informed “everything is working… Look!” When in fact it wasn’t. Go figure! We were also told to email Support which we did and amazingly, I didn’t get a response until this afternoon.

Personally, I’m shopping for something else. I’m greatly upset that I bought TWO Edge devices just before the acquisition to replace my Vera Lites. That’s money wasted IMO as they still can’t fix the annoying “ghost alerts” or keep my device online and reachable for 30 days at a time.

I really think they are looking at a PR problem and need to step up their game. There is no way they will be able to complete with the other “larger names” in the game if they keep up with the lack of information, response, assistance & customer service.

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I think the whole point of a commercially supported product is being lost in these discussions. Yes there are community based “expert” members providing workarounds for the product’s shortcomings but this is not a satisfactory long term solution.

Prospective owners buy the product with the expectation that it does what it says on the box. If this is not the case it is up to the supplier to either resolve the issue, replace the unit or provide a refund. It’s that simple. If I buy a car that doesn’t start without boost, that’s a workaround but it’s not a satisfactory long term solution.

Comparing an appliance like Vera to other commercial software based alternatives is not the answer. Neither is it satisfactory to compare it to the open source alternatives either.

Instead of constantly knocking Vera the answer is to walk away and leave those who appear content with the product to it.

The company have chosen a route to the future. It’s entirely their prerogative to do so. They will be judged on unit sales and not the constant knocking here. This will determine their level of success. Users cannot expect community “expert” members to provide long term support for obvious reasons.

If users find Vera restrictive they can of course choose the many other alternatives out their but going head to head with the company on this forum is not the answer.

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By your explanation it’s not a choice to move on, we are being required to accept the change or leave. I would choose to NOT have to move on but unfortunately a company with alternative agendas has now acquired the company and is making their agenda the priority without regard for the community who was here already. Almost as if they don’t care to retain them or it hasn’t yet occured to them. It’s like Microsoft being bought by Apple and changing Windows to something else.

I’d love to stay as I’ve already invested much time with adding devices 50+, creating scenes, etc. But if a company can’t keep it’s product working reliably or creates an additional layer requiring additional costs that were never present then what’s the point? Right now I’m stuck because I need to research options & make sure something else will work with what I have. Like I said I’d stay if there was more transparency, better reliability & a guarantee that I’m not going to have to “upgrade” or buy additional services to use what has already worked in the past.

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Please can you keep your posts on topic. The topic is forum banning, not the product.

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melih,

This just increases my motivation to move from Vera/Ezio

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I agree 100% @therealdb He helped me with your plugin over PM. We worked to get the plugin going for few hours. @catman was very helpful.

Big loss …

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