MORE ON FORUM CONDUCT RULES

Dear PBR Forum Members,

Please keep an eye on the announcement box on the home page. If you see link there to some new information please do click on that link and open up the page with the new information.

Just recently the PBR team published an updated rule on BANNING. You can find the link to this in the annoucements box. Please take the time to carefully read thi.

Forum members who abide by the forum conduct rules will never be troubled by being banned or suspended by a forum moderator.

If you feel that this new rule is unfair or needs to be changed in some way feel free to make a COMMENT to this blog post and we will publish it. We encourage open discussion on this site.

A ban or suspension will only happen if a member has breached a forum conduct rule and been given the required warnings and still persists in breaching the rule. That’s fair isn’t it?

To make it easier for members to participate in the forum without any fear of being suspended or banned we will soon be publishing on the site – in the ANNOUNCEMENT BOX and on this BLOG a newly written up Statement of the Forum Conduct Rules. This will remove any confusion about what they are (as not everyone has made themselves fully aware of what is already in the FAQ on the website) and hopefully this will reduce the amount of friction that can occur between members and moderators when a moderator takes action to enforce the conduct rules.

Last point – if you ever feel that you have not been treated fairly by a moderator or if you have a grievance you wish to air just go to the CONTACT US page and send us an email. We will endeavour to get back to you within 48 hours.

The Team at PBR.com.au will do its very best to be fair and to listen to what members have to say. That is why we have put up this blog – to promote discussion by members about the site and the forum and to provide their comments – and in the near future we hope to put up a special box on the home page that will invite you to provide feedback and suggestions to us whenever you wish. If it is feedback that we think all members should be aware of we will, with you permission, publish it on the blog and open up discussion on your point and see what other members have to say.

So to sign off we would like to sum this up by saying -

• This is you forum and so please look after it
• Do your best to stick to the forum rules
• Keep your eye on the announcement box
• If you see any link to a members survey in the box please click that link and help us help you by responding to the survey questions
• Give us your valuable feedback about what you would like to see happen on PBR and we will do our best to deliver it.

The Team at PBR

FORUM RULES – COMMERCIAL SIGNATURES

There seems to be a misunderstanding by some members of the forum about what is allowed and not allowed with respect to commercial signatures in the forum. A commercial signature in a post contains a hyperlink back to another website that is there to sell bikes or bike parts or accessories to forum members. It is not a link that takes you to a bike or bike part or some accessory that one forum member is trying to sell to another forum member as a private sale. 

The forum rule against commercial signatures DOES NOT include private sales. Private sales are most definitely allowed. 

The rule against commercial signatures is there for a good reason. The forum site would not exist but for its sponsors and advertisers who pay a monthly fee for the right to advertise their products on the website and in the forum. Please remember this. Our paying sponsors and advertisers do expect us to enforce the rule against commercial signatures and if we do not they feel that the value of their sponsor package is diminished 

So please lend us your support for this rule and do not give our moderators a hard time about enforcing it by suspending or banning members who continually breach this rule. 

We welcome your constructive and helpful comments about this rule and if you want to engage in a discussion about the rule on this blog your comments will be published. 

In recent times it seems that some members have chosen to engage in a war on any moderator who had simply tried to enforce this rule. This has not been helpful at all. Sometimes a moderator will make a mistake and cite a member for an infraction of this rule when in fact all the member was doing was trying to make a private sale. This will happen from time to time. It is unavoidable. If this happens to you please just politely point out the error to the moderator and request that he correct his ruling. If that does not happen just send a PM or an email to the site administrator from the home page (see the Contact Us page) and point out the error and we will address it as soon as we can and offer you an apology 

The Forum is a place for members to share their knowledge and experiences and to help one another. It is not a place to wage war on other members and stir up trouble and animosity. 

We have lots of plans and ideas to keep feeding into this forum site to make it better and better and to attract attention from pocket bike riders all around the globe. Don’t destroy this possibility by using the forum for personal attacks and character assassination. 

Stayed tuned to this blog and keep an eye on the announcements box on the web site to see what things are coming up. 

If you want to be automatically alerted to any new blog post just subscribe to the RSS feed by clicking on the RSS icon. 

PBR ADMIN

THE IMPORTANCE OF FORUM CONDUCT RULES

I am blogging this post to all forum members as the owner of this pocket bike site. This blog post is help all members, new and old, to better understand the critical importance of forum conduct rules to the long term success of www.pocket-bike-racing.com.au. 

The main cause of the failure of forums is a failure to manage the day to day conduct in and use of the forum. If the owner and his assistants (the appointed moderators) pay no attention to the conduct of members in the forum and let them run amok then they are setting up the site for failure. It will lose business because sincere and well behaved members and sponsors will lose faith and patience in this website as a quality website and sooner or later they will desert it and go somewhere else. 

So, for the benefit of all, there must be a set of forum conduct rules and and they must be strictly observed and enforced. 

Whose job is it to ensure that the forum rules are observed? Firstly, it is the job of all members to take action when they see another member breaking the rules. Don’t sit by idly and do nothing. Don’t be passive and let it go by. Speak up in the forum and POLITELY tell the member who is breaking a conduct rule what rule they are breaking and ask that member to immediately stop that conduct and get rid of the offending post or the offending words or the offending link back or whatever it might be. If you just turn a blind eye that will encourage that person to keep on breaking the rule. The best possible situation in a forum is for members to take personal responsibility for observance of the rules and do their level best to stick to the rules. The best possible situation is for members to be vigilant about others offending the rules and in a polite and courteous way point out the breach to the member in question and invite him or her to correct the breach voluntarily before one of the moderators has to take action. 

What is the moderator’s role? The owner has appointed on or two responsible members to act as a moderator. The moderator’s job is to patrol the site and make sure that everything is working properly, help new members get the hang of the forum and assist them in anyway they can, and to look out for infringing conduct and to stop infringing conduct and to report serious breaches of forum conduct rules to the owner. 

Participation on the site is by way of invitation by the owner. Everyone is welcome to come into the forum and participate in the forum as often as they like and for as long as the like PROVIDED THAT they stick to the forum rules. 

Where are the Forum Rules? The forum rules are written up on the site in the Q&A page. You can find this on the menu bar and just click on it to go to that page.  

We are also in the process of writing up a full set of the rules to publish on this blog and on the home page – in the announcements box with a link to the page – so that NO ONE can ever say that they are not aware of the forum rules. 

If a moderator believes you have broke a rule the moderator will take action to correct the breach and will tell the offending member what rule or rules has been breached and what action has been taken or will be taken. In most cases the moderator will simply remove an offending post in the forum or an offending link back or whatever and then tell the offender why they have taken this action and refer them to the specific rule. The moderator may also issue warnings. Except in the worst cases a moderator will usually give a member 2 clear warnings and if they offend the same rule again then the moderator has authority to suspend or ban that member from using the forum. First ban will usually be for 3 weeks; then, if the member re-offends it could be extended to 6 months.

Last thing to say – if any member feels that they have been unjustly dealt with by a moderator they may go to CONTACT US and send an email to the administrator and explain why they feel they have been unfairly dealt with by the mod. The member may request a review of the decision If such a request is received by admin then we will try to review the situation and give a final decision within 7 days. That decision is then final. 

This is as fair as we can make it. Best advice is STICK TO THE RULES AT ALL TIMES. It is no different to the rules in our general community. If you want to have a good time then play by the rules. It is as simple as that. 

This is a public blog post about an important matter and of course you may choose to comment and respond to what has been said here. You are free to do so and CONSTRUCTIVE comments will be well received and allowed to be published on the blog. Any frivolous or malicious comments that are aimed only to cause trouble or controversy are unlikely to be published. 

Pocket Bike Racing is a first class forum site and has received tons of praise and compliments from all over the world. We have plans to take it a lot further and you will be hearing about these plans very soon. We will be conducting a survey soon to find out more about what you want to see happen on the site to make it  better. I hope you will take the time to respond to that survey. 

All the best and enjoy your time in the forum. 

THE TEAM AT POCKET BIKE RACING.COM.AU

POCKET BIKES ON CHANNEL 9 “THE SHAK” COMING SOON

For those of you who don’t know yet, about 4 weeks ago a researchers at Channel 9 “The Shak” show in Brisbane contacted PBR and asked if we could provide some PB riders to be filmed for a segment on the Shak show down at one of the raceways and have them showing total newbies how to ride the bikes. PB racers Glen and Kim stepped right up and agreed to take on this assignment. We understand that the shoot went fantastically well and everyone had a hell of fun time. We will let you know when it is due to show on The Shak. We believe it will be screened in July or August. Stayed tuned on the blog to make sure you find out. It is not to be missed. The Shak producer has told us that once the show is screened on public tv they will send us a full copy of the filming on DVD and allow us to post it up on the PBR You Tube site. Our thanks to Kim and Glen for taking this on and ensuring it was a great success. 

PBR

POCKET BIKE ENTHUSIASTS WHERE ARE YOU?

Hey Pocket Bike and Minimoto riders – where are you? We set up this blog to communicate at a higher level about the industry, about people in it and about special events and what is happening around the world with this sport. We want to first gauge your interest to have this premium service provided to you before we commit all out to achieve this and bring it to you. The whole point of this blog is to bring you content that is different to what you will get within the Members Forum. We are lining up high profile people in the industry, in the sport who know it inside out to bring you specialised content and special insights that you will not easily find anywhere else. We plan to interview some of these higher profile people and post these interviews right here on the blog so that you can just click on the link and either listen to it directly or download it to your own computer. How does that sound? Are you interested? If so – PLEASE TELL US  - just use THE COMMENT function below this post and tell us, we who are ready to deliver more and more to you from this website and make it the best ever in the world – tell us what you want to get from here; tell us what you want as PREMIUM CONTENT DELIVERY from this Blog; tell us what your special interests are and how we can satisfy what you want. We are ready to move on ANY GOOD IDEAS. We are looking for pocket bike enthusiasts to step up to the line here and be proactive in helping us to better serve you. We want you guys to come out into the open an tell us who you are and what you would like to see this site deliver. Please be genuine and honest. We don’t want you to post any comments unless you are serious and genuine about helping us make this site better and better and to make it the benchmark site for pocket bikes and minimotos anywhere in the world. If you help us achieve this it will start to attract more and more attention from other parts of the world and that will be good for all of us. 

So, Pocket Bike Racing Enthusiasts – tell us who you are and what we can do to serve you better. Over to you!

If you come across really interesting stuff – just send it over to us and ask us to publish it on the blog. If it is good – WE WILL. I guarantee it. It can be news, articles, interviews, photos, video clips or whatever. 

We want to actually DO SOMETHING with our You Tube site but we are waiting on a member to send us an incredible bit of video footage not longer than 10 minutes that we can put up on You Tube to draw attention to our website and to start educating more people about this sport and hobby. If you can come up with any such footage please send it to us and we will consider it for the You Tube site or just publishing it here on the blog. If we pick your offering we will ask you to give us a splash on who you are and what you are doing and we will post that up here too if you allow us. 

Tell us what you want and let us take on the challenge of bringing it to you. Or, just as good, keep looking for great content that would be of interest to all members and send it to us and let us publish it here and give you due recognition for bringing to the blog. 

Hope to hear from you soon. Just use the Comment facility below and submit the comment to us. It will not automatically appear on the blog because we want to see it first to make sure it is genuine and proper content to share with everyone. If it meets that test I can guarantee you it will be approved and it will get published. 

Over to you!!

PBR Administrator