FanForce Forum Question

I had a general question about the various FanForce forums, and I apologize for the newbie-ness of the question.

I attempted to make an announcement on the Twin Cities board (The Minnesota Force) about a small group of folks lining up for Episode III next month. The thread I started was locked because it was not an event planned by The Minnesota Force. There was another thread that featured various people chatting about which theater they were going to to see the movie; that thread was also locked because it mentioned other options outside of The Minnesota Force's planned activity at a certain theater.

My question is, are all the specific FanForce forums this exclusive? It seems slighty unfair that someone can censor other happenings in a given area just because they are not "affiliated" with one particular group.

It feels odd that Star Wars fans are excluding other Star Wars fans from discussing various viewing options in a given area. I understand that an established group does not want "competition," but that was never the goal of me posting the announcement.

I would appreciate any and all feedback.

Thanks for your time.

 

I would take it up with the folks in Minni.

 

I was just curious how other forums handled this type of situation. Like I said, I'm not familiar with what is normal.

Are the FanForce forums "public" domain, or is each one the property of the specific group that runs it? To me, since it is through TheForce.net, anyone should be able to reach out to fans.

Oh well, no big deal. We'll all still have a great time in two weeks!

 

I can somewhat understand your thread being locked. But at the same time I do not necessarily agree with it.

I understand because I am currently planning our group's event and I have been working my butt off to do so. Meeting with everyone, co-ordinating with theatre managers, and other fan clubs has been taxing. For that reason I could see why they wouldn't want you to post non-official gatherings. My own FF is almost split 50-50 on doing their own thing and doing the official group event (and something tells me that will change after the announcement I am going to make on Sunday at our meeting )

However, I agree that since these boards are fairly public and are not owned by any individual FanForce you should be able to post non-official events that center around your area. That being said, since I do own my offsite forum I am not giving users that luxury. But even there I compromised and am giving them an "Unofficial Ep III events" thread.

Each FF is going to be run it's own way. If MN feels you are treading on their group, I suggest you take it up with the RSA (Jedi_Dajuan I beleive). I'm not encouraging you to "pull rank" so to speak, merely I am suggesting to talk to an RSA or GSA because they are going to be more knowledgeable about these sorts of things.

Hope this helps!

 

Due to the size of our boards, we have to take a fairly strict stance on advertising. Your thread was probably considered advertising a non-FF event/item/whatever, which may be why it was locked and I would agree with that decision. As for the other thread, to my knowledge we don't restrict discussion to FF events only, so there may have been another factor. I would suggest sending a Private Message to the RSA who locked those threads and asking them for the reasons.

As for your question, no, we try not to be exclusive - FanForce itself is simply a place where fans can meet worldwide, and organised fan clubs use these forums as a result. The majority of users in some forums may be part of these fan clubs, but you are certainly not required to be a member to post here and you shouldn't be under any pressure at any point to join.

 

Thanks Hawk. I knew an RSA would be able to explain this better!

 

This situation is stickier than anyone realizes at the moment. I can't really go into the details here about this, but if you'd like me to fill you in on the where's and why's drop me a PM, Swanton.

I agree with what Hawk said about FF's openness in general. Each forum "belongs" to the group who inhabits it. Some FanForces are really open to having all sorts of info on their board, others only want official events announced. As RSAs we try to follow the wishes of the City Rep and/or the leadership of each club, with in reason of course. If they want only certian things announced on their board, that's what we follow.

 

And that's why you PM the mod in the first place.

 

I feel I should explain some of what I can publicly. people can email me or PM me if they want to about anything that I can not say publicly.

Let me just say this. We had/have no problem with JC and Fan Force members who didn't wish to joing a group outting talking about where they were going. That just sort of got caught up in the cross fire of other issues and I am sorry about that.

Something I can say though that we had was a couple of different groups trying to use our boards to advertise events for Episode 3.

These were not members of the JC or Fan Force who just happend to not want to join our event.

These were people who signed up or posted only to advertise their event and none took the time to talk to us before hand.

We've been more than willing and open for helping people get stuff advertised outside of the twin cities. we've had a couple of members from Northwest Minnesota using both these and our off site boards for some time and we've pledged to help them get a Fan Force group started in their area.

Yes there were a couple of JC community members who unfortunatly got caught up in this.

I am sorry about that.

Swanton. If you wish to PM me or Mirax80 with questions you are weclome too. We would be more than willing and happy to disscuss this with you.

 

I appreciate the numerous replies from over the weekend. It helps to gain a better sense of how the forums are run. We were never intending to get in the way of official plans or compete, and if it seemed like we were trying to infringe on your territory, I do apologize.

There's only two more weeks before the big day, so I hope everyone enjoys themselves wherever they may be!

Thanks again.