Hi Everyone,
What follows here is a cautionary tale of internet groups/forums. It is in NO way meant to be a mirrored reflection of KIWIBIKER.CO.NZ, but I think there may be aspects to this story that may have ramifications on us all one day if this forum keeps growing at the rate it appears to be and other forums folks might be involved in and as such it maybe of interest to people here.
Anyway, I work in a sector of the broadcast and television industry, similar to video editing. It involves the use of expensive equipment, both hardware and software based. There are maybe less then 500 companies world wide with this equipment, and in NZ only 4 companies provide this service, so finding people to talk to about experienced problems is difficult. About 14 years ago an American colleague founded an internet group, where all the operators of this equipment could meet and share information, solve problems, complain about shortcomings in the industry and their supplies equipment and software, all in the name of furthering the industry and making life easier for all concerned.
In the early days it was a great success, the sharing of information was partly responsible for raising the bar for the standard of work that was produced, it became de-riguer for anyone in my profession to be on this internet group, and alot of people where able to save alot of time and expense by listening to the experiences of others. But word got out and it grew, the engineers of the related industry joined and added a welcome different slant to the group. Then the bosses of the companies joined, to keep in the loop with emerging technologies. The downside now was as an employee you had to watch what you said and couldn’t be seen to be letting out company secrets. Then the equipment and software supplies joined in, watching for anyone bad mouthing their equipment, and in some cases complaining to their bosses if they thought they had been mistreated, and that's when things went wrong.
After a series of postings recently about a particular manufactures product that did not sing its praises, a legal battle ensued and has resulted in the internet group being closed down. Just in case you think this is an American thing, This internet group was truly global and had been operating and administered from a server right here in New Zealand for the last number of years, so the long arm of the law is indeed far reaching.
As I’ve mentioned, KIWIBIKER is not quite the same, we here can hide behind user names if we want to. Apart from a handful of people, we would walk past a fellow member in the street, and not know we had been chatting with them online an hour before. We also, for the most part, don’t work in motorbike related industries. However their are plenty of folks here that do derive their incomes from the motorbike industry or related industries. And I expect there are plenty of people that log on and never contribute, that probably work higher up the bike industry food chain. As this forum grows and its profile grows, it is not beyond reason that it will take on a more global nature, with more subscribers from overseas. I have already seen two segments in the UK bike press about New Zealand bike stories, that I had seen here first. The internet makes the world a very small place indeed.
As I said at the start its a cautionary tale, its unlikely that something similar would happen here, but who knows what the future will bring. I like this site, I get alot from it and try to add something worthwhile every now and again. I hope it never loses the spirit it currently has, but I think as the corporate world finally gets to grips with the internet, places like this might be forced to change in the future.
So there you go, something for the afternoon as they say.
Cheers all.
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Originally Posted by Sniper
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