Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I think they were on here and the student asked why the posts were being deleted....If that is the case I would like the admin to explain this.If not,anyone else please post below the address to send the samples.Thanks,Jeff

The student's professor asked for an explaination yesterday afternoon in a well written post. I responded with my opinion. They were both removed. It seems that someone around here does not like herp research or would like to line their pockets with some university research bucks.

We all know by now that this is not a totally free and open forum but why not help these people in sample collection?? The Admin should realize that developing educated causes can only enhance their product....I think an explanation is needed! Jeff

I did not want to debate this on open forum while we were searching for a solution but I have been having an ongoing dialog with the professor and the problem has been resolved.

Kingsnake does not have anything against science, education or academic research. What we are against is advertising on the discussion forums. We wrote the TOS (http://forum.pethobbyist.com/shared/tos.html) with the hopes of keeping out advertising. Unfortunately, academia fell into the net. I think you all will agree that there is a huge difference between academic research and "marketing research". That's just one example of how one can get caught in the net meant for the other. And it is impossible to try to think of every possible scenario when writing it.

We put our heads together and came up with the solution that when academics need research material, they let us know and state in their message that they have our permission. The professor liked the solution and was very pleased with it. It is also a way that you all can know that it is a legitimate request

Hopefully you will soon see the post back up and you all can send your sheds to them. We didn't intend to stiffle that but did have to find a way to still have the rules to control the others that look to take advantage of a loophole. Please trust us that our intentions are in the right place

Ginger Sanders
PHGinger
www.pethobbyist.com

Edited on October 14, 2003 at 19:42:35 by PHGinger.

The first step in admitting a mistake was made reasonably(though I still dont see why this couldnt have been resolved in a simple follow-up).How long will restoration take? Will this continue to happen? How are we to feel that censorship is the rule not the exception?? As a scientist I am trained to question EVERYTHING.Where and how do we as a community supposed to file our complaints? Are we even allowed to have any??Jeff

This is not a matter of restoration. The professor was going to ask the student to repost using the new guidelines. I don't know when it is going to happen but I'm sure it will.

This is not about censorship and should not be construed as such. It is about the terms of service that everyone who posts on Kingsnake agrees to abide by. This was simply a situation where our rules unintentionally included a group that we did not want to restrict. We moved quickly to remedy the situation and find a good solution for all.

There has always been an easy way for anyone to get help or voice their opinion to us. If you look at the beginning of the forum list on Kingsnake and every other Pethobbyist site, you will see a link for feedback.

I have to openly admit that I should have resolved things with admin behind-the-scenes instead of posting my frustration on the forum. I am "the professor" and I am currently teaching a senior level cell biology class. One aspect of this class involves a research project that each student conducts. Since my interests are in population genetics (and behavioral ecology) and investigating patterns of geographic variation in snakes, I decided to have each student pick a species and conduct their own phylogeographic analysis using molecular characters (RFLPs, sequencing). I had suggested that they post some messages on kingsnake.com as there are a bunch of active and professional herpetoculturists/herpetologists that are always great about helping in these types of projects. When I found out that my students posts were getting deleted, I immediately got pretty fired up, and like so many times before, I vented on the forum instead of trying to professionally resolve this outside of the forum and directly with the admin team. I have expressed my sincere apology to Ginger for acting immature in this way. Their intentions are legit, and they are just trying to avoid the exploitation of the forums by commercial businesses that are trying to "do business" where they should not (take it to the ads). To the defense of kingsnake.com, it would be difficult to start trying to make exceptions, however, they came up with a great solution for solicitations of a strictly educational objective. I am tight for time but I would like to thank Ginger and the rest for coming up with a solution that will work very well. You will likely see another post for shed skins soon once I can forward the "rules" (i.e., how to properly post) to my students. Cheers and if you see the post again, please, please do help with this project and get involved. We appreciate it very much. Cheers and have a great day!
Chris

Christopher K. Carmichael, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Biology
Department of Natural Sciences
Malone College
515 25th Street, N.W.
Canton, OH 44709
Tel: 330-471-8175

I know they likely dont want to hear it, but PUBLIC commondations mean so much more than critical analysis.Leave this post here to remind us all that we are all imperfect,that this may eventually be a forum for the users! Dare I say, you/we can learn from this....Jeff