Hi All,
I don't know if you've seen this or if you received the email they sent out to announce it but ACA has added a forums feature to their website.
Normally I wouldn't go advertising other forums sites but I'm not here trying to get rich so it's no big deal to me if they want to be in the forums business.
The good news, it isn't Facebook and you've got direct access to factory people that have access to all of the most current info. Dale and Jody have been awesome to deal with, as has Chad.
The bad news, factory run forums usually have a hard time processing complaints made out in the open. Let's say you have fuel tanks in a late model plane that are leaking and you're super pissed. You can post it to the factory site but they're not going to be happy that you came and crapped in their house. As a guy that has run forums sites for a number of years, I've seen this and it's bad for the factory's reputation when they start censoring or manipulating content because it's not flattering for them. Maybe ACA will be different but it's a hard situation for them to manage. There are other issues but that's the biggy.
Another issue, if you want to discuss an STC or something that was done with field authorization, will they allow those conversations to be hosted in their forums? Wood spar wing discussions?
Forums are something that usually seem appealing to manufacturers but all of that access to customers can sometimes be too much and how ACA handles it can be problematic.
To be honest, in general I don't condone people that use forums to incite a riot against a manufacturer just so they can try to twist the manufacturer's arm in a dispute, I usually delete those types of posts and tell people to work it out privately. But I will allow open discussions of problems so long as they are done in a fair and civil fashion. Decathlon fuel tanks leak and people spend a lot of money, mush earlier than they probably expect, to make repairs that they shouldn't have to pay for.......we can discuss that here so long as we're not resorting to pitchforks and torches although I understand how people going through it would want to do that.
We'll stick around and see how it goes, if they take a more liberal approach then maybe we'll hand off forums management to them sometime in the future.
Would love to hear your opinions on this.
Bart
I don't know if you've seen this or if you received the email they sent out to announce it but ACA has added a forums feature to their website.
Normally I wouldn't go advertising other forums sites but I'm not here trying to get rich so it's no big deal to me if they want to be in the forums business.
The good news, it isn't Facebook and you've got direct access to factory people that have access to all of the most current info. Dale and Jody have been awesome to deal with, as has Chad.
The bad news, factory run forums usually have a hard time processing complaints made out in the open. Let's say you have fuel tanks in a late model plane that are leaking and you're super pissed. You can post it to the factory site but they're not going to be happy that you came and crapped in their house. As a guy that has run forums sites for a number of years, I've seen this and it's bad for the factory's reputation when they start censoring or manipulating content because it's not flattering for them. Maybe ACA will be different but it's a hard situation for them to manage. There are other issues but that's the biggy.
Another issue, if you want to discuss an STC or something that was done with field authorization, will they allow those conversations to be hosted in their forums? Wood spar wing discussions?
Forums are something that usually seem appealing to manufacturers but all of that access to customers can sometimes be too much and how ACA handles it can be problematic.
To be honest, in general I don't condone people that use forums to incite a riot against a manufacturer just so they can try to twist the manufacturer's arm in a dispute, I usually delete those types of posts and tell people to work it out privately. But I will allow open discussions of problems so long as they are done in a fair and civil fashion. Decathlon fuel tanks leak and people spend a lot of money, mush earlier than they probably expect, to make repairs that they shouldn't have to pay for.......we can discuss that here so long as we're not resorting to pitchforks and torches although I understand how people going through it would want to do that.
We'll stick around and see how it goes, if they take a more liberal approach then maybe we'll hand off forums management to them sometime in the future.
Would love to hear your opinions on this.
Bart
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