Regarding the new rule

[Victor Banerjee]

To the moderators,

While I personally agree that the forum was deviating from its purpose due to irrelevant and too many queries, I am afraid the new rule actually makes the forum lose its purpose.

The very fact that people are moving to alternate sites like orkut, yahoogroups depicts that people did really use this forum to analyze, compare and decide on companies which cannot done just by describing companies.

The discussions were getting more and more oriented towards Indian companies and probably may have caused the forum look "less global" in nature.

May I suggest creating a new forum for India specific job queries? I volunteer to moderate the same, but need to know the procedure and requisites for creating a new forum.

I also invite other fellow Java Ranchers who would be interested in helping me out with this purpose.

Rgds
Victor.

[Ben Souther]

This is in regard to the new guidelines for our Jobs Discussion forum.
https://coderanch.com/t/31504/Jobs/careers/Guidelines-Job-Discussion
[ September 22, 2006: Message edited by: Ben Souther ]

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

I think you're missing the point. We don't want these conversations on JavaRanch, and the reasons for this have been detailed exhaustively. We want people to go have these conversations on yahoogroups and Orkut and at the bar at the Outback Steakhouse.

Thanks for your offer, but no thanks.

[Ben Souther]

I'm going to make another attempt at explaining the reasons (My reason) for this new guideline....

Mark was right in calling it a guideline; not a rule because there is only one rule here at JavaRanch and that is "Be Nice".
There are plenty of things that can be useful without being nice.
We, the folks who run JavaRanch, along with it's owner, decided unanimously, that discussing companies by name on a public forum is not nice.

Anytime I'm not sure if something complies with the "Be Nice" policy, I apply the "Golden Rule" which states "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". In this case, I asked myself: Would I want my employers (past, present, and future) discussing their opinions of my strengths and weaknesses as an employee among themselves in a public forum for all the world to see? The answer is absolutely "NO".

BUT, a company is not the same as an employee or person, so does this make it OK?

Again, I applied the golden rule and imagined my freelance work growing to the point where I would need to hire some employees to help out.
In this case: Would I want them discussing my company in a public forum for the world to see? Again, it was quite clear: "NO".

My relationship with my employers (past, present, and future) is just that, MY relationship with them. Anything that went on between them and me should stay between them and me.

With this line of thinking and with the other reasons listed in the link above, we have concluded that allowing this type of conversation to continue runs against our policy of being nice and decided to put an end to it.

We have left a thread open in the Jobs Discussion forum open for those who would like an opportunity to explore other options for this type of discussion but we don't want it to happen here.

Please try to understand this and respect this policy.

-Ben
[ September 22, 2006: Message edited by: Ben Souther ]

[amit taneja]

I am not happy with new Policy

Dear moderator/bartenders...
we are not discussing topics out of job

naming the co. also give enlightments/knowldge to lot and lots of ppl and give true wisdom .. i mean someone can tell about his personal experience and save others carreer wheather to join that particular co. or not for career growth !!! and thus saving life of a person ..infact his happiness

by taking co. name we will not be in Ignorance !!!
coz. many co. decieve while giving offerletter about job profile etc etc but later the inner scene is totaly different !!!

even though some thread are added so as the traffic to your website nd making it popular !!!

I LOVE THIS WEBSITE SOOOO MUCH AND FAN OF IT BUT NOW BY DOING SOO YOU INFACT HURT OUR EMOTIONS WHERE WE CAN DISCUSS OPENLY..
YOU HAVE TAKEN OUR FREEDOM IN YOUR HANDS EVEN WHEN WE ARE NOT DOING SOMETHING ILLEGAL

**What you all moderators if in our postion.. YOU WOULD UNDERSTAND OUR POSITION ... and try to understand our career growth ... I think you people are not understanding our career growth path and discussing with co. names save us from going to wrong path ..
Pls Pls understand !! our felling and our career path !!

I hope some of moderators may understand us and can disucss with other moderator to change the policy back

Take it as APPEAL !!!



BEST REGARDS
AMIT

[Jaikiran Pai]

Well, i havent been active in the Jobs Discussions forum, but have visited it some times before. I read the New Policy that has been posted, and it mentions, in one of the reasons behind policy:

3) These discussions are likely to expose JavaRanch to legal issues.

Surely, none of us who have been involved with Javaranch for some time now, would like this to happen. So its logical that such discussions be avoided in the Javaranch Forums.

[Ben Souther]

Thank you, Jaikiran.

That is, indeed, one of our concerns but the main driving force behind the policy was the conclusion that is is not nice to hold this type of conversation in a web forum that is open to the coderanch.

Many people have asked us to understand their point of view.
In an effort to show our understanding, we have left a thread in Job Disucssions open for folks to discuss finding an alternative site for these types of conversations.

We hope that others will show their understanding of our point of view by respecting this new policy and by finding another place to dicuss companies by name.

-Ben
[ September 23, 2006: Message edited by: Ben Souther ]

[paul wheaton]

I think that if this aspect is important to folks, they can start a web site to talk about it.

[Mark Spritzler]

"Amit"

We understand completely, I have worked for some really really bad companies that I wish I knew about beforehand. But I also know that we can be sued and punished for comments someone makes about a specific company. That in and of itself is enough to keep those comments off this site.

Mark

[amit taneja]

Originally posted by Mark Spritzler:
"Amit"

We understand completely, I have worked for some really really bad companies that I wish I knew about beforehand. But I also know that we can be sued and punished for comments someone makes about a specific company. That in and of itself is enough to keep those comments off this site.

Mark

is talking about the co. is wrong ?
what if news paper publish all the reality stuff about different different issues happening globally .. both positives and negatives
and all the magzines are publishing

Here what we discuss is the VOICE OF THE PEOPLE

and i am v.old visitor of this site and i have not seen any single thread posting any rude language for some co.
but yes we people used to discuss that pros and cons of joinging that specific co. from its project point of view .. from its salary and career growth point of view .. from its work culture point of view
and here all the people i see in javaranch are exceptionally Honest and v.helpfull in nature ..

Infact all people follows some basic ethics !!! and are well manared !!

so i don't think any problem that any body can take legal action against you..

Have anybody has taken any action on you !! yet ?

Trust my observation above and please try to change your mind...
else its your wish...
but i m unhappy



Regards
Amit

[Bear Bibeault]

Have anybody has taken any action on you !! yet ?

Waiting until after the fact is too late.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Originally posted by amit taneja:
is talking about the co. is wrong ?

It's not a matter of right and wrong. It is a matter of what can be discussed on JavaRanch going forward.

For example, you can't talk about politics in the MD forum. Meanwhile there are other websites dedicated to politics. Similarly, there are other websites dedicated to talking about companies. Five years ago when I was looking for a job, I used vault.com's boards for this purpose.

[Angela Poynton]

This thread is just retreading the same discussion we had in the thread in JD which was locked because it was going in circles, as far as I can see nothing new has been contributed here.

Amit and everyone else who disagrees with the rule - learn to live with it. It will not be changed. It has been thought about, put to public discussion and then private discussion amongst the staff before an unanimous decision was made. Nobody is saying that there is no value in such discussion, we just don't want them here. The few threads in JD that have stuck to the rules this week have been interesting, compelling and more importantly they have been threads that could relate to a large portion of readers unlike any thread relating to a specific company. This is what Jobs Discussion was meant to be about and this is what we want.