The Old Fairfield Yahoo Group has a new home on YAHOO!!!

[acesneights]

Wyndham_Fairfield_Timeshare_Owners@yahoogroups.com is the open membership mirror of the 10 year old 4000 member group.

People who want a forum that isn't subject to the old moderator's whims now have a alternative.

Unfortunately for the old moderator's "new home" there is no assurance that next month or next year the old moderator's won't tire of his new toy group and decide to close it new members or just nuke it.

At least with Yahoo! there is some mechanism to check owner abuse, with the new group the old moderator is judge, jury, executioner, supreme authority and there is no appeal from his whims and ever changing moods.

At least with TUG there is a financial incentive to maintain the forums and a financial disincentive to suddenly close off new members.

Stan

Edited to remove comments not in keeping with the BBS rules of being courteous to others

 

[Bucky]

I really wanted to ignore this thread but {deleted}. Take it elsewhere please!!!!!!!!!!!!

Edited to remove comments not in keeping with the BBS rules of being courteous to others

 

[mshatty]

Stan,

Your ad hominem attacks about Glenn are uncalled for. Please stop it.

 

[GlennBenscoter]

I just want to ask anyone interest to come and visit, register and use our new home.

Last year the group had no way of accepting new members. I worked with yahoo to make that happen. I believe in the group and it mission to help and educate members in FF and Wyndham. The move was looked at since last fall, investigated and polled. The response was 50% in favor 5% against and 45% did not care. So the move has been made. Membership is close because the group has moved. We did not just move and destroy. We left everything there so present members can use the system and all the facilities just the way they are. Present members have lost nothing at the old home and gained a very robust TUG like new home.

Outside the volunteers that are putting the site in place with posting, Stan is probably the biggest poster as present.

The forums are the focus of our efforts at present but there is an attached web site. Ways of reaching us are http://forums.atozed.com ,
http://forums.FairfieldOwners.org,
http://forums.WyndamOwners.org,
or http://www.FairfieldOwners.org
www.WyndamOwners.org

If you have an interest in Fairfield, come check us out. It is free and there are no commercial ads on the site.

Thanks
Glenn Benscoter

 

[PA-]

Stan,

Your ad hominem attacks about Glenn are uncalled for. Please stop it.

Guess I've been out of the loop. I thought he was referring to Keith Halfpop, the old moderator for that group. And I thought his comment about the site being subject to the whims of one person were correct if he was referring to Keith. Not making a value judgement as to whether his whims were good or bad, just calling it as I see it.

 

[acesneights]

Is Glenn's site really the new home or just another group?

How is that different than now?

The Original Yahoo! Group still has no way of accepting new members. Glenn has retained "ownership" and has used his power as the sole owner to prevent anyone from joining the old Group! And he still retains the power to ban anyone who disagrees with him.

Glenn has created a new site which he claims is the "new home". However, many of the most knowledgeable members of the old site are not members of Glenn's site and the posts there consist mostly of copies of the files and reviews, pictures and floor plans from the old Yahoo! site which Glenn has closed to new members.

Glenn's "mandate" consists of 50 votes over SEVEN MONTHS out of 4000 members in an advisory poll as to whether there was any interest in a new site with new software.

The idea of a move or replacement is Glenn's idea and as he has the sole decision making power over the group (isn't that the dictionary definition of a dictatorship, is the truth an ad hominem attack?) he has persisted in claiming that the Yahoo! Fairfield group has a new home. This is in spite of several new polls which have 100% in favor leaving the old site as is, open to new members.

Glenn believes that having taken over as owner from Keith he has the sole and absolute right to dispose of the intellectual property of 4000 people accumulated over 10 years.

In response to the suggestion to light a candle rather than curse Glenn's darkness, the most active members have created a mirror site which is not under Glenn's control which also has the same files etc which Glenn's new group now has and which were available on the old site, plus most of the active members of the old site.

The archives are no longer accessible to any new members anywhere on the Internet, so from that point of view, the old Yahoo! group that helped thousands of people over the past ten years has ceased to exist. The closest replacement is the new Yahoo! website.

Glenn's new site is just as subject to his whims and fits of pique as the original Yahoo! website.

If Glenn decides to delete his new website or close it to new members or move it to third location, he is free to do so.

But once bitten, twice shy.

People will have to make up their own minds as to whether Glenn or the members of the old Yahoo! website are the true intellectual heirs of the Fairfield Yahoo! group.

But in any case, there is no longer any one place that is the definitive source of all things Wyndham/Fairfield.

Stan

 

[BocaBum99]

Stan,

I have no horse in this race, so I'll just provide a peanut gallery response. If Glenn retains ownership and control of the Yahoo Group, HE is the owner and that entitles him to do whatever with it he wants with it. You seem to believe that the content is public domain. I don't know which end of the spectrum this falls onto. But, the conventional wisdom is that possession is 9/10's the law. You could always copy all of the content to a new group and you could be the dictator of your own domain.

Good luck with your new group. I hope it's successful. But, I do believe that a message board format would be much more useful to the larger Wyndham owners community. That's just my personal opinion.

Don't be bitter. Just out execute.

 

[Conan]

..................
.................
Stan

Edited to remove comments not in keeping with the BBS rules of being courteous to others

What was left in, could well have been deleted too.
My vote if I had one would be to close this thread.

 

[esk444]

Creating a third group to diffuse the power of another group is just going to dilute the utility of all the groups.

 

[PA-]

Stan, you have to admit the format of the new group is vastly superior to the yahoo group. That said, any discussion group is only as good as its people, so if you're correct in stating that the most knowledgeable people left that group and started another, eventually most people will gravitate toward the "better" group. I guess we'll see.

That aside, why the anger? Who cares who "owns" the posts of people? If someone took your posts and charged for them, I guess that might be cause for anger. But you have all the same posts as I understand it, right? So what's the issue?

 

[Lerose]

Thanks

Wyndham_Fairfield_Timeshare_Owners@yahoogroups.com is the open membership mirror of the 10 year old 4000 member group.

Stan

Stan thanks for providing the link to the new Yahoo group. I joined today. When will the data from the old yahoo group be moved to the new one? My opinion is that the old yahoo group should have been left open to new members. The world is big enough to have more than one choice! I joined the bulletin board site but the active postings seem to only be in the section where people want to sell their points.

Linda

 

[Timeshare Von]

So much for Stan's phoney apology weeks ago!

 

[sandkastle4966]

New Board

I love the new board. I no longer have to hear about Harry and Sally arriving at Seawatch! I can peruse as many postings of points as I want. Resort info is easy to find. It is not perfect - over time it will find the "best folder" layout, and rules, etc, etc.

The "old board" has had little new information except pages and pages of posts complaining about moving.

My 2 cents - carryon Glenn.

SandKastle

 

[acesneights]

It's really sad what has happened to the best source of information for new owners of Fairfield/Wyndham on the Internet.

Ten years of an undisputed single best source for information and data shattered by the pique of a single person.

Yes, the owner of record of a Yahoo! group has absolute authority over it regardless of the wishes of every other group member. And it would be different if Glenn had started the Yahoo! Group and had invested ten years of effort by himself. But Glenn was merely the latest in a succession of owners who had tended to the group with the help of dozens of different moderators who did much (most?) of the work.

Now there are at least four distinct sources no one of which really compares to the old Yahoo! Group.

There is the original site which remains under Glenn's ownership, but which has been closed to new members and had its home page turned into an advertisement for a putative "new home". It has all of the information files and a 90,000 message archive but has recently become a repository for complaints about what Glenn has done. With no new members allowed it is not much use for new owners.

There is the clone of the original site which is run by a committee dedicated to restoring as much of the old site as possible. It has most of the most knowledgeable members and everyone who prefers to receive postings by email. The committee seems dedicated to preventing the site from falling into the single owner trap. All of the Old Yahoo! files have been migrated there as well.

There is this site on TUG which has the advantage of a for profit organization which is behind it. TUG will maintain this forum as long as it adds value to TUG and adds an incentive to pay to join TUG. TUG also has the advantage of being the most widely source of information on Timeshares in general and now with the Yahoo! site message archives unavailable has the best archives available to anyone who wishes to sign up for TUG BBS privileges.

Glenn's new site clearly has the best organizational format for all of the files that were on the original Yahoo! site with 62 Forums. It's biggest weakness is the number of Forums which may make it difficult to locate a piece of information that is not clearly categorized. Like the original Yahoo! group is completely controlled by a single owner whose history of ownership may make many people reluctant to commit their time and effort to a site which might be gone or closed at any time.

Best organization of files, photos, floor plans, point charts, any kind of fixed data definitely belongs to Glenn.

Best place to get your questions answered, tossup between the new Yahoo! group and TUG, with Glenn's site hard to evaluate.

Only place for a new owner to get an email (individual or digest) format - the New Yahoo! Group.

Stan

 

[ausman]

Stan,

I'm sick of reading of the infighting, mostly instigated by you.

Please cease.

I have no idea what you want or hope to accomplish by this message.
I also do believe that family fights should be kept in the family home, where ever that may be.

Signed,

Here as Basham
Elsewhere as sommeone100/Mark B.
As Myself -Mark Basham

 

[Dave M]

With my Moderator hat on....

If the fighting and potshots don't stop, this thread will be closed, and the instigator can take this topic somewhere else other than TUG.

Consider focusing on the positives of sites seeking participants. That will likely draw more converts than taking shots at others.

 

[KenK]

You can bet Wyndham loves this. The more sites, the more dilute...and the weaker the owners (?) power over the good & bad of the management company, and the info the sites are supposed to help their members with.

I want to start a site for my T/S management company. Lets see, I'll only open it to owners of the 6th floor, south end, main building......AND GOD FORBID we allow anyone looking for info on that resort, or management company that is not an owner unlock the site doors. Geezzzz do you want the resale value EVEN lower??? Do you want EVERYONE to see the truth???? as some members think see it? Naww....its easier just to avoid those 'type' problems from 'those' type people.

 

[bnoble]

Good to see that the Moderators are on the same page then.

 

[Jya-Ning]

The more sites, the more dilute...and the weaker the owners (?) power over the good & bad of the management company, and the info the sites are supposed to help their members with.

Not quite sure about it. IMHO not everyone fits into the same model, otherwise, there is no way TS can make. The more sites, the more likely an owner if willing will joint into a group, and there always has people belongs to several different groups, in the end, the information will be more opened.

And if there is a need to have power over the management company, I believe most owners will choice the best for his(her) need, thus will still keep the same pressure over the management company. It becomes management company's selection if they want to monitor certain site or not. It generally is not a good idea to have a BBS forum try to over power a comerical for profit management company, and if an BBS owner tries to use that as his(her) agenda, usually the BBS will not run too long. On the other hand, if most of owner has the same feeling about a change made by a management company, and if that company do care, the opion will be overwhelm.

Futhermore, it will reduce the risk of only one site and something happen to that site, remember, most BBS owner treat this as hobby, not professional job.

The only good thing IMHO for a product like FF to be in one site is the rent and sell, since they are generally free ad (at least till this moment), so if all in one site, it can create enough market to smooth the process and give the best benefits to all owners, and provide great convience to the buyer/seller renter/landlord(?).

Jya-Ning

 

[acesneights]

Last word

[Message deleted. This poster ignored my admonition. Dave M, BBS moderator]

 

[KenK]

Too much good brain power on specific Wyndham & general timeshare info for anyone to be growing ulcers from all the folks posting here.
All see all points.

Relax....

I don't see how any new info here is helping anyone except the Tums company make more $$$.

Wheres that sales guy from Wyndham Atlantic City? He has ALL the answers...just call him up....

 

[Dave M]

Since the OP ignored my admonition, I am closing this thread. Those wishing to continue this contentious discussion should do so elsewhere - outside of TUG.