I may as well use this thread to address another concern that crops up from time to time, that negative posts about companies are removed because of some bias held towards them, whether they advertise or whatever. This is not the case. No one checks whether or not a company advertises or is on a favored list or anything like that. The only criteria is that a post follow the established rules in order to be fair to everyone. The explanation in the posting rules is:
It is acceptable to post factual accounts of disagreements (e.g., "My name is John Doe. I worked for XYZ, Inc. They said I'd get paid in 30 days but I still haven't seen a dime after 3 months. I'd advise anyone not to work for them.") but it is NOT acceptable to post accusations ("XYZ, Inc. doesn't pay their contractors and if you work for them you'll get screwed.") Please note that any remark claimed factual but posted under an anonymous (non-Premier) account or without the author's name clearly displayed is still subject to removal at the discretion of site moderators. The balance between informing the community about bad actors and protecting the rights of innocent parties is difficult to maintain. Please be understanding and take care when wording your messages.
The "in a nut shell" explanation is: keep it professional and factual and the post will not violate the rules.
The objective here is to try to focus the discussion on resolving differences and distributing factual information. The best example I can give is where someone posts they have not been paid per agreement, the accused company responds with clarifications as to the circumstances, then the two work out the problem and finish their business with this site acting as the catalyst. Wonderful. In other cases, someone (or a series of people) may post about their negative experience with a company and respond to inquiries by others about it, getting the word out so others are warned. Again, great, so long as the accused is given fair treatment and an opportunity to respond and/or resolve the issues.
On the flip side, there will be people with no interest in solving a problem. Their main goal in posting is to do harm to the targeted person or company. It doesn't matter whether it is a company saying "this person is a lazy dope addict and will screw you over" or an individual saying "this company is a bunch of lying thieves and will screw you over". I'm not going to allow either kind so those types of messages will be removed. Many times these are well-meaning and good people posting and have every right to be feel the way they do, and I can understand and empathise. However, personal feelings must be kept out of what is, in essence, a business problem. In some cases the effect is I am seemingly unduly fair to "bad" people and I get the "why are you supporting these crooks" attitude. I can live with that and just hope they eventually understand the reasoning. In rare cases I even get a 'thank you' when someone realizes they were acting out of emotion instead of good business sense.
