I think he meant owned as in belonging to...

Who pays for the hosting of the usergroup?
Who set the rules for posting on the usergroup forums?
Has the usergroup ever removed anything from their site at the request of Plusnet?

Ignoring the law for the moment who does own PUG? It is PN who supply the hardware, the website, forum and bandwidth. They are the ones who chose the members from their list of customers. It is in their power to disband it at a stroke. They have the power to dismiss people from the group. Is it therefore not true that they own and run it?

It is true that all the members could resign from their positions but that still wouldn't disband the group because PN would still have the power to put new people into various positions.

In all honesty I don't care who or how the PUG are run, but your post is extremely defensive and is trying to portray that you are an independent group when it is anything but.

Whether the Chairman is ill or not should also make no difference to the disclosure of their name. The person is still considered the Chairman and been put or elected into that role and hence should be accountable. If you can't provide his/her name then provide the name of the acting chairman.

Why does the PUG play the cloak and daggers game? As you and others have repeatedly said - it is only an ISP at the end of the day and not the end of the world so why this secrecy.

As a comparison, here's a short history of Freedom2support.net which is the self elected User Group for the F2S ISP.

Can Ian safely say that they are similar in the way that they operate?

<Quote>

On this page you will learn about the history of our website, along with why we are here, our mission statement and how we were formed.

In the Beginning

Freedom2Support was first thought of in April 2002 by Justin Johnson when after discussion with several users on ADSLGuide, he thought such a site would benefit freedom2surf customers. In the initial planning stages of the site, Justin set up a web page where users could register their interest in the site, to asses whether there was enough demand for such a site.

After having encouraging feedback from freedom2surf customers who were interested in such a site Justin then put these plans into action and invited several prominent members of the freedom2surf user base to join the Freedom2Support Team which would later handle the running of the website.

The name Freedom2Support was then decided to be used, after checking with freedom2surf that this name was okay and would not cause any confusion into thinking we were an official freedom2surf site, the domain was registered, and work on the site started to begin. Launch day for Freedom2Support was 17th May 2002, with a lot of promising feedback being received on opening day.

The Place to Be

Since the start of our website we've worked hard to improve the website and expand our offerings as the freedom2surf user base and product range has expanded. We've invested in new scripts where we feel they will help the running and end user experience of the website and will continue to do so for the life of Freedom2Support.

Our website is now recognised by a large section of the freedom2surf user base as the place to go for all the latest freedom2surf news and views. Our News Mailing list continues to grow at at least 25 users per week and our forums have thousands of regular users with almost 25,000 posts.

Despite Freedom2Support not being officially connected with freedom2surf, representatives from the ISP do post on our forums to give our users updates, and help out users along with the rest of the community.

Community First

We've had a few offers for our website and offers of free hosting in exchange for banners, along with members of the Freedom2Support Team being approached to help another ISP out at their own support site due to the success of our website thanks to the outstanding work the team has put in over the years.

All such offers from companies and individuals have been turned down however. We've always, and will always continue to put Freedom2Support and freedom2surf users before anything. We have a strict policy of no advertising on Freedom2Support, and this will always be stuck to. To put it simply, we're not interested in making financial gains from the website.

</Quote>

Text taken from http://www.freedom2support.net/about/

What business is it of yours anyway. You are not a member of PUG. You are not eligible to be represent by PUG.

Hi

I was not in the least surprised that mark joined plusnet , even though i remember him stating that he had not intention of working for plusnet etc ,
And his heavy handed approach on the portal forum when he became a mod there.
So all i can say dont listen to a word most of the mods say on the portal , as clearly shown they are the ones with a agenda..
To be honest i wont even wish him good luck in the job..

Edited by sattaff (Sat 07-Oct-06 18:49:30)

Its hosted on a separate server at PN called usertools.

Both the PUG site and its sister site UserTools (content of which is also all run by PN customers not PN as people often wrongly assume). Both are run by the users for the users.

afaik PN gave this server over to the customers several years ago.. and its the one where all the stuff like customer tutorials and the exchange checker (again a tool written by PN customers) resides.

A few customers have access to change content etc - but afaik the main person in charge of it is Colin since hes the one with the most knowledge on that side of things.

These 2 sites get a hell of a lot of hits per day and to host the site and content ourselves would cost an arm and a leg.

PUG did discuss the possibility of hosting elsewhere.. but the costs were far too high because of the traffic the sites generate.
I personally dont know the ins and outs of this side of things because its not something I get involved in... but PUG members devote a huge amount of their own personal time, are they also supposed to dig very deep into their own personal pockets too.

IMHO its no different to the fact that idnetters is hosted on an idnet server, dslzone is sponsored by xifos and ace.. or even the fact that pipex gave adslguide a server many years ago. This site also has to carry ads for various ISPs to keep it going.


>> Who set the rules for posting on the usergroup forums?

PUG members did without any input in anyway from the PN staff. PUG are totally responsible for maintaining the site.. and PN staff have no control over the site input, nor are any PN staff moderators. In fact PUG admin has to authorise PN staff as "staff" before they can even have access.

>> Has the usergroup ever removed anything from their site at the request of Plusnet?

I was about to say no... (remembers the capacity report).
But... yes there was once..
That was tiscali LLU list, it was removed after it was found out to be wrong, and tiscali threw a wobbly.
Yes I know for a fact that it was wrong.. and the list that is now shown elsewhere is still wrong and misleading and cannot be relied on.
Take for eg my neighbouring exchange, Cleveleys is NOT tiscali LLU enabled despite being on that list for many months. It is tiscali datastream enabled though.

In reply to:

---

Open your eyes Simon,some people actually find Plusnet a good ISP.

---

Unfortunately for Plusnet, in ever declining numbers it seems:
http://www.adslguide.org.uk/isps/compare.asp?aol=ON&bt=ON&plusnet=ON&tiscali=ON&cmp_action=Compare

and the even starker reality
http://www.adslguide.org.uk/isps/compare.asp?ndo=ON&plusnet=ON&zen=ON&cmp_action=Compare

Edited by lodge (Sat 07-Oct-06 20:50:55)

>> the website, forum ... etc

No they dont.. afaik web site content and forum come primarily under the control of colin and mike. I think a couple of the tutorial team members may have had some access.. and Liam had some sort of access for a while (now removed).

>> They have the power to dismiss people from the group.

Nope.
Dismissal is laid out in the constitution under section 3.
Dissolution of PUG is also laid out under section 8
http://usergroup.plus.net/constitution.php

tbh if they did do something like that and dismissed or disbanded anyone or PUG.. dont you think that would hit this forum.. Then that would really give someone something in these particular forums something to talk about. :/

Also if there ever should be something that I felt should be brought to the attention of the users, and PN did try to stop it, then I would quite happily host it on my own site.
- Remember capacity... I provided those figures for a long time from my site.
and yes whilst my site may be hosted on PN at present.. this wouldn't stop me moving it elsewhere if I needed.
I'm also sure theres plenty of other sites that would probably host something juicy anyhow.
Therefore PN would not be doing themselves any favours if they did try to restrict us.

There is no great secrecy, Ive explained things as best as I can what I know.. although there are such things which we do get involved in which are NDA'd such as testing of new platforms, tools, and occasionally may get told of products before they are to be announced to the general public.

Yes some of us may have originally been chosen to form PUG by Ian Wild.. but PN regs at the time will possible remember that those that were asked, were the ones that were most often in here and the portal forums devoting their own time to helping other users anyhow, and often had some form of technical knowledge or background.

I hardly think I was chosen because I was very vocal about them lighting more capacity... or about my comments on how all PN customers should be advised of the reduction in costs. Believe it or not I was in here harping on about this long before pr100 took over. I even managed to get a sticky up in here advising customers to downgrade to the

Me thinks the Tiscali LLU list had 'planned' exchanges on it and that is why they got the hump.

Must admit thats what I thought at first too.

However,
Take for eg Cleveleys which was marked down on that list as already enabled
or even my own exchange which was marked as not yet enabled but due 01/05/2006
Neither of them are tiscali LLU enabled yet..

I just picked another - (cause its where a relative lives and I know the phone no) -
Cheltenham.. which also doesnt appear to be enabled either despite that being on the list too.

Then take Luton which is tiscali LLU enabled, yet it doesnt appear on the list at samknows.