These obviously will be my thoughts and my thoughts only.
I view this forum (general discussion) as a place where everyone - from clients to providers - talks about any topic in the hobby. We discuss things, argue things and converse about things. Disagreement, critique and back and forth are inevitable just like in any online community and/or culture.
The type of tone is typically dictated by the mods and community in these kind of forums. Ie, if you conversed at four chan a decade ago the tone there would be a lot more different than tone used by a College professsor.
The mods are fairly laissez faire here, so yeah.
Now, this forum is for all of those things but one thing that it's not for is ads. It says so in the rules, and I'm a big supporter of that. I'm here to shoot shit, not hear or see an ad or someone trying to get noticed. Thankfully it's not too common but it's also not rare. Some will make a comment about threAD but typically posts don't get removed. So to me that's one part that is a nono. Typically Id treat those posts like I'd treat Google ads on a non ad blocker environment. Scroll through them. But when someone keeps doing those ads I stop trying to read their posts, we are supposed to be here to talk to each other and shoot shit, not get ads or matchmaking. There are dedicated forums and places for ads.
It's like chopping it up on a fridge lovers forum only to have some manufacturer to keep posting pics of them and their fridge in every other post. Eventually I see no reason to converse with them if they manage to turn every post to essentially "buy my fridge it's the best, ya heard? Here's the link in case you forgot my site". I don't want to buy your fridge and I don't want to visit your site. I want to talk anonymously online about fridges, fridge prices, fridge marketing techniques, etc. And I feel that's a fair take.
The general discussion forum isnt a "dear abby", column, nor is it a "providers perspective of things". It's more of a clients and providers just talking about topics. The ratio does not matter that much. We're not in a club. Yes, typically provider perspectives are interesting and always welcome; sometimes they are not relevant to review consumers, sometimes they are more than relevant.
But I don't see it as a goal to have some kind of speicifc engagement. You engage if you want to, just like if you'd talk to your acquaintances. If you don't then you don't. I dont think anyone deserves to be disrespected for entering or not entering discussion, but also I don't see any quota requirements. It's great for providers to have a voice and anyone online should have one. Now, this particular site is geared towards more of a customer voice when evaluating the services, but hearing the sellers perspective is also great. But if providers don't want to interact with the forum because of some critique or a prolonged argument, well, the solution shouldn't be to eliminate critique or prolonged arguments, should it? What I'm saying is, I'm sure engagement would go up with a more sterile discussion, but would a sterile discussion be worth it?
Let's talk about next part. I'm a firm believer in no double standards. Hence, treating both clients and sellers the same way you'd want to be treated yourself. This is indeed a two way business
This means everyone's time is equally important, everyone's safety and security is EQUALLY important. This is one rule I abide by. If I see someone who will not criticize a provider only because it's not a "gentleman" thing to do, on a review site no less, I will call them out. It makes no sense. If someone calls subset of mongers "stupid", but can't do the same for providers then we have a problem. Both clients and providers do bad things, both sides aren't immune from criticism. Both are human beings with feelings. Respect goes both ways. As does criticism. I don't think anyone should get slack cut because of their gender or their profession.
I don't think there's anything bad about disagreeing with others and criticizing their viewpoint. It's a natural part of conversation and argument. As someone who is extremely argumentative and - admittedly - often combative, I generally get stuck at this part for a bit. However when someone starts to get personal or use fallacies of appeal to majority or appeal to authority, they do themselves no favors.
Last but not least, let's address the "clients vs providers " thing. Here we need to be clear. Clients are either paid or prospective customers, for sellers in any biz their goal is to sell and advertise their product/service. A seller will rarely say or admit things that might be detrimental to their bottom line. For example, a seller that requires deposits will typically almost never say "don't pay deposits" to anyone even if it's the right thing to say to someone who wants to eliminate all risk.
So yes, there is a certain bias here and incentive for providers to favor practices that they themselves favor, not think what's best for the client or a subset of clients. So already client best interest and sellers interest diverge. As a customer, I'm not interested in whats best for the seller. I'm only interested what is best for the buyer. I don't care how many fridges you sell or if you don't sell any. That's the reality. But for the seller, I expect you to at least to pretend to care about my wants and needs. After all, I'm the paying customer.
There are many instances in which selers input, while good, is irrelevant to the buyer/reviewer.
As a seller, the last thing you want to do is to tell a client "you think you do but you don't".
The moment I tell the fridge seller I don't want a device that requires an internet connection - it's a fridge after all - and then the fridge seller tries to argue with me that I don't know what I want or that I'm wrong in wanting what I want, I view it as insulting to my intelligence.
On the flip side, it's in the fridge sellers best interest that people don't criticize the smart fridges publicly, because it can hurt their sales. Yet it's in the client's best interest to know what information is sent by your fridge to the server and how that can be detrimental to your privacy or how maybe the company can shut off your device for any reason they want to. And I want a device if bought I can repair myself or even upgrade the firmware myself.
Anyway, you should get the point. The point is while clients and sellers have equal footing to engage in a discussion, sellers especially have a vested interest here and a certain incentive and bias. Clients on here don't have this incentive. We also don't have any incentive to post for "engagement" as the endgoal to show ourselves or our goods. Clients on here post without ulterior motives. So when the discussion comes around as to what's best for the clients, I would think the clients would know best what's best for them, not a seller who typically has an interest at stake. Also, truth and quantative analysis >>>> perception and fluff.
Also one more thing. If someone disagrees with you and your post, your response shouldn't be "you are trying to win the argument" or get personal, I think this is when many of the arguments start going south. It's not really about "winning" the argument or anything. It's about recognizing points and arguing for and against them.
Just my two (long) cents. Cheers.