all I know is there's a difference between the community "shutting you down" and the moderators actually shutting you down. You know the worse part is, shamelessly self promoting your own content in a place that you apparently have no respect or regard for.. that's a little.. well, weak. If ya ask me. But no one did! Hah
Some of them hated Chinese lights, describing them as crap, so I started a poll of owners which showed that a specific cheap Chinese light was much more reliable than the mods would have us believe. That didn’t go down well. That was many years ago, before Chinese lights became mainstream.
On another occasion I was banned temporarily by DM51 for suggesting that battery technology could change overnight. Having previously worked in academic research for eight years, I know how unpredictable science is. DM51 had a tantrum because I disagreed with one of his posts.
They also have a rather nasty system. They don’t tolerate anyone complaining about moderation. They say you must contact a mod if you disagree with the way they dealt with someone. They then ban you. It avoids having your disagreement publicly visible.
My view is that the moderation of CPF is unpleasant.
The last few times I visited CPF it was full of anodyne posts, people posting an image of a new light, with others posting “congrats” and such like. Fair enough, but it’s not for me.
CPF had a rule against discussing moderation issues on the main site, but there was a separate site (CPF Underground) where it was ok to discuss such issues. CPFU was not accessible to the public (i.e. you had to enroll an account and log in to read it at all), but it was reasonably well publicized to CPF members.
Luckily a lot of the positive atmosphere is because the community tends to self moderate. I don’t mean by shouting down dissenting voices but rather that most of the posters tend to stay on their best behavior because they want it to stay a positive community.
SB did a fantastic job bringing that attitude with him when he formed the board in the beginning and it’s made things easier for everyone.
Someone is trying to sell their CPF membership? Or do you mean the new admin is trying to get people to join, or to join some free membership tier. I haven’t looked there much in the past 5 years or so, except right after the sale was announced I logged in to wish Greta good luck. But I have a quite old account there with a lot of posts.
I've heard of people selling online memberships to places that are tough to get in to, but anyone can create an account at CPF for free, so why pay for a free membership?