A new forum...

It's rare that a large company will want to reach out and communicate directly with their customers. This is what Dynamite Plant Food has done by sponsoring DG, and I think it's wonderful.

I direct your attention to: http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/f/dynamite/all/

This kind of direct communication between customer and company is a model that all large companies should be emulating.

best,
dave

All I'm getting is a return to my homepage...?

same here

yup, me too.

Oops. Try again now. :)

It worked! Thanks Dave!

worked for me too.

Oh, that's much better--thanks, Dave!

:)

Make sure to reply and say hello. I did see some people have some questions about Dynamite in the free samples thread, so feel free to pose them directly in the new forum.

I have asked a couple questions and am happy with the answers since they seem eager to be open and honest with us..

BUT... yep... that awful word... is this going to be a trend now to provide forums for marketers/sponsers? Will their sponsorship and friendly forum here effect our ability to rate them or their products fairly and without bias thereby devaluing the rating system overall?

There have been forum sponsors for a while now, as well as the companies that pay to list their stuff in Plant Scout and I haven't seen that have any negative effects. And we already have mail order nursery owners who actively participate in some of our forums, and if they sent me a bad batch of plants and wouldn't make things right, I wouldn't have any concerns about leaving them a negative rating! (but since they do actively participate in forums and I feel like I know them, I'd be shocked if they didn't make things right!) I actually think it might serve to keep vendors on their best behavior, after all you don't want to disappoint your gardening friends who you talk to everyday! I look at something like this as a good opportunity to get information "from the horse's mouth" so to speak and a chance to have the inside track on making suggestions for improvements, new products, etc that might benefit me.

You have a valid point ecrane3, but I fear that the more commercial the site becomes, the less objective the rating tools are going to be percieved to be and therefore their value may be diminished.

These tools have been garnering recognition by a lot of different publications and I would not like to see them lessened in any way, real or imagined.

I certainly don't want to see them diminished, either. I created the Garden Watchdog because I wanted an objective place where people could rate mailorder gardening companies. Such a place didn't exist and so I created one. It would be a disaster for that to be diminished in any way.

I see Dynamite's sponsorship as a way for them to reach out to our community, learn from us and teach us things, also.

Will it impact our objectivity? NEVER.

Dave

LOL Dave, NEVER is a long time ! Even if it does not alter our objectivity, I wonder if it affects how that objectivity will be percieved by others.

Will the garden columnists still view it in the same way or will they percieve it to have become biased as a result of commercialism? Ditto for those folks who find the site for the first time and are not familiar with your objectivity or honesty.

Facts are important but perceptions can make or break reputations deserved or not.

Stepping off the box now ☺

Well, having a special forum where companies can interact with DG is, in my opinion, completely separate from the GWD. I will always keep them separate and won't budge on making any changes to the GWD no matter what any sponsor asks for.

I've been tested on this already this past year and I put my foot down. HQ gave me their full support.

dave

But companies already interact with DG. When you post something on Garden Watchdog, they are notified that a comment has been made either for or against them.

As quoted on a GWD post I made from the company I posted about, when asked how they knew I posted a comment on DG:

"To answer your question about how I knew of the posting.
Dave's Garden allows you to post a rebuttal and I received
an e mail about the first post you made."


This message was edited Mar 27, 2008 12:03 PM

GWD is different from the forums