While Saabnet.com is a great concept, the bulletin boards are censored and
if you don't follow Scott's strict 'blinkering' board posting rules he
blocks you from posting. I was blocked from posting on Saabnet because I set
up my C900 Workshop website which contains online web-based forums, mailing
lists, yahoo groups, etc. and stacks of reference material links which goes
against 'Saabnet.com bulletin board posting policy', and the few posts I was
able to get into the Saabnet.com C900 bulletin board all contained a link to
my own website (since Scott's boards provide the facility to add a web link,
etc. with each posting).

That's fine as it's Scott's call as to what he does with his site, but I
don't condone the approach as he is basically forcing people to use his site
and not go to alternatives (and there are plenty more besides the site I
have set up).

The emails I exchanged with Scott were fairly terse and the tone seemed to
be one of 'well if you do something which competes with Saabnet you will be
blocked from posting'. If I was directly 'competing' I'd try to steal his
commercial advertisers but I have a rule of not having any commercial
advertising connected to my C900 Workshop site as the site is open to
*everyone* with an interest in C900's, not just those people who Scott
thinks are not trying to usurp visitors to his site.

All that aside, the best way to initially track down information for
something you're not sure about is via Google and by asking here in this
newsgroup. I've discovered a lot of other sites with chatrooms, bulletin
boards, online forums, etc. which Saabnet doesn't have any info about
through searching via Google for info on various Saab-related topics,
usually with fairly good results. Some of those I've added to the links page
on my C900 Workshop site, and almost all I have invited to join the Saab
C900 Webring that I set up (though almost none have accepted the invitations
- once again that's up to each website owner to decide to join or not).

Regards,

Craig.

PS. The other thing which bothers me about Saabnet is that Scott has a great
photo gallery system going, but for the time I've known about his site he
hasn't been accepting any new image submissions! No idea why. I just accept
it and save up the pics I take of my Saab's and the work I'm doing on them
for a time in the near future when I start creating my own Saab image
galleries and (hopefully) get a public web-based Saab C900 pic gallery
started.

Can we ban everyone in the same subnet as his newshost, just to be sure?

Hey bud! How's the new weapon of mass destruction? I must confess to having
looked at a Nissan Silvia recently - one of the older twin turbo models. It
was an auto though, but would still have been fun. I looked at one about
four years ago, but bought a SAAB instead ... Something about gold wheels
not going down too well for a guy like me in a place like I live ...

Speaking of BBs - there are several others out there, going by names as
diverse as 900 Aero, SAAB Central, SAAB Scene, UK SAABs, etc. I find if I
want to know something quickly and want a correct answer (short of rining my
excellent mechanics, of course), I know where to make my post. If I want to
share that advice, I can go to BBs :)

Paul

1989 900 Turbo S
http://saab.go.dyndns.org/

I doubt you will be able to get this removed from the archives.  For
the most part this message would disappear from most news servers
within a week.  As long as we continue to reply to this thread, the
origional message will stay alive.

Freedom of speach is a great freedom that comes with the ultimate
power to ignore the speaker.  I would rather have the freedom of
speach and have to deal with a few posts that irritate me, as opposed
to being censored.

Freedom of speach means you must give your opponent the opportunity to
express his views.  If you're not willing to do that, the you need to
keep quiet too.

My 2 cents worth.

NIP

"Drive a liberal crazy, work hard and be happy!"

You realize this may be a fishing expedition so wazzizname can collect
IP addresses proactively.

Dave "I'm just saying...and not caring..." Hinz

<<snip a bunch of self promotions>>

While the forums at saabnet may be censored, the saabnet site is still the
single best collection of SAAB information on the web that I am aware of.
Your site may be good for C900 enthusiasts, Craig.  I cannot say since I am
not one.  OTOH, I have used the saabnet site for getting information about
9000's and NG900's for years and never once felt the need to post to the
fora there.

I have also successfully advertised and sold 2 cars through the Classifieds
section there at a total cost to me of $50.  I suppose I could have sold the
cars at zero cost on some other site or via spamming newsgroups, but the
amount of traffic at the saabnet site got the cars sold quickly and at the
prices I wanted.

I feel for those people who have been rebuffed by the saabnet owner/censor,
but that does not mean that the site is not a valuable resource or that
anyone who thinks that it is one is a "stooge."

Otherwise, better paint me a stooge...

-Fred W