I posted a link on the PF to the EnergyTalk forum for someone who was looking to buy some Lifepo4 Cells and suggested they speak to the guys involved with the groupbuy. To my surprise the post was held for moderation, I suspected that it may be due to me posting a link so I reduced it to just the word “energytalk” and that was also put aside for review so could only be the word energytalk on their blacklist.
Any idea what the Admins on the PF have against the Energytalk forum?
PF is a business forum that serves the PF store. So conversation on the forum can only promote what they sell, it’s in no way free fair or open.
They used to delete threads and posts like crazy when people were having issues with their Hubble batteries which they were selling like hotcakes.
I think they gave up on promoting the batteries as the faults started popping up on other forums like myBB which they can’t control.
So yeah, it’s just an advertising board, nothing else. Most of the members are none the wiser though.
The manager(s) of that forum is concerned that we might recruit their members, so they have filtering in place to make sure it doesn’t happen. Even private messages are policed.
Re Hubble: They are moving up. They implemented support for DVCC and official support will be in Venus 3.00. They have quite an ingenious way of dealing with overcharging (instead of disconnecting the DC bus, they have a DC/DC converter that kicks in). The guy I have been dealing with is very clued up and quick to respond. And they have many different models as well, some are NMC, some are LiFePO4. Really have nothing against them.
Do have a problem with people who treat my friends badly though… they can take a long walk off a short pier.
Edit: In fact, this issue is so well known that we included it as point 13 in our terms of service.
Edit 2: If you desperately need to include a link to this site, use an URL shortener, like Bitly. It’s not guaranteed to keep you out of trouble, but it should avoid the filter.
Edit 3: Now that I think about it, there was a time when “PF” was one of the common search terms on this site. Almost as if someone periodically checked for it… 
Indeed, there is a good reason I often refer to that country as “Mordor”, because of the all-seeing eye attitude.
hahahahahahahha!!! we have a snitch between us, we have a snitch 
Of course you can also do it with google. Just add site:energytalk.co.za to your search terms. This is often a much easier way to find contents on a site. Especially in Mordor where the search function was incredibly poor, and always started penalising you with a timeout after the third try.
Edit: They missed one!
I used to go there occasionally and searched Victron to see how they force-change the narrative and/or to see how the advice given really has gone down since you & Jaco “left”. That search just made me sooo frustrated.
On the 4x4 site when someone posts a swear word it changes the word, cant you add that here to replace powerforum with a funny nickname.
Can we add rule 15. Unless the world is shortly to come to an end, it is never necessary to use more than one exclamation mark.
Once done, please edit rule 14. accordingly.
I totally agree!!!
Ag OK!!!
I’m not saying this as a dig on Hubble, though I do think buying an NMC battery is pretty silly. It was just the point where I realised that it’s not an open forum, it’s just an advertising platform for the store.
!!! 
All online forums cost somebody time & money, and so we shouldn’t expect that there’s no price we pay or at least a line we have to toe.
I’m thinking of a good old mailserv list that I used to belong to and which actually survived into this year.
Way back when it was set up so that enthusiasts of a certain musician and his works could chat. But there had to be rules to keep things on topic and to deal with personal attacks. Somebody had to rule on this. Somebody had to modify the code as rich text email clients became common. Somebody had to keep the server running & pay for the connection. And that somebody ended up having the last say on everything, and eventually got older and decided he was no longer willing to spend the time to regulate and host the list.
Even back in the hey day of usenet & IRC, administration was necessary, some servers wouldn’t carry some groups, and etc.
Google actually has filled a lot of those spaces, but I doubt their motivation is altruistic.
If the Internet was ever like ham radio, it isn’t now (and it’s a lot cheaper and you don’t need a license). When you sign up for any forum now, you sit at somebody’s table and they will decide what is acceptable and what is not.
Like Elon Musk?
True true. And I have no issue with what how other people manage their forums, which is why in the last (almost) 3 years we’ve never really discussed that other forum, other than to occasionally refer to it through LotR terminology
I also have no illusions that one day, this forum might go away too. It is the nature of things.
In the interim, the founding principle was that it should be independent from a particular brand, and so far we’re doing fine with that. It is no secret that a great number of us have very blue blood, but from day one the main founder made spaces for the other brands as well.
We also have some other advantages. The server space is a few USD a month. At least one of us was a sysadmin in a previous life (aka career) which helps. And Open Source software drives the thing (the software that PF runs on is commercial). We also made a good decision to use the same software used by the HomeAssistant forums… which means it is actively developed and maintained.
(Truth be told, I simply looked for software with good reviews that was NOT a PHP+MySQL combination… because I have a particular hatred for MySQL… and lucked out ).
+1
I strongly believe that the only reason it is popular is because it is “free”. I put “free” in quotes, because it is only really free if your time has no value. I’ve spent countless hours dealing with MySQL bugs and finding workarounds for its limitations.
All of that is bs, this is a decent place with decent human beings….
Grotnis
