Your thoughts...banning resort skier for public comments?

[smiTTy]

This entire thread and subsequent post by Stephen Kircher simply blows my mind. Just the simple fact that he felt that he could come to TGR and write some PR-friendly justification of his company’s actions shows just how clueless he really is. Yes, there was some backpedaling in his statement, but the overall tone was in DEFENSE of their actions and threatening further action if messages about Sugarloaf are not “constructive”.

WAKE UP!! Internet forums are not here to provide feedback to your corporation! If you can glean something from the posts then more power to you, but people need to be allowed to speak their minds in a public place.

I have no intention of skiing Sugarloaf anytime soon, or ever, but this is seriously out of line and has the potential to lead to a lot of other issues. We need to draft a statement explaining this entire situation, and then post that statement on every maggot-run blog, forum, and web 2.0 outlet possible. I know some of your blogs out there have the potential to be seen by a wide audience and maybe even picked up by a mainstream source.

Keep up the fight splat! Any writers out there want to craft an AP worthy piece? The maggot collective is a powerful force to mess with, and right now we need to flex a little muscle.


Oh, and my name is Kevin Smith. Just try finding me on Google…I dare you!

[Patches]

Legally, can they ban people for saying bad things about their resort?

Seems kind of un-American.

[telepow]

Bend Over You're Now Exiled!

[BigDaddy]

...Any writers out there want to craft an AP worthy piece? ...

I think somebody quite worthy is on this... Hopefully Steve can cut through all the BS and get the facts. I can't wait to see what is really going on.

do i have an opinion? no, i'm just here to spam my website and bring in more $$$ with it.

oh, wait, it's not bringing in any money. well, there goes that theory.

i do have an opinion, but it's important to get the facts first. there's three sides to every story...his, hers, and the truth. if everything's true, if the poster made a (weakly, if you ask me) critical comment and was subsequently banned, it's a measure of retribution and idiocy in the ski world that i don't think i've ever seen, and i've seen some pretty freakin stupid stuff. i mean, really. and these guys are public relations PROS?


anyway, i'm looking into it for a story. and if i write it up, i'll post it here so you jongophobes aren't misled into clicking on some other website. god forbid.

If it's a good story, I may even check out his website.

[skircher]

Clearly, I cannot respond to all the above posts and I understand clearly my answers have not been well received or in some cases misinterpreted.

I certainly empathize with everyone who is concerned with any curtailment of free dialogue on these forums. Again, if you will look at the numerous activity I and others from Boyne have had on other forums you will see I fully respect this new medium and those who participate in it actively. I do personally think that for this to be even more effective civility should be carried in the tone of the conversations.

Let me state clearly, posting negative comments about us will not be cause for this type of action under our long-standing season pass policy.

Those comments were not the sole cause in this case, as I understand it.

The individual wanted to keep this between him and Mr. Costello and therefore I cannot comment on the other reasons this action was taken.

However, seeing the misunderstanding of the events and the perception that censorship occurred solely on the comment made, it is clear that most of you do not understand the background events of the people involved. Much of which I do not even know myself.......

Your reactions make sense to me and even though the harsh words hurt.

I personally questioned several days ago why this seemed to be the appropriate response and asked for the meeting of the folks involved out in Maine to put this behind them - hopefully with full reinstatement of privileges for this young man.

In addition, I agree with all of you that taking away privileges for comments alone is not the correct next step. Engaging in mutual understanding and hopefully constructive dialogue should be in my opinion and will be reiterated to the senior mgt team.

We want and encourage constructive feedback and understand that this forum and others is meant to be free flowing. We hope for that feedback to be constructive and respectful.

The feedback here is appreciated albeit painful to read, as it is clear our team over reacted in an emotional state.

Unfortunately, my answers only seemed to fuel some of your concerns about censorship. I apologize for our team's actions, that perception and for doing a poor job of communicating - I maybe should have waited a few more hours before posting and gotten a cup of coffee.

Again respectfully submitted,

SK

[IrieRon]

And all this time I thought Boyne was simply a harmless crappy hill in Michigan.

[RocketMan]

However, seeing the misunderstanding of the events and the perception that censorship occurred solely on the comment made, it is clear that most of you do not understand the background events of the people involved. Much of which I do not even know myself.......

So you're defending the action but you don't know the real reason it was done?

[skibumnh]

Someone needs to consolidate this and post something on consumerist.com and submit any resulting article to digg.com

[TJ.Brk]

They have a facebook page. Maybe someone should start a group on facebook about boycotting Boyne

[Neal0301]

SK,

A for effort.

D for judgement.

[likwid]

Summarizing quickly here....

So something else happened in the mean time between the post and his pass being refunded... and said revoked pass holder doesn't want it to be made public, YET he goes onto the forum he posts on and changes his name to exiled?

This is too fucking weird.
Someone get the dude in question to post on here and tell us why his pass was revoked then.

[Neal0301]

I think we need Dateline NBC to help us out here. Maybe Chris Hansen can catch us a predator??

[rideit]

Popcorn time.

[Neal0301]

Popcorn time.

I'll bring the butta

[likwid]

Popcorn time.

Salt?
Butter?
Harpoon Leviathan Imperial IPA?

[miketheskier]

I think whats happened here is that they are trying to save face and prevent further bad PR, understandably so. The end result it seems is that the person who got his season pass revoked and banned for life will be able to ski the resort again.

Realistically, you can only ask that a corporate body does things to an extent. Their action in the beginning was overly harsh, very protectionist and generally not well-thought out. However, between the lines of PR bullshit it seems to me that he is apologising for what happened, and would like to move on.

[TJ.Brk]

Clearly, I cannot respond to all the above posts and I understand clearly my answers have not been well received or in some cases misinterpreted.

I certainly empathize with everyone who is concerned with any curtailment of free dialogue on these forums. Again, if you will look at the numerous activity I and others from Boyne have had on other forums you will see I fully respect this new medium and those who participate in it actively. I do personally think that for this to be even more effective civility should be carried in the tone of the conversations.

Let me state clearly, posting negative comments about us will not be cause for this type of action under our long-standing season pass policy.

Those comments were not the sole cause in this case, as I understand it.

The individual wanted to keep this between him and Mr. Costello and therefore I cannot comment on the other reasons this action was taken.

However, seeing the misunderstanding of the events and the perception that censorship occurred solely on the comment made, it is clear that most of you do not understand the background events of the people involved. Much of which I do not even know myself.......

Your reactions make sense to me and even though the harsh words hurt.

I personally questioned several days ago why this seemed to be the appropriate response and asked for the meeting of the folks involved out in Maine to put this behind them - hopefully with full reinstatement of privileges for this young man.

In addition, I agree with all of you that taking away privileges for comments alone is not the correct next step. Engaging in mutual understanding and hopefully constructive dialogue should be in my opinion and will be reiterated to the senior mgt team.

We want and encourage constructive feedback and understand that this forum and others is meant to be free flowing. We hope for that feedback to be constructive and respectful.

The feedback here is appreciated albeit painful to read, as it is clear our team over reacted in an emotional state.

Unfortunately, my answers only seemed to fuel some of your concerns about censorship. I apologize for our team's actions, that perception and for doing a poor job of communicating - I maybe should have waited a few more hours before posting and gotten a cup of coffee.

Again respectfully submitted,

SK

Steve. You don't get it. All of us skiers/snowboarders have watched major skiing companies like yourself forget that it is us skiers that keep you afloat. So what if they guy posted comments about the resort you didn't like. Just ban him from the chatroom. Instead you ban him from the mtn. And with that your company committed one of the "7 Deadly Skier Sins".

Now many Veteran's gave up allot to defend Freedom of Speech. You just took a health shit on it.

[ian9139]

Clearly, I cannot respond to all the above posts and I understand clearly my answers have not been well received or in some cases misinterpreted.

I certainly empathize with everyone who is concerned with any curtailment of free dialogue on these forums. Again, if you will look at the numerous activity I and others from Boyne have had on other forums you will see I fully respect this new medium and those who participate in it actively. I do personally think that for this to be even more effective civility should be carried in the tone of the conversations.

Let me state clearly, posting negative comments about us will not be cause for this type of action under our long-standing season pass policy.

Those comments were not the sole cause in this case, as I understand it.

The individual wanted to keep this between him and Mr. Costello and therefore I cannot comment on the other reasons this action was taken.

However, seeing the misunderstanding of the events and the perception that censorship occurred solely on the comment made, it is clear that most of you do not understand the background events of the people involved. Much of which I do not even know myself.......

Your reactions make sense to me and even though the harsh words hurt.

I personally questioned several days ago why this seemed to be the appropriate response and asked for the meeting of the folks involved out in Maine to put this behind them - hopefully with full reinstatement of privileges for this young man.

In addition, I agree with all of you that taking away privileges for comments alone is not the correct next step. Engaging in mutual understanding and hopefully constructive dialogue should be in my opinion and will be reiterated to the senior mgt team.

We want and encourage constructive feedback and understand that this forum and others is meant to be free flowing. We hope for that feedback to be constructive and respectful.

The feedback here is appreciated albeit painful to read, as it is clear our team over reacted in an emotional state.

Unfortunately, my answers only seemed to fuel some of your concerns about censorship. I apologize for our team's actions, that perception and for doing a poor job of communicating - I maybe should have waited a few more hours before posting and gotten a cup of coffee.

Again respectfully submitted,

SK

So you initially supported their decision even though you don't know the reason for it?
And now you are asking them to review their decision, as well as apologizing for their actions, even though you don't know the reasons for it?

Even though no new information concerning the decision has come to your attention, you have seemingly reversed your position on the decision that the management team made.



Congratulations Maggots,

There is more work to be done.

[sierraskier]

Clearly, I cannot respond to all the above posts and I understand clearly my answers have not been well received or in some cases misinterpreted.

I certainly empathize with everyone who is concerned with any curtailment of free dialogue on these forums. Again, if you will look at the numerous activity I and others from Boyne have had on other forums you will see I fully respect this new medium and those who participate in it actively. I do personally think that for this to be even more effective civility should be carried in the tone of the conversations.

Let me state clearly, posting negative comments about us will not be cause for this type of action under our long-standing season pass policy.

Those comments were not the sole cause in this case, as I understand it.

The individual wanted to keep this between him and Mr. Costello and therefore I cannot comment on the other reasons this action was taken.

However, seeing the misunderstanding of the events and the perception that censorship occurred solely on the comment made, it is clear that most of you do not understand the background events of the people involved. Much of which I do not even know myself.......

Your reactions make sense to me and even though the harsh words hurt.

I personally questioned several days ago why this seemed to be the appropriate response and asked for the meeting of the folks involved out in Maine to put this behind them - hopefully with full reinstatement of privileges for this young man.

In addition, I agree with all of you that taking away privileges for comments alone is not the correct next step. Engaging in mutual understanding and hopefully constructive dialogue should be in my opinion and will be reiterated to the senior mgt team.

We want and encourage constructive feedback and understand that this forum and others is meant to be free flowing. We hope for that feedback to be constructive and respectful.

The feedback here is appreciated albeit painful to read, as it is clear our team over reacted in an emotional state.

Unfortunately, my answers only seemed to fuel some of your concerns about censorship. I apologize for our team's actions, that perception and for doing a poor job of communicating - I maybe should have waited a few more hours before posting and gotten a cup of coffee.

Again respectfully submitted,

SK

Respectfully, I still don't think you really get it. Free speech means you can't censore it or take action if you don't like the tone. It's either free or it's not. People will form their own opinions about your resort/company as well as the credibility of the poster/naysayer/person you have a disagreemet with. And you/your companies actions will dictate what others think. So far the perception is those actions were 1) a very crude and insensitive statement in a press release relating to the skier death 2) unfairly revoking a passholders privelages for negative comments made about the resort. So at the very least your company is REALLY bad at PR and communicating the facts, and if what's been said is actually true, you guys are censoring free speach and unfairly penalizing others, which is totally unnacceptable. I suggest you go away and just fix the situation through action, rather than pontificate without all the info or any real solution. Respectfully, cut the bullshit, take some responsibility, do what's right and eveything else will work out. Or, continue to do what you're doing see how people react.

[masterofgreenbeans]

My condolences to the family and friends who lost their daughter, sisiter, teamate and best friend. I can not comprehend the pain as I have never lost anything so precious.
SMR has muffed this terribly as pointed out by many previous posts and possibly needs some direction on how to correct or save at least some modicum of decency.
Free skiing for life at all Boyne resorts for the guy you completely mistreated and his immediate family.

[rideit]

Cosmic, I guess you missed the fact that Boyne owns operates Big Sky, Crystal, etc, this isn't an EC thing at all.
And Sugarloaf is a great mountain, being absolutely tarnished by this abominable reactionary behavior...your resort could be next!
This must be addressed.
Free speech MUST prevail, period.

[BigDaddy]

How ironic is it that Powder's article about Boyne Corp's Big Sky was titled, "The Big Lie"?!:



PS- I still don't hear anything in SK's posts that make this okay or even semi-sensible.

[likwid]

Great? I would go that far...

Maybe "pretty ok".

[carbs]

SK-

So if I'm getting this right you just berated us for making a judgment about this situation without having all the facts, while at the same time you just did the same thing. Kinda like a pot calling the kettle black huh?

[basinbeater]

Condolences to the family who lost the victim.
Fuck Boyne. I'll ski at other resorts. Sorry SK, your responses are too little too late and do not convince me that the culture in your corporation that is responsible for crappy decisions such as this one has changed. Corporate culture doesn't simply change because you got called out, and are now trying to make nice. Good luck learning your little PR lesson, hopefully it will lead to real change.