DVDStripper, commercial tools and their place in the Doom9 forums

[Doom9]

Ok guys, unfortunately I was away when the storm was still blowing and I'm having some PC issues so I've just gotten around to reading those threads. There are going to be some policy changes in the coming days, but before those are implemented, I want to talk them over with the moderator team.
Until then a few comments:
It was unfortunate that a tool that was under development and private testing got so much attention in a public place. I believe that if testing is private, so should the discussion about anything related to testing be. Posts where testers are raving about a program are all borderline to a rule5 violation, hence if anyone should feel the need to do so, they can use a private place.
I did approve MX' announcement of DVDStripper. I knew with the hype prior to the release it wouldn't be the best thing, but someone would've announced it anyway, and if there hadn't been any previous hyping I don't think the announcement would've been a problem.

I have removed all the locked posts on the dvdstripper subject. If you have any problems with registration, or want to express your ethical or moral impression of that program, please use the official forum (http://www.dvdrbase.com/forumdisplay.php?f=177) because that's not the stuff we discuss here. If you feel the need to share your success stories, do also use the official forum because unless you are explicitly asked, you must not use our bandwidth to say how something works for you. If you have any ideas how the program can be used creatively to achieve something special, then that's the place (just like you could discuss registry hacks for IC7/8 to make the program more useful). Let's focus on being creative and pushing the envelope, not on bashing each other's heads in.

I'll continue this after we've had the chance to talk this over internally.

As a last note, let me just remind you of forum rule 16. If you go against what I'm asking for in this post, you'll be eligible for a rule16 strike even if you have not violated any "traditional" rule.

[Doom9]

So here's the follow-up:

Tools in development that are undergoing non public beta or alpha tests are not to be discussed here. For once, that would lead to a lot of "where can I get it" and "me too" requests that are a waste of my bandwidth, and it leads to a lot of unwanted attention in M$ style. We've had this before where products were hyped before release and frankly I don't like it.

If a product is good, the release version will speak for itself. If it isn't, all the pre-release discussion is a waste of my bandwidth and since that isn't free, I won't have it. Also, some people are very good at jumping in on random threads and trying to move them in a direction where they can tool about their "amazing upcoming tool or features for something existing".

Now I know there's a bunch of people out there who'll start screaming "you're all nazis" but that's a bunch of crap. There's no stopping innovation with this at all, it's merely a matter of presentation. There's a bunch of tools that started out from this very forum, but they were not hyped, rather there was constructive discussion on how it could be improved without it sounding like a PR machine in motion. A few good examples: BeSweet, DIF4U, Rejig, etc.