All Forum Posts by: JD Martin

We used to provide everything through Charter but consistently polled our guests and found that no one was using it at all. We cancelled it and went to an all-streaming Roku setup for the last year and had one complaint, but since they were just general complainers (a bug was inside the pool screen, for example) I don't think it would make a difference. This year was an exception but being near Disney we usually get a decent number of foreigners and they mostly watch soccer and cricket and things like that so they have their own streaming subscriptions. 

It just depends on your market. If you're somewhere that you expect a lot of people to stay home, you might want to provide some entertainment. In my market people often leave early and come back late so they generally don't care. 

This is just about just an advertisement more than anything else. I live here and while I personally like the NC side, maybe even a little more than "my" side (I'm in TN), the reason prices are half is because most everything in NC in/near the Smokies is literally in the middle of nowhere. I laugh, and laugh some more, when I see advertisements for VRBO/AirBnbs that claim 15 or 20 minutes to things like Cherokee, and then I see where they're located and it's easily a 30 or 40 minute drive in reality regardless of how the crow flies. 

The best Smokies hiking on the AT is easily more accessible from Gatlinburg than NC. Tail of the Dragon only appeals to real drivers, and it's often so crowded it's more like a senior citizen tour. Fontana is a beautiful lake but looks like a creek compared to Douglas or Cherokee. The rest of what you mention is just as accessible - maybe more so - from the TN side except for Cherokee, and most people interested in Cherokee just stay there.

Markets are what they are because they respond to conditions. SPFG might be overpriced but that doesn't make nowhere shacks in Bryson City (population under 2000) good investments. 

😂 It's in the 50 cent words

 No problem and I didn't say that you did :) . 

I don't know the laws in Minnesota, but when I was in Ohio years ago the utility bills belonged to the property - so if the tenants ran off, the owner was stuck with the bills. So we always made sure landlords got copies of the bills so they knew if the tenants were paying or not. If MN is set up the same way, I would keep on top of it so you don't get a surprise later (or at least can deduct from their deposit).  

 I think you made the right call. A tank without any mechanism for leaching liquids will need to be emptied constantly (think port-o-johns). A thousand gallon tank, which would be about the size of a small-to-average septic tank, with a cabin with 2-4 people staying, is likely going to fill up in less than a week unless they've piped the grey water (washer, shower, kitchen sink) somewhere else like a dry well. I'm surprised they didn't have any kind of leaching mechanism at all; with the new baffle systems they can get leach systems in on some really tight lots. I'd guess the subsurface is solid rock or such hardpan it just doesn't percolate at all, or they're right on a lake, or they were just too cheap to put them in. 

This has been a good thread and there's nothing wrong with a healthy dose of self-examination from time to time, but at the same time some posts have been allowed to remain standing despite being in violation of several forum rules (1. Don't attack staff or moderators in the forums, 2. Don't troll, flame or create incendiary posts meant to stir the pot). Let's not let the thread become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Beyond that, a few random thoughts:

1. No one should mistake the forums for a town hall where all speech is permitted. Posts are censored, have been censored and will be censored in the future at the pure discretion of staff and moderators. I know most of the moderators (I've been one for almost a decade) and I think they all try to be reasonably even-handed and err on the side of letting things stay up rather than yank them down - even more so as AI has started to run amok. If censorship or the possibility of it makes some people leave, well that's probably just how it will have to be. Personally, I can't imagine being so thin-skinned that someone changing or taking down one of my posts would lead me to throw a fit or leave in a huff, but that's just me. I know at least a few of my posts in the days before I was a mod were probably changed or censored for rule violations, and I also know that I have edited or taken down at least a few posts from people who later ended up moderators (I don't name names :) ). I don't really see it as a big deal. Sometimes we say stuff we shouldn't have said, or get overly heated or emotional. It happens, life goes on.

2. I have interacted with @Rene Hosman plenty of times and have found her interested, reasonable and easy to get along with. I think overall she's done a nice job here and has been more involved with the moderator team than some others have been in the past. I'm sure she sometimes does things that make people mad but I'm sure I do as well as does @Chris Seveney and @Joel Owens and lots of other mods and staff members. Again, that's life. I wouldn't take it personally. I have seen some of the threads that she has moderated or edited and some others would have taken a harder tack on some of the posts. 

Try the Wayback machine on the website for the listing. You might be able to pull a picture of the original listing.

 I don't think most of the moderators curate anything that's critical of the site - I know I certainly don't. Criticism of the platform or of features is not really an actionable moderation event anyway. There's a list of offenses at the bottom of the page in the rules section and I think most of the moderators try to follow it. 

On the issue of long timers/old timers fading away, some of that is just natural attrition. People change over time and get different interests, or have less time, or die, or some combination of all of it. That's nothing new or unique to forums. Individually I find it unfortunate when my "friends" stop posting as much - like anyone here there's people I just click with, and others I don't, and I enjoy conversation with some people more than others. But as it pertains to the forum, as long as there's always a stream of newcomers arriving to participate in the conversations, and add their value, I don't necessarily think it's terribly harmful to the forums overall; it's just different. I could rattle off half a dozen posters that I miss seeing around, but I could also rattle off half a dozen "newbies" that are also keeping things interesting and bringing new perspectives. 

I get some of the viewpoints - I am not at all a big fan of change, in fact I usually prefer to fight it - but it's inevitable and while discussing problems is helpful, the best way for the forums to thrive is for people who are interesting and knowledgeable to start and participate in interesting threads.