The rest of the benefits are just the gravy to the meat and potatoes that is the magazine.

Derek, I went through the NAPP member forums last night and looked at all your recent posts. I must say that I would have banned you long before you asked for your membership to be refunded. Almost every post you made was negative, insulting, or condescending. You claimed many times not to be a great photographer but that you worked as a hairdresser for many of the professionals back in the 60’s and 70’s. That’s great but you never actually shared any of the knowledge you may have learned by working with them. In fact, you never really shared any knowledge what-so-ever. You just criticized everyone else. You may see your actions differently but what I am saying is how you came across to everyone else. It is up to you to decide whether to remain as you are or make an effort to become a positive member of the photography community.

Hope all is well with you. As a member of the NAPP team (and a person who is familiar with this incident) you neglected mention that you were not BANNED from NAPP at all. In fact, you contacted Larry (Director of NAPP) after your latest questionable post and told him that you would gladly leave NAPP if you were refunded your membership fee.

Larry’s response to you “After careful consideration, we have decided to take you up on your offer.”

All of your “less controversial” contributions to the NAPP forums still exist and you are listed there as a “Former NAPP Member” so anyone is free to look for your comments and judge for themselves on their degree of usefulness to the overall discussion.

Our NAPP member forums exist for only one purpose, to allow our members to discuss Photoshop & photography and seek help, advice and ~constructive~ criticism from fellow members. There are ~plenty~ of other forums on the Internet for all other content, but our moderators work very hard to keep the NAPP forums a place where people from all walks of life and skills sets can go and feel completely comfortable in posting, knowing that they will not be ridiculed, berated or teased.

So, in a sense, Derek is somewhat correct about being careful about what you post on the NAPP forums as we do not tolerate negative behavior towards other members. However, we will NOT ban you outright. Instead, we will privately contact you, as we did with Derek on many occasions, and if you decide that NAPP is not the environment for you, we will do whatever we can to ensure a satisfactory conclusion.