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Topic: False information regarding Foreforums and commercial members/ads (Read 399 times) previous topic - next topic

False information regarding Foreforums and commercial members/ads

It's been brought to our attention that a member is spreading false information regarding his selling of items on Foreforums, claiming he was prohibited from doing so.  Many of you may have received an e-mail claiming such.  This is essentially libel.


To set the record straight, we had a member who was reposting his ads every few days, often with BIG BRIGHT text and very long posts repeating identical information, and we had many complaints.  Here is the text of the messages he was sent a year or so ago:

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You should recall I had contacted you a year or so ago regarding the frequency of your ads and bumping them.  At that time, you agreed to only post or bump an ad no more than once per month.

An increase in frequency of ads is occurring and resulting in member complaints to the admin team.  It's impacting the forum experience and creating more work for the forum staff.

While commercial members are allowed to place ads, it needs to be done with consideration for the membership - and the forum itself, which is not intended to be an ad-driven site.  The repeated and frequent similar ads are against the Forum User Agreement under section 3d - no Spamming, Flooding, or Soliciting:

You will not spam, flood or otherwise post in a manner that disrupts the functioning of the forum. This covers various forms of disruptive posting including the spamming or flooding of the forum by repeatedly posting identical, or very similar, content in the either the same topic or across different topics.

I have deleted the old ads and merged the 2 recent/related ones into a single topic.  We ask that you honor the originally agreed-upon frequency of advertising.

Thank you,

Michelle

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We had definitely discussed this issue before because it has been complained about before.

There are 4 nearly duplicate WITH BIG RED LETTERS ads in the last 2 weeks.  These were not responses to questions, they were ad postings.  They were in 2 topics and have been merged.

Several moderators have received complaints from members.

There is no issue with one ad posting per month or answering specific questions, but frequent postings/repostings of advertising, bumping advertising in a short period of time, etc., is not appropriate use of the forum and not what we had in mind when we reluctantly added a commercial listings board to Foreforums.


I will point out that Foreforums receives absolutely no consideration from any member, commercial or otherwise.  We offer the ability to advertise to contributing members as a convenience, but the forum resources have never been intended to be used as an advertising platform.
Learn every day, but especially from the experiences of others. It's cheaper!  - John C. Bogle

2000 U320 36' non-slide / WildEBeest Rescue
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