I've noticed that a lot of people come here, get their 10 posts, create an advertisement thread, and we never hear from them again. I'm sure everyone sees this as a problem, both the members and the community leaders. Quite frankly, I'm tired of these people replying to my posts (or to others' posts) with phrases such as 'right on' or 'i agree.' It's a shame this actually counts as a post. I'm new here, I know, but believe me, this is not the first forum I've been to ... this happens across the board at all hosting forums. I think the idea is not to enforce a post minimum, but to impose a membership minimum of 1 month. Make a person be here for a month before they can create a thread in an advertising forum. I haven't even been here a month, but then again, I don't create pointless posts here - as you can see, I've posted quite a bit and I haven't, and won't just disappear. Anyone have any comments or ideas relating to this issue? I know this won't completely erradicate the problem, but I think that it'll stop these people from creating pointless posts to meet the post minimum.

right on :D

Just kidding, I agree with you it is a problem that needs to be delt with, maybe a way to sort it would be to require a person with under X ammount of posts to be sponsored by an active member of the forums before they can post in the advertising forum?

Just a quick idea, I am sure there are many other great ideas out there. ;)

Adam

I would like to see a 2 month minimum and at least 100 posts.

That's just me, though. :)

Sirius

im with you sirius..

advertising is a privilege.. it must be earned lol

I think two months and a 100 posts is a bit too much, 50 posts and a month minimum is good. Then again...if you think about it, we'd have ever more spamming because they would need more posts. I guess we would just hope that spammers will think it's not worth the trouble.

I rather favor the minimum membership time.

I would hate to set a minimum post number so high that it encourages spamming.

Maybe the modest post number we have now and 2-4 weeks membership would be good.

thats true, setting a minimum post would encourage spamming and members will start posting just about anything and even a :) still counts as a post.

I think 2 weeks would be a good time,

Two weeks is nothing, useless. I think a month is good because it's quite a while and spammers will think it's not worth the trouble. Two weeks seems like really little.

This rule would be helpful to companies because it would eliminate some compitition :stickout:.

If I were to join this forum only to promote myself and it had a one month minimum before I could do so, I'd register and mark my calendar and be back in a month.

If it were two weeks, I might stick around and get to know the place and fall in love and get married and have children and eat that coconut cream pie that just finished cooling.

Okay.

No children.

But the rest could happen.

Especially the part about the pie.

Originally posted by SoftWareRevue
If I were to join this forum only to promote myself and it had a one month minimum before I could do so, I'd register and mark my calendar and be back in a month.

If it were two weeks, I might stick around and get to know the place and fall in love and get married and have children and eat that coconut cream pie that just finished cooling.

Okay.

No children.

But the rest could happen.

Especially the part about the pie.

You have a point there. In fact I think you are right, two weeks - three weeks works best. Moderators could read and delete any advertisement when it's obvious the person joined only to advertise (or is that done already :confused: ).

Originally posted by Lev
Moderators could read and delete any advertisement when it's obvious the person joined only to advertise (or is that done already :confused: ).
Depends where it is posted ;) Some manage a heap in the wrong forums before they hit 10 posts :)

Originally posted by anon-e-mouse
Depends where it is posted ;) Some manage a heap in the wrong forums before they hit 10 posts :)

Agreed... either way (add time or add post count) people are going to still do it, however, I think this is a good way to cut down on it.

I still say 2 months and/or 100 posts.... or... maybe they can send anon-e-mouse flower, to speed up the process.

Sirius

Originally posted by sirius
maybe they can send anon-e-mouse flower, to speed up the process.
Frangipanni might work ;)

So is a membership minimum something you guys think is feasable and can do? I'm not sure how the structure here works, if iNet has to approve all changes like that, but it really gets annoying having these leeches hang out around here. Personally, I'd rather have them wait two weeks, make one post (their advert), and let them be on their way rather than have posts like 'right on,' 'i agree,' and ':)' - Losing the post count will put a stop to this unneccessary spam.

I agree, I think it should be atleast 2 months but a month is liveable. I think the 10 post minimum is just bringing trash to the forum....

I think there should be a minimum requirement of 1 month membership, and 50 posts. 50 posts within a month isn't too hard, and it ensures that the member is active and contributing to the community while he's here.

Whether it's two weeks or a month, anyone could just register, and come back after the specified time requirement to post in the advertising forums. They need to have a minimum number of posts to ensure their credibility.

What's the philosophy behind requiring any entry qualification to advertise?

If there was none, then there would be no running up of post counts and, presumably, the adverts posted here are of interest to the WHT community and are therefore beneficial to the site and its users in general.

I think we can all agree that someone who joins forums, posts their advert, and never returns is not beneficial to any member of the community. The idea is to join a forum, establish a name for yourself and your company, post an advertisement once in awhile, and generally contribute to the community. The fact that someone can come here, post an advertisement, leave, and never return sickens me - I can't believe we have people like this, that care nothing about their company or even check to see if anyone has replied to their thred, running companies. If I'm the only one who feels this way, please forgive me, but when I see someone using the community to make a quick buck, I get disgusted. I know I'm new, and my opinion probably isn't regarded as highly as members my senior, but I really think this is a big problem that needs to be addressed.

Or they come here to post an ad and then post on another forum how much they hate WHT.

Originally posted by WarpFactor
I think we can all agree that someone who joins forums, posts their advert, and never returns is not beneficial to any member of the community.


I don't necessarily agree. If the advert is of interest to the community, then it doesn't matter if they've posted once or 1000 times.

Who knows, someone might have finally discovered that 'unlimited' hard disk.:)


The idea is to join a forum, establish a name for yourself and your company, post an advertisement once in awhile, and generally contribute to the community.


Maybe WHT needs a declaration of purpose along those lines. There are an awful lot of advertising forums at WHT, so it can give the impression that it's as much an advertising medium as an information exchange medium.


The fact that someone can come here, post an advertisement, leave, and never return sickens me - I can't believe we have people like this, that care nothing about their company or even check to see if anyone has replied to their thred, running companies. If I'm the only one who feels this way, please forgive me, but when I see someone using the community to make a quick buck, I get disgusted. I know I'm new, and my opinion probably isn't regarded as highly as members my senior, but I really think this is a big problem that needs to be addressed.

Yes, I agree it's unpleasant but, personally, I'd rather they posted once and cleared off than post 10 lots of junk just to get their post count up enough to post an advert.

Whatever the problems may be, I'm sure the 10 post rule isn't the answer - I think that just encourages more junk posts.

Originally posted by anon-e-mouse
Or they come here to post an ad and then post on another forum how much they hate WHT.

They could do that if they've made one post or 14,000 posts though. Does it matter?

I can see what you're getting at though: it's the feeling that WHT has been 'used' by some selfish individual simply for the purposes of advertising. That's a fair point, but that advert might also have been extremely useful for some of the regular members of the forum and thus it enriches the WHT experience for those you want to enrich it for.

It's a tough nut to crack, I admit, but I think the subject of this thread was specifically about people posting rubbish just to get their post count up and it's the 10-post rule that causes that.

Getting rid of it would stop the 'junk' in other (perhaps 'quality') threads, but you may see an increase in junk in the advertising forums (assuming the current 10-post rule deters some opportunist advertisers). Personally I'd prefer it that way in terms of it being the lesser of two evils.

Maybe there's a better solution, I don't know. Possibly something along the lines of membership time rather than number of posts (as has been suggested here).

Trust us, in many cases some that post a heap of garbage to make an ad post are often dealt with before anyone sees their junk. This system works :)

I simply suggested that the forums impose a minimum membership time window of a few weeks - if the person is truly interested in advertising, they'll come back after two weeks, if they are advertising to get the quick buck, I'm sure they won't return. No offense to the community leaders, you guys do a great job here, but a lot of worthless junk does get by you. I think that a minimum membership period would solve the problem to the junk-posting ... I will admit we will still have people coming just to advertise, but at least it rids us of this junk, and it will relieve many of these new users that come JUST to post one advertisement. I'm sorry, but I find that most people won't buy form a host who's posts consist of junk and an advertisement. That gives a host a bad image, and, in my opinion, shows us their true character. I'm a member of this forum to absorb information ... I've been hosting for four years now, but I don't know everything. I also come here throughout the day when I'm not doing anything as far as support and maintenance goes to hang out, help people, and read about things that I don't posess knowledge of. This forum is an amazing resource, and I hate to see people leeching off of it's members to post an advertisement. Just my thoughts - like I said before, I don't imagine my opinion is valued much as of now, but I hope to stay around here for a long time to come.

Originally posted by WarpFactor
No offense to the community leaders, you guys do a great job here, but a lot of worthless junk does get by you..
And a heck of a lot more gets by you ;) If you see any, please report it. We are not bots, and don't have the capacity to read several hundred new posts a day.

I've made a suggestion for eliminating much of this worthless junk ... whether you choose to make changes to the structure of the advertising forums is your decision ... I've tried to help by posting this suggestion ... many other people agree with me, but, oh well. I report things once in awhile, but if I were to report everything I saw that was annoying, pointless, or just plain stupid, I wouldn't have time to post. Perhaps you can appoint more moderators if you're not willing to make changes?

We made these changes for the express purpose of making our job easier. And trust me, it has. Did you see the flyby that was in 30 minutes ago? Maybe not....all his posts have gone now. This works.....anything that annoys you, report it please.

just my thoughts

are there any ways to let em write an ad but when they quit posting its automatically deleteled, like they have to be joined for 3 weeks and must post something meaningfull daily to keep an active add

honestly my last idea was a little overkill something like 2 Month minimum and 100 - 200 post isnt bad considering:

-99 percent of the ads in the advertisement threads are in fact spam
-having to actively participate in a community before getting to post an ad would help somehow educate the person whos gonna sell hosting
-the more lagit the ads are the better the content on WHT is
-the short 'yea' post may just go away?

as i finish reading the end of the thread here i realize we are aiming to get a solid webhost thats gonna be around when you click the ad 2-3 months from now even a year

----------------------
my extra edit
i think the only thing that may hold us backing is to try new ideas but this could be mind boggling for anone-mouse at the moment cause I dont know :)

Originally posted by anon-e-mouse
We made these changes for the express purpose of making our job easier. And trust me, it has. Did you see the flyby that was in 30 minutes ago? Maybe not....all his posts have gone now. This works.....anything that annoys you, report it please.

How did the 10-post rule help in that case? Just interested.

There are a lot of things they could do to fix the problems surrounding this - the admins just don't seem to be interested. Oh well, I'll just know not to leave any suggestions anymore :)

I am fairly new to WHT and am trying to get my post count up so I can post legitimate ads in the forum however if the required post count is increased to something ridiculous like 100 posts you are going to find that you will not only scare away the spammers but also legitimate businesses such as ours.

We run an Australian based ISP as well as doing the hosting side of things and don't have the time to continually read the forum and get our post count up just to advertise.

As you will see it has taken me nearly 2 months to get my post count up to 7 because of:
1. Time constraints
2. Not wanting to spam the forums just so we can post ads

Having a time limit along with the 10 post minimum is a much better and easier idea for a company like us to handle

If we were to impose this. Getting iNet to approve it or deny it wouldn't take long. The longest part would be waiting for ProHacker to implement it... :P

I think the rule is fine AS IS though.