Getting Banned

[mhall]

Just out of curiosity, and not wishing to pop my head above the parapet without good reason, what do you need to do to get banned ?

I notice Dave Kinnel has been banned but I can't see which posts may have caused this. He's a bit of a grumpy old beggar, but show me a Retailer who isn't - especially this time of the year as we wait for Christmas to kick in - (pray pray pray, we are ok at the mo) - and he did offer a fair bit of good advice. Certainly there are plenty of people with thousands of posts who are a lot more aggresive than he is/was

So, unless he's been a naughty boy off the forums (i.e. private message) I am a little intrigued :|

 

[josor]

Just out of curiosity, and not wishing to pop my head above the parapet without good reason, what do you need to do to get banned ?

I notice Dave Kinnel has been banned but I can't see which posts may have caused this. He's a bit of a grumpy old beggar, but show me a Retailer who isn't - especially this time of the year as we wait for Christmas to kick in - (pray pray pray, we are ok at the mo) - and he did offer a fair bit of good advice. Certainly there are plenty of people with thousands of posts who are a lot more aggresive than he is/was

So, unless he's been a naughty boy off the forums (i.e. private message) I am a little intrigued :|

I think he was a previous member that was banned, it caught upto him

 

[Steve Sellers]

Breaking these http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/faq.php

 

[OldWelshGuy]

Just out of curiosity, and not wishing to pop my head above the parapet without good reason, what do you need to do to get banned ?

I notice Dave Kinnel has been banned but I can't see which posts may have caused this. He's a bit of a grumpy old beggar, but show me a Retailer who isn't - especially this time of the year as we wait for Christmas to kick in - (pray pray pray, we are ok at the mo) - and he did offer a fair bit of good advice. Certainly there are plenty of people with thousands of posts who are a lot more aggresive than he is/was

So, unless he's been a naughty boy off the forums (i.e. private message) I am a little intrigued :|

We are certainly not going to discuss private matters with anyone that it doesn't concern, that would be totally wrong.

You make a common statement and that is "x has been banned, I have looked and can't see why'.. many then go on to complain that x was banned and has clearly done nothing wrong as anyone can see from x's posts. here is the problem though, we deleted the offending posts, so only mods and admins can see them (as we see all posts even those deleted).

There is also a misconception about being banned. A member will show as 'banned' but normally they are simply suspended. The susytem works like this. We issue strikes, each strike is worth 100 points, it takes 3 strikes to get suspended, and the account will remain suspended, until the total live value of strikes falls below 300 (A strike lasts 6 months). If x got a strike 5 months and 29 days ago, and he got his third today, he would only be banned for a couple of days until his first strike runs out, bringing his total below 300.

Very few genuine members get banned permanently, (although pretty much all spammers are banned for life). All members get 3 strikes, they know what the score is, they get warned that a third strike will result in a suspension, so it isn't like being shot by a sniper

Hopefully that better explains.

 

[mhall]

Thanks, I was just pondering. I am a mod on a couple of other forums and on those, the warnings are public so everyone can see them, if not the offending posts that we remove. I guess it's down to the software and system used.

I know being a mod can be a thankless task, but consider yourself thanked !

 

[Steve Sellers]

The amount of spam has been ridiculous lately. How come the mods don't do anything about the constant touting for business.....you know a totally pointless message something along the lines of a user asked for advice and they get a barrage of posts along the lines of.

"[enter cut and paste information] I can help with that email me/pm"....

 

[LicensedToTrade]

The amount of spam has been ridiculous lately. How come the mods don't do anything about the constant touting for business.....you know a totally pointless message something along the lines of a user asked for advice and they get a barrage of posts along the lines of.

"[enter cut and paste information] I can help with that email me/pm"....

How many of them did you report with the red triangle button?

 

[Steve Sellers]

How many of them did you report with the red triangle button?

Quite a few actually. I wonder does anyone else report the spam?

Reporting the sales pitches is a different matter, that's for the moderators to decide whether a post is useful for the forum members or just a plain old sales pitch.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

I personally remove well into 3 figures each day, of spam. Much of it is reported, the rest I find while browsing. We rely on members reporting posts to help us identify the spam.

We issue infractions every hour of every day for self promotion, I have issued probably half a dozen today for this very thing.

Honestly you would not believe the level of out and out spam we deal with here. we really do need people to report posts they feel breach the rules though, it doesn't matter if you are not sure, report it and we will take a look

 

[Steve Sellers]

Could you explain to my why people spam, well I understand the reasons for some people spamming.....but a lot of the spam is just random crap(and with no links). It's the same when I get spam emails, I don't see how it can serve any purpose whatsoever.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

Could you explain to my why people spam, well I understand the reasons for some people spamming.....but a lot of the spam is just random crap(and with no links). It's the same when I get spam emails, I don't see how it can serve any purpose whatsoever.

or is it? we are currently battling against these spammers who are using 1x1 pixel invisible gifs as links. You can't see them, but they are there


Much of it is auto spam, they will post a load of junk, let it settle, then in a few weeks time, they will pop back and add a signature to their profile, and ping all their pages to get them indexed with their links on.

So much going on, so much to fight against.

 

[Steve Sellers]

or is it? we are currently battling against these spammers who are using 1x1 pixel invisible gifs as links. You can't see them, but they are there

I managed a forum for someone but ended up removing it because of spammers. Captacha wouldn't stop them. Spammers are a pain in the a##e!!!!!!

 

[OldWelshGuy]

Amen Brother

 

[LicensedToTrade]

Could you explain to my why people spam, well I understand the reasons for some people spamming.....but a lot of the spam is just random crap(and with no links). It's the same when I get spam emails, I don't see how it can serve any purpose whatsoever.

Quite simply, just like all other direct-marketing (including the junk-mail you get through your letter box), if they can get one person in one hundred to reply or make a purchase then they have done well. Most legitimate direct-mail campaigns are lucky to achieve a 5% hit rate.

As for the mods being responsible for clearing out spam, that's not quite true. I haven't been on UKBF much in the past two months but I'm sure I've reported at least 100 posts since I've been a member. 90% of them are addressed and removed within the hour, the rest of them have been left untouched as the mod in question has deemed them to fall on the acceptable side of the fence. The point I'm making is that the mods cannot make a decision on a post until it comes to their attention. If you aren't sure... report it.

 

[internetspaceships]

*goes around the forums reported every single one of LTT's posts as spam*

Hehe

 

[Fred_the_frog]

Sorry for going off on a tangent, but are mods paid for moderating forums?

 

[Fred_the_frog]

The amount of spam has been ridiculous lately. How come the mods don't do anything about the constant touting for business.....you know a totally pointless message something along the lines of a user asked for advice and they get a barrage of posts along the lines of.

"[enter cut and paste information] I can help with that email me/pm"....

If the spam email doesn't contain links, then more than likely they will be trying to con information from you, or just trying to get you to email them back. If you email them back, they know your email is valid so they can sell it to other spammers as a valid email address. Thats why you shouldn't reply to spam messages, even if you are just saying 'Don't spam me'

 

[OldWelshGuy]

Sorry for going off on a tangent, but are mods paid for moderating forums?

In general of here?

In genreal I can't comment. but on here we get performance related payment.

if we issue a warning we earn £1
if we issue an infraction we get £2
if we delete a members account for spamming we get £5
if we issue an infraction and spend 20 minutes replying to umpteen Pm's, trying to explain that the member broke the rules, hence the infraction, we get £10
If after the above we end up with a "shove your stupid forum, just delete my account" We get a £20 bonus









Oh and all of the above is rubbish, we do it for free

 

[Fred_the_frog]

In general of here?

In genreal I can't comment. but on here we get performance related payment.

if we issue a warning we earn £1
if we issue an infraction we get £2
if we delete a members account for spamming we get £5
if we issue an infraction and spend 20 minutes replying to umpteen Pm's, trying to explain that the member broke the rules, hence the infraction, we get £10
If after the above we end up with a "shove your stupid forum, just delete my account" We get a £20 bonus









Oh and all of the above is rubbish, we do it for free

You actually had me believing that at the start....
I don't pay the mods on my forum too, that's cause there aren't any. That's cause I operate all the accounts. That's cause no one joined. So I left it. aha.