Posters are being paid to post on this forum

Who will be in charge of that?

Seems...like the mods are already over loaded just dealing with the cry baby threads.......

 

I and I'm sure numerous others will be happy to make their jobs a little easier. That's what the "report" button is for.

 

Yea , but how would that work......

I personally own 350 sites.....

How would people know what I owned....

 

You put it in your sig. If anything attracts suspicion, I or someone else does a whois on the site. If that looks awry, I or someone else clicks on tghe report button. Then it's up to you to prove it's your site.

 

I don't think I like that.

Nofollow is more then fine, banning the sales of sig links is OK, I'd not even mind making it so that guests can't even see signatures.

But there are people here that link to sites they simply like in their sig and do not get paid for it. I've done it (I'm actually doing it now). I'd hate to think I'd get banned for a month because I linked to someplace I liked in my own signature.

I saw someone with a link to Matt Cutt's blog ~ I'm pretty sure that was not paid, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't Mr. Cutts. I had a link to a local festival in my sig for several weeks, and I certainly didn't own that page, and I linked it to get the word out (because I was going). So making us "own" the sites in our signatures would, in a way, limit quite a few people here, that do not deserve such restrictions.

(and yes, I've sold sig links, but currently do not have any 'sold')

 

No wonder you don't like the suggestion. I imagine anyone who buys or sells sig links, avatars, location ads, and the like - or who has done so in the past and hopes to do so in the future - would be downright dismayed at any suggestion that their source of income might be removed.

Nofollow isn't a solution because it still allows scammers to sell links to the naive and uninformed who may not even know that nofollow exists here or what it means. And it doesn't affect the avatar and location sellers.

 

You have an amazing knack for skipping relevant points in a post to knock someone...

I fessed up to selling sig links so that people would not assume that I was simply against it on that basis. Is it so hard to believe that, or have you lost all such faith in people that sell links?

So please read the WHOLE post, not just the first & last lines. It makes you look mean

 

My apologies. I admit that with all the self-serving scamming and spamming that goes on in this forum, I have become cynical.

I must also say, however, that my previous reply to you wasn't meant as an attack on you (your stance in the Compostannie crime has led me to revise my opinion of you). It was simply a statement that people who are benefitting from sig link sales are of course going to object to anything that cuts into their incomes.

There's also the second point: That neither nofollow nor banning sig links entirely will stop the scamming and spamming of avatars and location lines. So what do you do? Ban them all?

 

Compostannie crime?

 

I don't know but it's fairly safe to say 70% (give or take, my estimates from observations) of active users have sold a signature link.. even nintendo (I myself as well).

Being much much much stricter on quality of posts would be ideal, then it would be much harder for users to spam. Infractions on those short responses that contribute barely anything to the OP, starting silly threads (including GC), "is adsense down" threads, etc should be infracted heavily. Again the mods already have a lot on their plate.. scammers or spammers, which to tackle first..

My 2 cents

 

Wouldn't it be easier that no same URL can appear on different signatures? In others words, every signature would be unique.

 

Cutting down on short threads or stupid general chat threads is one issue.

That won't affect the blatant link selling that goes on here, though. Some of the worst culprits have many post in the mainstream forums. Take a look at the Directories forum for an easy list.

 

No problem, thanks for the apology

No advertising in Avatars & Locations would likely be easy enough (though, DrPepper may not like it, unless he can prove his affiliation with the bottling company or something). Though, I do think that could result in a few infractions for people innocently putting something they liked in their avatar, as would something like a Nike Swoosh be considered paid?

On a more positive note, I was recently looking for the going rate of avatars (out of curiosity, not to sell) and noticed that they are sold for very little now, and most of the recent sales threads have 0 replies.

 

See http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=352189 - a new low in the already sad history of DMOZ.

 

Very true, I think it was just a fad.. however there's a new one (purple avatar) that just came out.

Hopefully we can use out own logos for our avatars?

 

just remove the sigs all in all and display the URL we filled-up on our profile for our own personal sites, then they could check our sites whoever we recommend...

 

I wonder how high DP's PR jumps when sig links are changed to nofollow.

 

Wow are you serious? Did shawn say this or...?

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That is sad that people are paying people to pad their post count... but im sure they are easy enough to spot.

 

well what will he dowhen he gets 2000 posts on dp
i wonder how many of these members (4 digit poster)are like this

 

Well I am sure only few 4 digit posters like it.