How is the rule of duplicate thread treated within the BST section? I offer Webhosting for my company, so I used to post our services in the Web Hosting section. I then found out through one way or another that it wasn't allowed to post your thread offering a certain product more than once? --- For web hosting or if you offer a service this seems bad that the duplicate thread is treated in this manner. I'm not exactly going to be creating new service offerings every time I want to post them, or create new offers (since we only create every month, not twice a week or so) to do so. What is considered a duplicate thread within the web hosting section? Are we not allowed to post our current offerings and promotions more than once ever?
Duplicate threads are treated the same way with all categories of DP in that duplicate threads are not allowed. What you must watch for in regard to web hosting is if you offer multiple hosting packages and a single package sells for five dollars or less, thread should be posted in freebie area. If all offerings are above five dollars ($5.01 won't cut it) the thread belongs in web hosting area. You may not continue to repost same offers over and over. Use your signature creatively to meet your hosting needs. Say if you want to offer a promotional offer, you could place in signature with a promotional code to be used to get the special offer,
I don't think this is a good way to positive activity and good traffic within the Web hosting section. Our plans are generally never going to change and we plan our promotions every month to post across forums. We even offer the same offer again at times, like we have a promo we offer when space frees up on specific nodes we set up for the special. Is this rule taken into account to prevent much being posted? Would it not be prudent to then allow the same offers to be posted BUT to limit the frequency of which they are posted? Only allowing offers to be posted every week or a similar time restriction to be in place could be a good way to manage this while to still encourage web hosting companies to post their services.
The web hosting section is being better moderated then it ever has been before but I have my doubts it'll maintain this level. The necessity to post the same topic goes down a lot when you have less threads coming in. I still count several under $5 threads active one of which I reported yesterday still active. I have a feeling people are going to start posting their hosting ad's in other sections to avoid being flagged though. For example http://forums.digitalpoint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=18 has someone advertising hosting on thread right now. Still it's much better than it was before regardless. Previously there were 20+ new threads a day there most of which were duplicates or violated the rules.
I can agree that it seems a lot cleaner now, probably due to it being monitored now and "Warez" offerings being banned from it. It has been through phases of actually being stepped into and moderated now (even though there were times of reporting threads and not being dealt with), it will be a shame to see it slip back. What bothers me most is how severely "duplicates" are treated, sure if they are posting multiple per day. For example, I've never really seen yourself do any different offerings for a very long time now, this rule would mean you wouldn't be able to offering your well known reliable services too often, when something like once a week or similar is a resonable time scale to post in. Say if you're a local business, who advertises in newspapers or in shop Windows. You'll want to re-new your advertisement in a new publication every week, your services aren't going to change most probably but you'll still want to advertise to people about your services, to get business, to get known.
InFloW, keep reporting and we will keep plugging away. Human nature being like it is, regardless of rules you will always have rule breakers
When the forum was not enforced at all could post the same deal for a month to fight through the spam. Since things started being well policed haven't much bothered posting anything. The forum is still full of people who are getting ripped off on those "better" deals. We're not interested in competing with the people here and I just read topics every day to see what's going on. If we wanted to post I imagine as we do in other forums have different coupons for each month to appease the rules. So this month september2009 40% off then October octobor2009 45% off then back to november2009 40% off. It's not the same and the coupons all expire. I might be wrong but that's how I read into it. As for the whole duplicate thread situation I still think the best solution is to do what so many other forums do who have free BST sections. Limit how often a person can post a thread in a section. Once a week or whatever the person can post. If they post a duplicate so be it not a big deal of a new one once a week. It cuts down on moderator work to worry about the ones breaking other rules. I'm always one to be in favor of a software solution over a human one. This is one so many forums have done so well to help withe spam of their BST sections. Will do
Yesyes, agree so much to limit physically how much you can post by the forum software, works well on many other forums.