Hi Samamtha Yes I agree. Buyer beware. That stated, its also clear that when a marketplace becomes riddled by then that marketplace provides little real value to the DP community as a whole and should either be closed or reformed. I do not claim to have the magic answer. Simple I am trying to expess the frustration I experience wasting my time filtering through falsely advertised products.
Once you get burned you start putting in a lot more time to complete the due diligence. I've learned that really fast around here. It doesn't seem like it's ever 100% full proof, but what else can you do?
A quick look at waybackmachine will tell you the history of a domain as well as Google cache and other things. It's a case of making informed decisions when buying anything. Not just internet based purchases.
Hi Colin, yes there are lots of ways to spot it. However, thats not the point. Why is so much blatant lieing being permitted in the sales forums ? My use of those forums is decreasing as I have to spend more and more time wading through the false titles, and sales pitches. That is a shame. As a buyer and seller.
Unfortunately misleading or false information will always be around as long as there is money to be made. Due diligence is even more important online than offline.
Yes I agree. But what is this community doing about it? Are there any plans to do anything? Or are we just gonna ignore it and hope it goes away?
I see a few good suggestions being made on how to check out these false domains. They may not be difficult, but they ARE time consuming to do every single time. Having had a bit of experience with vBulletin forums, some re-alignment concerning the sales section of this board wouldn't be too tricky, and might help with problems such as described here. A general forum structure may simply not be the best approach - instead a more structured input when starting a new sales thread would be more appropriate in my opinion (I don't know sitepoint too well, but don't they do this?). By having a more structured information input, you can start to analyse it. If you had to choose a particular sales type from a list, then had to fill in details depending on what you had selected, you could filter out rubbish just be providing more information to viewers. This would allow you to do 1 of 2 things in this particular case: 1.) automate the checks on a domain name input entirely, and display the data at the beggining of each "thread" in the sales section (or maybe limit it to a single sub-forum?). The aim need not be to stop threads being posted, but to alert all users as to a potential mis-match. Once people catch on, this should lead to a decline in more mis-leading threads. It may also be a more effective form of moderation. 2.) at least have the links to these different checks laid out, for users to compare the data themselves (along with a guide on what these different things do). Again, a form of community moderation, but maybe less effective than automating checks to look for mis-matches. I think what this thread really points out is the fact that DigitalPoint, at its current size, is not really equipped to deal with everything in the manner it should. As far as I can see, no work has been done to the sales section to make it more user friendly, or easier to filter out the "bad stuff". The sales section isn't like the rest of the forum, and I don't think it should be treated as such. I am disappointed that the owner(s) have not done more to combat such problems, which are quite evident for all who visit the sales section to see.