You Must Be Kidding

Still laughing. Thanks. Pond scum. Exactly right.

Thank goodness our posts count here. I'm just here to get my post count up.

And to rain on someone's parade.

Wow. Are people really that disturbed by ideas that are different from their own?

You may see that stuff in the paid ad sections, or things you believe are 'that stuff.' You don't see it in the discussion sections much, and ads get nuked there when they're reported.

There's still a lot of the old-style networking and helping out going on in the discussion areas. It's not as 'in your face' as it once was, because this place was originally small and filled mostly with savvy early adopters. Members found the place by referrals, not search engines.

It grew, just like the rest of the net.

If you're selective about the topics of the threads you read, you can still get far more out of this forum than most people ever do. If you're focused on accomplishing something, you will barely notice the extraneous stuff.

Of course, if you're actively bothered by the stuff that doesn't fit your ideas, you'll go crazy. Or just lose sight of what you were here for in the first place.

As individual sites go, this is a pretty big place. 6 million posts and almost a half million threads. Hundreds of thousands of real members. If you can't find what you're looking for, the problem likely isn't that it's missing. It's likely you need to adjust how you look for it.

The way to deal with it may be to avoid certain sections. It is not helpful, though, for anyone to start making generic rants about how there's something wrong with the forum simply because it doesn't match their personal preferences.


Paul

I like this!

Kim,

The "hijacking" techniques I've seen that do what she mentioned aren't even spammy, much less illegal or unethical. They use ridiculous language to make the thing seem exciting, but it's really usually just buying ads from a pop-up or pop-under network.

Sort of like the ads that say you can FORCE Google to rank your page, or FORCE money into your Paypal account. Stupid descriptions, which people should realize are over the top, but that doesn't mean what's behind them is necessarily an abusive system.

If something posted here really is illegal or clearly unethical, there's a way to respond: Report it.

Edited to add: I wasn't just addressing Lori in my post.


Paul

You can. It's done the same way you report spam or other problem posts anywhere else on the forum. Use the little red triangle with the exclamation mark in it at the bottom of the column where the user's name is.

Lori, If you PM me the link, I'll be happy to take a look. If it's something else, it may well be as bad as you say. I can't comment on a specific situation without knowing what it is.

The number of offers that really do fall into the sort of ethical category you're talking about is very small, and they tend to get reported and nuked pretty quickly.


Paul