Is Trade2win as lifeless as it seems to me?

[Lightning McQueen]

a rough and ready test of whether they are being picked up by google

chose a distant member page, which was p101

chose first clown on the listing - yAndite6z6 - join date Apr 8, 2013

stuck yAndite6z6 into google

result - "Your search - yAndite6z6 - did not match any documents."

conclusion - they're not being indexed in google. surely they'd have realised this by now if that is their mission, they've been at it for months and for what? a lot of work for what looks like no gain whatsoever.

 

[Sir Pond Life Dreg]

Teh Leopard is here - hello Leopard!!!

And Dash back at the same time.....:idea::?:

 

[Vasco da Banana]

Fyi, this was the solution I was referring to in my previous post. It's marvellously simple, though the registrants do need to know the answer... But I'm sure we could put up a Q such as "What is the primary subject matter discussed on this board?" with little detrimental effect.

We'd all fail that test.

 

[the hare]

We'd all fail that test.

I think the answer is "LULZ" isn't it ?

 

[Trader333]

LM,

They may have been at it for months and many did have urls in signatures but it is only recently that I changed profiles to not being visible by guests. Most still haven't realized that Google now punishes backlinking for subject ranking. Maybe we should try an experiment and see what happens if we allow a few selected ones to remain and then watch what they get up to. Also many of these are clearly bots as they register around 10 names in under 5 minutes all with the same IP.

On my own board when this first happened I also got hundreds of registrations and nothing happened over several months. If the agenda is not visibility by Google and other than the occasional one that does post spam, what do you think maybe the reason ?

 

[Lightning McQueen]

LM,

They may have been at it for months and many did have urls in signatures but it is only recently that I changed profiles to not being visible by guests. Most still haven't realized that Google now punishes backlinking for subject ranking. Maybe we should try an experiment and see what happens if we allow a few selected ones to remain and then watch what they get up to. Also many of these are clearly bots as they register around 10 names in under 5 minutes all with the same IP.

On my own board when this first happened I also got hundreds of registrations and nothing happened over several months. If the agenda is not visibility by Google and other than the occasional one that does post spam, what do you think maybe the reason ?

I have no idea what they are doing, it all seems a waste of time on their part. a large proportion of them are logging back in at least once, so something is going on. are they a bot? will a bot be able to select a vendor badge? if many are coming in on 1 ip then that could be a farm! so that's good, if cutting 1 ip cuts off many pc's you won't have to ban many of them to help prevent further registering from here on in.

the experiment has been already running for months. so far with no apparent ill effects to the boards, they don't yet appear to have done anything (other than sign back in) but you've checked the post report thread for any post reports and pm reports? that cross reference with these clowns? you've done that already, yes?

 

[Lightning McQueen]

anyway I wouldn't worry too much on these clowns right now, maybe concentrate efforts on the binary clowns and their many threads littering the boards. or the unregulated managed forex clowns that are posting links freely.

 

[Trader333]

The reason I think many are bots is that the profile is identical for hundreds of the registered names. My role is specific to this and I have no involvement with any other moderation issues such as the increase in binary posts and threads.

 

[Vasco da Banana]

I think the answer is "LULZ" isn't it ?

Used to be, but not much of that around here recently. If you really wanted to filter out the riff-raff, the answer could be, 'teh tarding loosers'.

 

[Steve]

Yeah, on reflection, you have a point. I was referring to the fact that when DT used and avatar with his company name in it, he was hassled and told to remove it (and I agreed with that). He's a long term member who actually contributes. Yet there are 5 or 6 vendors who contribute nothing on the site, other than their own threads (which usually aren't discussions either), who have their company name in avatar, thread title and signature and nothing is done - in some cases for several years.

Can you list them please and i'll get rid of them.

 

[Steve]

I've honestly lost the plot regarding this vendor messaging issue. The last I heard Steve confirmed that vendors can send and receive messages.

My assumption is that vendors are free to PM whoever they choose and its not a breech of any kind of guidelines.

Yes I lost the plot too. I was 100% convinced that we had done this hence the publicity I gave it and I would certainly have bet anything on it having been done. There were several actions taken at the same time and this was one of them, or so I thought. I even had several PM arguments with members who did not want it to happen.

As a result of you bringing it to my attention I immediately jumped up and down demanding to know who had got it wrong, it turns out it was me. It seems that technically we can't do it as there is no way in the software to prevent it and I was told this at the time.

I'm not happy about this. On one level it makes me look like a complete prat. That I will live with, what I'm most unhappy about is that I really don't want vendors to be able to PM people and I can't have it.

So there's no agenda. If I could stop it I would do.

 

[Mr. Charts]

Yes I lost the plot too. I was 100% convinced that we had done this hence the publicity I gave it and I would certainly have bet anything on it having been done. There were several actions taken at the same time and this was one of them, or so I thought. I even had several PM arguments with members who did not want it to happen.

As a result of you bringing it to my attention I immediately jumped up and down demanding to know who had got it wrong, it turns out it was me. It seems that technically we can't do it as there is no way in the software to prevent it and I was told this at the time.

I'm not happy about this. On one level it makes me look like a complete prat. That I will live with, what I'm most unhappy about is that I really don't want vendors to be able to PM people and I can't have it.

So there's no agenda. If I could stop it I would do.

Perhaps if you invite members to report any ADVERTISING PM from a vendor and when you see the proof, ban that vendor?

 

[the hare]

Perhaps if you invite members to report any ADVERTISING PM from a vendor and when you see the proof, ban that vendor?

That seams like a reasonably common sense approach. Just make misuse of the PM facility an offense that results in a ban


I think at the time this was discussed there was a view amongst the anti vendor lobby that t2w should make it as difficult as possible for members to contact vendors (with the exception of those who legitimately pay for exposure via advertising)

We all know how it works. Legitimate vendor, or vendor without a badge starts and maintains a thread, retrospectively posts screen shots of great trades, maybe the odd small loser etc. t2w provides a convenient button that encourages the initiation of a private dialogue.

Its been abused in the past, here and elsewhere, and no doubt it will be abused in future. You can't blame vendors for taking advantage

There's no easy solution, and lets be honest, anyone who sets out to feed in this target rich environment is probably going to use slightly more sophisticated methods other than blundering right in by PM, although it does happen occassionally.

I'm no bulletin board expert but just 5 minutes spent on google located posts on the vbulletin forums explaining a couple of ways of preventing specific groups from using the PM facility. The problem would be vendors would need to be manually assigned into a group although it can't be rocket science to automate this at signup.

The real reason, and its been openly admitted is there are one or two vendors who in fairness do contribute and play the game within acceptable boundaries, and there is a general reluctance amongst t2w staff to penalize vendors such as yourself and DT simply because mr Wong's click factory insist on abusing the forum. I do have some sympathy with that viewpoint

 

[Shakone]

Can you list them please and i'll get rid of them.

Well a lot of the time it's that thread titles are used to plug the company, and then they can post once a day and bump the thread into new posts every day without having a discussion, but as a few examples

http://www.trade2win.com/boards/technical-analysis/166014-forex-research-27.html#post2131876

Avatar and links (lots of them at the bottom of posts) to alpari sites. It can be useful to have some of the larger brokers on here to field questions, but posting links is not allowed.

http://www.trade2win.com/boards/forex/71100-deltastock-daily-fx-analysis-98.html#post2135648

Threadtitle, avatar, website posted in his charts, even some talk of offers

http://www.trade2win.com/boards/for...s-comments-updated-daily-104.html#post2131746

Avatar and thread title.

http://www.trade2win.com/boards/tec...date-forex-gold-crude-oil-10.html#post2131592

Putting website name in charts, probably not the worst offender

http://www.trade2win.com/boards/forex/104304-ganns-pyramid-table-69.html#post2131568

website and logo in every single table they put

http://www.trade2win.com/boards/tec...lysis-majors-4-pair-forex-16.html#post2131526

In every daily technical analysis they put there website (again not a direct link but still it's essentially spamming a website address)

http://www.trade2win.com/boards/stocks/147242-swing-trader-daily-ideas-17.html#post2101512

lots of youtube links that are actually the company's youtube, so a bit sneaky that one

http://www.trade2win.com/boards/edu...oo-much-screen-time-killing-your-trading.html

Avatar and signature

http://www.trade2win.com/boards/tec...al-analysis-majors-07-00-gmt.html#post2136372

Company name in signature, avatar, charts, well you get the idea.

 

[cablemonster]

kinell bud mate it aint rocket science. you dont want to start banning vendors as they give revenue. just simply make a subset of vendors and ban them from pm. then have a vendor only section for posting.

 

[the hare]

kinell bud mate it aint rocket science. you dont want to start banning vendors as they give revenue. just simply make a subset of vendors and ban them from pm. then have a vendor only section for posting.

They can't do that because of

a) Mr charts
b) DT
c) sharkys mate

Etc

 

[cablemonster]

They can't do that because of

a) Mr charts
b) DT
c) sharkys mate

Etc

 

[Trader333]

Perhaps if you invite members to report any ADVERTISING PM from a vendor and when you see the proof, ban that vendor?

This already happens but it does rely on it being reported.

 

[Mr. Charts]

Then if people rarely report it then it can be assumed they don't find it a problem and regard it as the spam we all get in our mail boxes anyway. And I guess those who do report it can rightly expect the vendor to be banned.
So much ado.....?
Certainly not such a problem for the CEO to be too exercised about - apart from the frustration at not being able to implement his wishes

 

[the hare]

So much ado.....?
Certainly not such a problem for the CEO to be too exercised about - apart from the frustration at not being able to implement his wishes

You have to look at the wider context of why they are in the mess they are in, then it all sort of makes more sense.

Its a bit bizarre really isn't it