Steve
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Somewhat later than planned I have finally written the new policy. It is pretty much as it will be but I would appreciate some feedback about what might be missing at this stage. It is going live from August 1st.
Any direct questions/comments PM me or get in touch at [email protected]
Vendor policy
In my view it is impossible to separate T2W from vendors and nor should we try. For one thing, the whole enterprise is funded by vendors through advertising, so any attempt to move toward a completely vendor free environment would clearly be unworkable.
In addition, we have content that may well have been produced by a vendor (articles for example) and as we continue to develop the educational side of the business there may well be more of this.
However, this does not mean for one moment that we should continue to allow some of the vendor practices that have been happening within the forums for quite some time.
We don’t have to be anti-vendor but we do need to have clearly stated polices and rigidly enforce them so we have vendor control. This will allow us to move forward on a basis that works for us commercially whilst at the same time protecting members from the unscrupulous parts of the vendor community.
The policy
We depend on our approved advertisers for revenue. Most people accept and understand this, it works here and it works in other forums. These advertisers know the rules and they leave our members and guests to decide whether or not to contact them.
If you want to be an approved advertiser then follow this link.
[email protected]
With any other form of advertising we have a zero tolerance policy.
This includes (but is not limited to) the following:
• Using an avatar that shows your logo/business name or some other form of promotion.
• Putting any link in your content (including charts) to the firm you represent/ are trying to promote.
• Mentioning your firm/the firm you represent in any manner that can be construed as promotional and trying to drum up business.
• Offering a free trial of your product or service.
• Asking people to contact you to find out more about your products/services either openly or by private message.
• Posting minimal content deliberately designed to tempt people to find out more.
• Posting references or excerpts from your product or service.
In my experience whatever we list here will be worked around in some way or another, but please rest assured you’ll be caught and dealt with if you advertise whether it is in the above list or not.
You will be warned once and if you offend again you will be banned. If you try to come back under a different name we’ll keep on banning you until you get the message.
The ‘good guy’ vendors
Many people would have you believe that all vendors are crooks, which is clearly nonsense. However, this market is certainly one of the worst I have ever experienced for its ability to attract scammers and fraudsters of the worst kind.
Despite this, within the vendor group there are people who run proper firms, from the one man band through to the major broker and I’ll not tolerate these people being hounded off our forums as long as they stick to the rules.
There is plenty of evidence both here and on our colleague forums (BMT,FF,Elite etc) of vendor members posting useful and informative content and being treated with respect when doing so.
So I’m going to let this practice continue here for now and we’ll see how it goes. But if you break the rules you’ll be dealt with in exactly the same way as any other vendor, regardless of your level of contribution.
In return I’ll expect you to deal with or report any flaming and I’ll deal with that robustly as well. This is my chosen policy for T2W, anyone who does not like it can say so, but they can’t then flame the vendor member in question without facing sanctions.
I’ll be keeping a close eye on this but I hope it is now clear where I stand on this subject.
Company representatives
Experience here and elsewhere has shown that it can be very helpful for a representative of a firm to deal with questions from members. Occasionally they have crossed the line a bit into promotion and been warned accordingly, but overall it has worked pretty well in my view.
So I’m going to formalise this and introduce a ‘Company Representative’ grade of member. Anyone can apply for this status but I’ll need to be sure that it is in the interests of members.
If the firm is already on our approved list of advertisers then generally I’ll allow it, if they are on our black list I will not. Anything else I’ll take a view.
I’ll also allow an exception to the avatar rule but no other links will be permitted unless they directly relate to the question being answered and do not solicit further or new business.
Content suppliers
Much rubbish has been written about vendors writing content for articles, books and so on. I don’t accept that all vendor produced content is of no value but if we are to allow content written by a vendor then the first question has to be “is it any good?” This applies regardless of where it came from.
Once this test is passed the next question has to be about how much of the vendors product is promoted within the text. The answer should be none at all and if this is evident it should be removed or the content refused.
The only reference will be to the name of the author and their firm or business name but with no linking. If people want to find out more that’s their choice and they can use google to do so.
So we’ll continue to publish and/or link to content that is deemed of some value to our target audience but it will be subject to much closer scrutiny.
Finally, I’ll reject anything that is written by someone who I believe belongs in the ‘wrong’ group and that is regardless of whether it is promotion free or not. There are some characters/firms who we simply should not be associated with and I’ll decide who these are.
Policing the policy.
We don’t actively moderate content. We rely on reported posts and will continue to do so. In writing this policy I have tried to take some of the uncertainty out of the situation so I’m hoping this will make the reporting of vendor mischief a more fruitful experience.
If not you can contact me anytime by PM or on [email protected]
The groomers
This is one of the hardest areas to deal with and we need to get smarter at sorting it out. You know the story, a few posts promising help and guidance, then a few indicators and great trades etc etc, then the hook.
But there’s no evidence of wrong doing initially and no declaration of being a vendor but experience tells us that most people show their true colours before very long.
I’m still not prepared to delete these posts immediately but we will be keeping a closer eye on them and challenging the poster as necessary. In addition we will no longer allow posts from new members or those with a limited number of useful posts along the lines of; “anyone heard of…” “what do you think of ….” “I have found a great…”
Commercial area
I am currently working on a revised layout for the forums and as part of this we are going to set up a commercial area. This will be for all threads/posts about brokers, software and data feeds and education/training and will keep all of these things out of the main forums. Any threads started elsewhere on these subjects will be moved to here.
This is obviously where the Company Representatives will post but I’ll not restrict vendor members to this area as long as they work within the rules and continue to make a valuable contribution to the community.
So, there we have it. There will obviously be a period of bedding in and there will inevitably be some people who don’t like it or feel it does not do enough.
I’m confident it will help us finally eradicate the vendor issues but I’ll listen to any comments before making it live from August 1st so please PM me or email me directly on [email protected]
Any direct questions/comments PM me or get in touch at [email protected]
Vendor policy
In my view it is impossible to separate T2W from vendors and nor should we try. For one thing, the whole enterprise is funded by vendors through advertising, so any attempt to move toward a completely vendor free environment would clearly be unworkable.
In addition, we have content that may well have been produced by a vendor (articles for example) and as we continue to develop the educational side of the business there may well be more of this.
However, this does not mean for one moment that we should continue to allow some of the vendor practices that have been happening within the forums for quite some time.
We don’t have to be anti-vendor but we do need to have clearly stated polices and rigidly enforce them so we have vendor control. This will allow us to move forward on a basis that works for us commercially whilst at the same time protecting members from the unscrupulous parts of the vendor community.
The policy
We depend on our approved advertisers for revenue. Most people accept and understand this, it works here and it works in other forums. These advertisers know the rules and they leave our members and guests to decide whether or not to contact them.
If you want to be an approved advertiser then follow this link.
[email protected]
With any other form of advertising we have a zero tolerance policy.
This includes (but is not limited to) the following:
• Using an avatar that shows your logo/business name or some other form of promotion.
• Putting any link in your content (including charts) to the firm you represent/ are trying to promote.
• Mentioning your firm/the firm you represent in any manner that can be construed as promotional and trying to drum up business.
• Offering a free trial of your product or service.
• Asking people to contact you to find out more about your products/services either openly or by private message.
• Posting minimal content deliberately designed to tempt people to find out more.
• Posting references or excerpts from your product or service.
In my experience whatever we list here will be worked around in some way or another, but please rest assured you’ll be caught and dealt with if you advertise whether it is in the above list or not.
You will be warned once and if you offend again you will be banned. If you try to come back under a different name we’ll keep on banning you until you get the message.
The ‘good guy’ vendors
Many people would have you believe that all vendors are crooks, which is clearly nonsense. However, this market is certainly one of the worst I have ever experienced for its ability to attract scammers and fraudsters of the worst kind.
Despite this, within the vendor group there are people who run proper firms, from the one man band through to the major broker and I’ll not tolerate these people being hounded off our forums as long as they stick to the rules.
There is plenty of evidence both here and on our colleague forums (BMT,FF,Elite etc) of vendor members posting useful and informative content and being treated with respect when doing so.
So I’m going to let this practice continue here for now and we’ll see how it goes. But if you break the rules you’ll be dealt with in exactly the same way as any other vendor, regardless of your level of contribution.
In return I’ll expect you to deal with or report any flaming and I’ll deal with that robustly as well. This is my chosen policy for T2W, anyone who does not like it can say so, but they can’t then flame the vendor member in question without facing sanctions.
I’ll be keeping a close eye on this but I hope it is now clear where I stand on this subject.
Company representatives
Experience here and elsewhere has shown that it can be very helpful for a representative of a firm to deal with questions from members. Occasionally they have crossed the line a bit into promotion and been warned accordingly, but overall it has worked pretty well in my view.
So I’m going to formalise this and introduce a ‘Company Representative’ grade of member. Anyone can apply for this status but I’ll need to be sure that it is in the interests of members.
If the firm is already on our approved list of advertisers then generally I’ll allow it, if they are on our black list I will not. Anything else I’ll take a view.
I’ll also allow an exception to the avatar rule but no other links will be permitted unless they directly relate to the question being answered and do not solicit further or new business.
Content suppliers
Much rubbish has been written about vendors writing content for articles, books and so on. I don’t accept that all vendor produced content is of no value but if we are to allow content written by a vendor then the first question has to be “is it any good?” This applies regardless of where it came from.
Once this test is passed the next question has to be about how much of the vendors product is promoted within the text. The answer should be none at all and if this is evident it should be removed or the content refused.
The only reference will be to the name of the author and their firm or business name but with no linking. If people want to find out more that’s their choice and they can use google to do so.
So we’ll continue to publish and/or link to content that is deemed of some value to our target audience but it will be subject to much closer scrutiny.
Finally, I’ll reject anything that is written by someone who I believe belongs in the ‘wrong’ group and that is regardless of whether it is promotion free or not. There are some characters/firms who we simply should not be associated with and I’ll decide who these are.
Policing the policy.
We don’t actively moderate content. We rely on reported posts and will continue to do so. In writing this policy I have tried to take some of the uncertainty out of the situation so I’m hoping this will make the reporting of vendor mischief a more fruitful experience.
If not you can contact me anytime by PM or on [email protected]
The groomers
This is one of the hardest areas to deal with and we need to get smarter at sorting it out. You know the story, a few posts promising help and guidance, then a few indicators and great trades etc etc, then the hook.
But there’s no evidence of wrong doing initially and no declaration of being a vendor but experience tells us that most people show their true colours before very long.
I’m still not prepared to delete these posts immediately but we will be keeping a closer eye on them and challenging the poster as necessary. In addition we will no longer allow posts from new members or those with a limited number of useful posts along the lines of; “anyone heard of…” “what do you think of ….” “I have found a great…”
Commercial area
I am currently working on a revised layout for the forums and as part of this we are going to set up a commercial area. This will be for all threads/posts about brokers, software and data feeds and education/training and will keep all of these things out of the main forums. Any threads started elsewhere on these subjects will be moved to here.
This is obviously where the Company Representatives will post but I’ll not restrict vendor members to this area as long as they work within the rules and continue to make a valuable contribution to the community.
So, there we have it. There will obviously be a period of bedding in and there will inevitably be some people who don’t like it or feel it does not do enough.
I’m confident it will help us finally eradicate the vendor issues but I’ll listen to any comments before making it live from August 1st so please PM me or email me directly on [email protected]