Links to competing forums

[Fast Freddie]

:-\ I was alerted by email tonight about a member spamming links to a competing site. Sure enough, nearly 1/3 of their posts had links to another site. As I checked for other occurances of the site name, it came to light that they had several people spamming their links. Seems they have been doing this on many of the gti and vw forums and is why they have several thousand members since they started at the first of the year.

Normally, I have no problem with anyone posting links to other sites, but it has become a problem. I'm not going to post the site's name, or the poster's but competing links will be deleted from now on. I'm really sorry it had to come to this.

The email I received was actually from another GTI site. They said they were losing members to spammed links from this site also. After browsing through their members, I did a comparision to our members who asked for deletion. 90% went there after following the spammed links according to our logs and used the same user name. Grant it, the other site is a nice site because they have many sponsors, and they can use that money to promote the site. I have actually turned down sponsors on MFG so we wouldn't be under so many rules of what we can and cannot post.

FF

[blackgti06]

wow never knew about all this and how serious this could get. Freddie do what you got to do. Good Luck if you need any help i will be more than happy to help you make this a safer and better place. :)

[zulu]

F Ya! We get to post what we want and not be held down by the man. O0

[GTI2007]

F Ya! We get to post what we want and not be held down by the man. O0


Right on. >:D

[dean]

Color me retarded, but I don't understand what "spamming links to another site" means. Is it like sending email and pm's to members of MFG telling them to go elsewhere? FYI, I don't give a **** what other sites are out there. This is the MotherFu%^ingG Spot.

[DrJones]

No.

Spamming a board involves making dozens of pointless posts that either promote something or are just there to waste space. In this case, it was the former.

[Fast Freddie]

Yep, Having a link to somewhere else is no problem, but more than couple links to the same place by the same member starts looking suspicious. This member had 25 references to the other site. Nearly every other post referenced the other site and each post was usually less than 10 words. = very spammy I hadn't even noticed it, another member who asked to be anonymous, pointed it out. That's why we have Dr. Jones cleaning up and organizing the boards. He's doing a fantastic job of it too. Keep up the good work DJ!

[GTI2007]

Then DrJones is doing a very good job keeping this forum spamfree. Way the go!!

[GranTurismoInjection]

I remember one post had a bunch of random ass chinese letters for links. It sucked bigtime.

[Thalo]

I don't remember any spamming. Only saw 1 link to a competing board and it was the Golf Mark 5 forum (won't post URL, don't want to get in trouble) and it was relevant, as they had some cool pics there.

[DrJones]

I don't remember any spamming. Only saw 1 link to a competing board and it was the Golf Mark 5 forum (won't post URL, don't want to get in trouble) and it was relevant, as they had some cool pics there.


That's not spamming. It's not illegal to post a link to another site, it's illegal to post a link to another site A HUNDRED TIMES!


I remember one post had a bunch of random ass chinese letters for links. It sucked bigtime.


Maybe it was a link to a chinese site? Or it could have been that your browser had trouble translating whatever programming language that link was posted in.

[GranTurismoInjection]

It was a chinese site... about 100 of them infact. Friggin pop-up hell!