MarkPrince Moderator Joined: 19 Dec 2001 Posts: 5,462 Location: Vancouver, BC Expertise: Professional
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Posted Fri Oct 8, 2010, 4:48am Subject: A reminder about Advertisements within the forums
I recently had to delete a rather long thread regarding a green bean vendor because this vendor decided to circumvent what keeps this website alive and functioning (our paid advertisers) and post direct links, discounts, and other information about his company.
I am very loathe to do any kind of censorship on this website - especially those within the rules (ie, many of the posts within that thread by other site members were within the rules). But I felt we had absolutely no choice. The vendor in question has shown a complete lack of respect for what keeps this website functioning - he stated publicly that "advertising on CG doesn't work", yet he took opportunities to attempt to advertise for free in the forums, created different accounts on CoffeeGeek to shill his own business in a false way, and did other things to keep that thread going.
I do not tolerate any kind of advertisement posts in this forum or any CG forum. It is not fair to our paid advertisers, 100% of which are in the business of coffee. It is also not something the majority of our membership wants, as has been repeated many times over. Our forums are advertisement (and shill) free because of the hard work of our moderators. If they didn't do any moderation for one week, I think all regular readers would be surprised at the massive amount of spam, advertisements, and shill postings that take place here.
Because of this company's modus, I have given them one last chance to become a proper participant in these forums, with a complete zero tolerance policy against them for any future ad-postings, stealthy or direct. If they do not comply, I have also instructed all moderators to remove any references or new postings to this company in the future.
Please help keep these forums spam, shill, and advert free.
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Forum Rules: No profanity, illegal acts or personal attacks will be tolerated in these discussion boards. No commercial posting of any nature will be tolerated; only private sales by private individuals, in the "Buy and Sell" forum. No cross posting allowed - do not post your topic to more than one forum, nor repost a topic to the same forum. Who Can Read The Forum? Anyone can read posts in these discussion boards. Who Can Post New Topics? Any registered CoffeeGeek member can post new topics. Who Can Post Replies? Any registered CoffeeGeek member can post replies. Can Photos be posted? Anyone can post photos in their new topics or replies. Who can change or delete posts? Any CoffeeGeek member can edit their own posts. Only moderators can delete posts. Probationary Period: If you are a new signup for CoffeeGeek, you cannot promote, endorse, criticise or otherwise post an unsolicited endorsement for any company, product or service in your first five postings.
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