[sg]

Forum spam, IS spam, and forum span is not required to be robot driven, even wikipedia states it MAY be robot driven, but it can be human too. Just not as efficient that way.

Run your site the way you want to. Dont tell me how to run mine.

I bet if I came to the OZ report, and just continuously posted hang gliding youtube videos *WRAPPED* in hang gliding org pages containing advertising, you would have a problem with this, as many many other websites do.

This is a well known spammy tactic used by internet marketers. Its trivial to just post the youtube video, but instead they post all that other stuff for the free advertising and traffic.

[davisstraub]

I'm not telling you how to do anything.

I'm just saying that I see and delete forum spam every week. And I personally can tell the difference between what Lauren sent you and what is forum spam.

But you can do whatever you like. I'm quite certain that it doesn't look good on you though. :-)

[Andrew Vanis]

I like hang gliding spam

Is this HG spam? - http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=25482

[davisstraub]

Or this? http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=25608

[sg]

Posting an EVENT to the EVENTS forum is not spamming.

A single person, posting 30-50 posts or 95% of their posts to link to a commercial Visit Florida website, over and over and over again, is absolutely forum spamming.

Regardless, free advertising is AGAINST the site rules. Its a clear violation.
The site rules state to ASK ME first... I make exceptions. That didnt happen.

This is not a free bulletin board for peoples commercial businesses.
She could have simply posted the youtube videos instead of the commercial site embedding the youtube video. There is an easy solution.

[davisstraub]

Did she post 30 to 50 times her links to Visit Florida?

[davisstraub]

I only count 29 posts by her and I don't see most of them being links to Visit Florida.

[sg]

Ive already cleaned everything up. She had over 50 posts and most of them pointed to visit florida. You can stop your sleuthing now McGruff.

[davisstraub]

Okay, but, very funny.

Thanks.

[davisstraub]

BTW, if she had all these posts linking to hang gliding videos on the Visit Florida web site previously, why did it become an issue now? Couldn't you have just PM'ed her and told her to post just the links to the videos?

I'm not telling you how to run your site, but it isn't like she is some anonymous spammer. She is a hang glider pilot and her posts were hang gliding related.

It seems that you just created bad feelings when a simple PM would have straightened things out behind the scenes and made her aware of how your policy works.

Thanks again for the site. Which, btw, I support with donations.

[sg]

Only caught the pattern yesterday.

Was surprised to find how many links there were and how far back they went.
I dont read every post on the site.

[davisstraub]

I had dinner last night with Lauren. She was of course upset about what happened here. As her previous posts had not presented a problem, she didn't know that she was doing anything wrong. I'm sure that you can understand that.

She is using her low paying part time job to promote part time (as much as she can) hang gliding and hang gliding in Florida. She has raised the profile of hang gliding making it more of a destination activity for people coming to Florida for fun.

We are all into promoting hang gliding, and this seems like a good way to do it.

Why not encourage her instead?

[sg]

Posting videos promoting hang gliding is perfectly fine and not advertising.

Not sure how many times I have to point out this simple solution.

[Fred Wilson]

I for one thought the (ad) video was absolutely spectacular.

... And posted it elsewhere - just posted the wording a little different.
- long before this thread came up. Saying:

"This absolutely spectacularly positive video is just the sort of thing our sport needs to get everyone doing and posting everywhere."

So if people want a direct url to the non-commercial post of this, go (2nd post at)
http://www.westcoastsoaringclub.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7074

I have taken the liberty of posting it elsewhere too.

[sg]

Posting videos was never an issue.

[davisstraub]

Okay, here I think is the deal.

Lauren gets to keep her job (which for us means that she gets to keep promoting hang gliding) if there are a good number of clicks on her posts to Visit Florida.

She doesn't get to keep her job and doesn't get to keep promoting hang gliding on the Visit Florida site if pilots click on the video at You Tube. Only if they click on the video on the Visit Florida site.

She doesn't have a way to pay hanggliding.org for her hang gliding advertisement. And Visit Florida has no interest in paying hanggliding.org for advertising.

So is the problem obvious?

Is the solution obvious?

Don't we want to promote hang gliding?

[TomGalvin]

Do you want to grow the sport?

[davisstraub]

Fred, see above.

[Fred Wilson]

[sg]

Yup, I dont do anything for this sport. I do less for this sport than 99% of HG pilots.
My job here is to give everyone free advertising. I should open the flood gates to free advertising for commercial services so I have to pay for 100% of costs out of my pocket. My valuable time I volunteer every day is not enough. I should pay for everyone elses advertising too.