Why this forum is different!

[Gina]

Tell me if I am wrong, but other business forums seem to look down on people who openly promote their product or service. This just seems to me to be hypocritical in the extreme. Of course people do promote on the other forums (or is it fora?) but they have to be serrupticious, subtle or even underhand about it and it causes lots of sniping and bad vibes. It seems to me that posting in forums (or fora) is; yes, about help and advice and belonging to a community, but I want to actively encourage people to promote as well. Obviously I dont want members to spam other members excessively, especially in private messages, but apart from that - I think that being able, as a member of B.I.A.O, to promote your business idea or opportunity, without fear or favour can only be a good thing! Gina

[SmileBCS]

My [short] experience of forums are as a place of community.

I've seen some pretty nasty responses to people who openly abuse the community with their "offers" or blatant promotions.

I can understand long standing members object to this and reacting badly, especially if your community (forum) is about general business discussion or whatever.

Time will only tell if this growing community will have cohesion on the basis of sharing ideas and opportunities.

The 'market' will decide if this is successful.

I for one, am happy to be involved in this forum; it is different; there is a better atmosphere.

How we react for the 457th time to someone promoting a new slimming wonder pill, will be telling.

But in the meantime, bring it on....

Brendan

[Gina]

My philosophy is that people are basically good and fair, so I am proceeding on that basis.
We may get people who try to abuse the privilege of being a member, but my feeling is that they will give up when they see that no-one is interested in being bombarded with stuff.
I am trying to avoid all the acrimony and hypocrisy apparent and inherent in other sites, which I feel stems from the practice of not allowing people to be themselves.
In my view this negative culture pertains through a set of of false values imposed by the forum operators, who, I believe, do have the best intentions, but are perhaps swayed by some members into thinking that they are doing the right thing.
The ethos that I hope to see created here is one of freedom, fair play and honesty.

[Eagle]

What we've done on our business forum is to set up clearly defined areas for both business discussion and promotional/advertising threads with little to no ambiguity (providing people actually read the rules/guidelines!)

If you allow 'the odd advert' to slip through or even allow 'leeway', you will eventually get overrun with people chancing their arm or blatently taking the mick!  This in turn ruins the experience for the whole membership and, because of the noise generated, valuable, genuine posts from valuable, genuine networkers get lost in the fog.  Then the community dies...

I'm a member of over 190 business forums/communities and of those that have allowed promotional threads across the board, all have died a grizzly death!

It's honorable to foster trust and give freedoms but not at the expense of your membership (not to mention your hosting costs) and their chance to network unmolested.  This has been the ethos at UK Business labs right from the start and people are slowly but surely coming round to it.

[Gina]

I really appreciate your comment Eagle and you have lots of experience in this.
Obviously this is a very new forum and will undoubtably evolve.
At the moment It seems that the members are reacting positively and in the spirit of what I am trying to do. Hopefully this will continue, but I can certainly see why you have your doubts - Gina

[Eagle]

You're welcome!  For what it's worth, it's great to have you as a member as you always contribute constructively and positively so I'm sure you'll do well here too.

Cheers,

Mark

[Hedgebetter]

If you allow 'the odd advert' to slip through or even allow 'leeway', you will eventually get overrun with people chancing their arm or blatently taking the mick!  This in turn ruins the experience for the whole membership and, because of the noise generated, valuable, genuine posts from valuable, genuine networkers get lost in the fog.  Then the community dies...

Wow. Though I bow to your experience I really find it hard to belive that fora die cause of sellers punting. I guess like the kid with the flame its not that I think you are lying, just I find it hard to believe.

Mind you I have 3 fora for various enterprises and y'know my biggest problem was spammers just pasting lists of links.

its 4am so dont expect me to make sense.

[SmileBCS]

If it becomes a problem, why not capitalise on it?

i.e. adverts can only be placed in a certain area of the forum, and either you must be a full(paying) member to post there, or you have demonstrated benefit to the community, thanked x times, more than y total posts.

This protects against those who have no interest in the community, other than to try to sell into it, parachuting in and disrupting the karma.

Thoughts?

[Gina]

If it becomes a problem, why not capitalise on it?

i.e. adverts can only be placed in a certain area of the forum, and either you must be a full(paying) member to post there, or you have demonstrated benefit to the community, thanked x times, more than y total posts.

This protects against those who have no interest in the community, other than to try to sell into it, parachuting in and disrupting the karma.

Thoughts?

Thank you Smile,

If I had opened the forum with the intention of making money from the members, then I suppose that what you suggest would be an option, but I won't go down that route.

I will never put paid commercial advertising on the site either.
If I wanted a site to make money from membership, then I would create one for that purpose from the start.

The other problem is that, as Eagle said, a lot of people don't read rules, and a system of rules using x and y would gib with my philosophy of keeping it simple.
People could also argue over interpretation as to whether the rules had been broken etc, and that in itself could create the acrimony that I am trying to avoid.
Hope this makes sense - Gina

[Eagle]

Wow. Though I bow to your experience I really find it hard to belive that fora die cause of sellers punting. I guess like the kid with the flame its not that I think you are lying, just I find it hard to believe.

I've deleted about a dozen links to forums I used to visit on a regular basis but here's one I kept - and it's a perfect example of 'advertise anywhere' / under-moderation gone horribly wrong: http://www.inctalk.com/

It's a real shame because it was a really good forum at one point.  It's now just a spammers heaven, link farm!

The problem is; where do you draw the line?  On one hand you need to keep content coming in (people posting), on the other you don't want to put them off by them seeing ads, plugs and spam.  So you simply have to be clear where advertising can take place. 

[Gina]

The difficulty I can see is one of definition. One persons spam is another persons useful contribution.

This forum is about promoting and networking in a positive way.
Do you see any posts on here that you consider to be spam at the moment? please pm me if you do and that will give me a better idea of what people consider to be spam.
What I consider spam is if someone persistently bombards the forum with promotional posts with no regard to their relevance to the thread in which they are placed.
I have no insight into personal messages so I hope that people will report to me any incidence of spamming that uses that method of communication.
If people start a thread and it is purely promotional I have no objection to that, because people can just choose to ignore it.
What I do not want to see is people taking it upon themselves to chastise others for promoting their opportunity, idea, service or product.
This forum will never go un-moderated. All incidences of posts that I consider to be spam will be moved into the 'Spam Posts' section, wherein the poster will be given a chance to argue for its reinstatement.

[TerryThomas]

Well Gina, it certainly looks like your strategy is working as far as spammers not appearing is concerned, although I have noticed a few odd new member names that dont seem to make sense in any language that I know (must admit to not being multilingual though )

[Alibaba]

Yes I have seen a few strange sounding names. Maybe they are Welsh! 

[Sellyveryfast]

Tell me if I am wrong, but other business forums seem to look down on people who openly promote their product or service. This just seems to me to be hypocritical in the extreme. Of course people do promote on the other forums (or is it fora?) but they have to be serrupticious, subtle or even underhand about it and it causes lots of sniping and bad vibes. It seems to me that posting in forums (or fora) is; yes, about help and advice and belonging to a community, but I want to actively encourage people to promote as well. Obviously I dont want members to spam other members excessively, especially in private messages, but apart from that - I think that being able, as a member of B.I.A.O, to promote your business idea or opportunity, without fear or favour can only be a good thing! Gina

Good Afternoon Gina ,

We have joined the forum due to considering launching a home collection business and need advice on best way to pursue this. Noticed your Briteways opportunities but are slighter further on. Our problem is that we are based in a affluent area and are advised to solely enter the Pay Day Loan Sector.

Can you advise on forum or would it be better to call you.

Best regards

Selly

[Gina]

Tell me if I am wrong, but other business forums seem to look down on people who openly promote their product or service. This just seems to me to be hypocritical in the extreme. Of course people do promote on the other forums (or is it fora?) but they have to be serrupticious, subtle or even underhand about it and it causes lots of sniping and bad vibes. It seems to me that posting in forums (or fora) is; yes, about help and advice and belonging to a community, but I want to actively encourage people to promote as well. Obviously I dont want members to spam other members excessively, especially in private messages, but apart from that - I think that being able, as a member of B.I.A.O, to promote your business idea or opportunity, without fear or favour can only be a good thing! Gina

Good Afternoon Gina ,

We have joined the forum due to considering launching a home collection business and need advice on best way to pursue this. Noticed your Briteways opportunities but are slighter further on. Our problem is that we are based in a affluent area and are advised to solely enter the Pay Day Loan Sector.

Can you advise on forum or would it be better to call you.

Best regards

Selly

Hiya Selly,
I have no problem with answering most questions on this forum, best if you ask them in the cash loans questions and answers section; and that way it helps others who may have queries of the same nature - Gina

[Sellyveryfast]

Thanks Gina and will do. I will also do the introduction as well, look forward to your replies and any others to our unique problem

Best regards