Signature Change Request

[AndyMan]

A new moderator in the 3rd gen forum asked me to remove this link: Truck for SALE - Click Here from my signature. The link takes you to my ad in the TDR classifieds. The text of the first PM that I received from him is as follows:

"I have to ask you to remove the truck for sale in your signature. The TDR site does not want forsale items in signatures just in the classifieds. I hope you understand and thank you for your cooperation. Thanks again Dan 3rd gen eng and trans moderator"

The message was polite enough. At the moment, I have obliged by removing my entire signature. I was "forewarned" by other members, that he had also contacted them, and requested simmilar changes in their signatures.

There are a few things I don't understand, and would like enlightenment on.

1. Is the link contained in my signature a violation of TDR rules and regulations? If so, neither myself or others this has happened to been able to find reference to it.

2. There are other members with links to personal websites where products are sold. Some are "basement" enterprise type items, others appear to be retail businesses. I realize that some may be paying the TDR as advirtisiers, however, the only ads of theirs I see are in their signatures.

Am I missing something? I am not trying to be obstinate, I just don't see a violation present in my signature.

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

2. Conduct. The TDR encourages lively and informative discussion among Discussion Forum participants. But keep it clean and productive. Do not use or allow others to use your subscription to:



2. 3. Post any form of solicitation on any Discussion Forum

A for sale item in your signature is posting it in the discussion forums because that's where it's shown. In the past we have let the occasional notice slip by in signature lines (as we do with most of the guidelines) but it has been getting out of hand and we are therefore clamping down on it. We are working our way through them as we see them and that's why you are still seeing some out there. Members who are affiliated with a business are required to have that affiliation shown in their signature lines so that people are aware of any bias they may have:

5. 3. Vendor participants must have their business name incorporated into their signature block. Vendors may include their business telephone number within their Profile so that it is available to other TDR website users.

Both items are based on input from members that 1. they don't want to see the forums become a for sale bulletin board and 2. that they want to know vendor affiliations for potential biases.



The classifieds were put up to keep for sale items off the forums. What usually comes up next with this is that people think they don't get much traffic. They get a ton of traffic - 1. 3 million hits last month.

 

[AndyMan]

Thank you sir for the clarification. I will try and use better judgement in the future.

 

[HeavyHauler]

Steve - I've seen several people, who have done business with certain vendors, that boldly advertise for them in their signature. These are people that aren't even directly connected with the said vendor. Seems to me that would be a violation too. If you're gonna come down on one person, seems fair that you would need to totally enforce this restriction.



Andy's link to his truck was much less intrusive and conspicuous than the signatures that I've mentioned above.



What gives?

 

[AndyMan]

Hans,

Judging from PM's and e-mails that I have received, it's not limited to just me. Your point about people advertising for businesses that have patronized sounds word-for-word like verbiage I had in mind to post. After giving it some thought, I just decided to let it ride, and see how the enforcement went.

I too agree, there are FAR more offensive and inflammatory taglines and signatures than "Truck for sale - click here" (i. e. Jesus Saves, Autos Suck, etc... ). Being somewhat of an "ambassador" to the TDR (leader of local chapter), I decided not to be argumentative and confrontational…. And just let it go…

I suppose that if I wanted to take a hard liberal stance and try to obfuscate the issue, I could argue that your AirDog "waiting in the box" was a solicitation of some sort. Obviously, I realize that is ridiculous, I’m just using you to make a point since you’re convenient. No offense dude. Also, not to single one of our other members out, but he is advertising for a vendor, and his own basement enterprise. If they are truly cracking down, which I believe they are, things like that will start disappearing. The part that ruffled my fur was that unlike other signatures, I didn't really feel like mine was shoving it in anyone's face.

What I find most offensive is vendors (one in particular) that post "give us a call" messages any time there is a post remotely related to a product they sell. There's a Juice/Attitude thread right now that is primarily composed of "hey "Vendor" send me a PM with your price. " That type of thread is where information flow stops. That thread started out with a member trying to gather legitimate information. The over-eager salivating vendors see it as an opportunity to plug themselves, everyone gets in a frenzy and want's a PM with a price. My point here is THEY are INTERJECTING solicitation in a thread intended to gather information.

This also brings up the point that people with start a thread asking where to get the best price on a product. Is this not also solicitation? The vendors have a heyday with threads like that. Generally, the title lets me know I’m not going to find any information in said thread, so I know that’s not one I want to read.

All in all, this is a great site, run by professional and reasonable people. I hate to be a jerk, but I think my case is a loose interpretation of the rules. If you’re going to clean me, let’s clean up the others as well.

/abg

 

[HeavyHauler]

Well said Andy, but if "Airdog - Waiting in the Box" is solicitation then I guess my entire signature is! I vote to eliminate signatures altogether! :-laf Just joking...



BTW, I'm hoping to get started on that Airdog this weekend.



Anyway, I'm in total agreement about the vendors hijacking informational threads with those "give us a call" comments. I could name 1 on here that really irritates me and there are a few others that are really bad about this as well. I want to respond to them whenever I see one of those posts but I always bite my tongue (or cross my fingers or whatever). Those people are the ones that really need to be addressed and if the TDR historians are correct, there have been a few reputable and very knowledgeable vendors that have been banned from the site, or at least reprimanded, for violating rules along those lines.



Maybe I'll just start reporting those posts to moderators whenever I come across one. Eventually somebody will get fed up with it and that should get some things rolling...

 

[AndyMan]

Well said Andy, but if "Airdog - Waiting in the Box" is solicitation then I guess my entire signature is! ...

I know that was ridiculously ignorant, I was just stretching the logic out to the next "plausable" level for effect.

The warranty on that airDog will be expired by the time you know whether or not it works.

 

[HeavyHauler]

The warranty on that airDog will be expired by the time you know whether or not it works.

Ain't that the truth! I don't even think that company is stable right now. Sure hope I don't have any problems.

 

[AndyMan]

Case-in-point

https://www.turbodieselregister.com/forums/showthread.php?t=135538

 

[HeavyHauler]

Ahh, how ironic - that just happened to be that 1 person that I was referring to above soliciting in that thread. There was also another this morning to go along with the countless others...



EDIT:



Good grief - after reading that entire thread, that just makes me sick that something hasn't been done about that. Like you said, that was purely intended to be an informational thread and here comes the ever-eager DPPI rep advertising his inventory. Well I'm gonna have to eat lunch mad now.



Something really needs to be done about this...

 

[AlexWV]

Personally, I think that that thread is fine. Somebody asked about the Juice and

the thread is all about that including where you can buy one from. On topic and

all about the Juice/Attitude.





Anyway, I got a PM about a grill for sale note in my sig so I removed it. No big deal.



But using that example thread about the Juice/Attitude, I reserve the right to chime in on any thread about grills that I happen to have one for sale.

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

Steve - I've seen several people, who have done business with certain vendors, that boldly advertise for them in their signature. These are people that aren't even directly connected with the said vendor.

A line has to be drawn somewhere. If we aren't going to allow people to put vendor information of products they bought in their signature lines at all then 90% of the signatures out there would have to go because people list the stuff they've put on their trucks there. Where we draw the line is if a person has something to gain by promoting a product. If it's a person that's bought something and is happy with it and is posting about it they don't stand to gain financially. If a vendor does the same they do. Same thing goes with for sale items - if a user posts a link to an eBay ad of something they saw that people might be interested that someone else is selling that's ok, if on the other hand a person posts a link to an eBay ad of something they are selling it isn't - because they have something to gain. Vendors are allowed to respond to posts when asked about products/availability, etc - they can't post unsolicited ads. They are required to put their vendor affiliation out there so that you guys know where they are coming from - we feel that is more important than the advertising they get out of it.



Keep in mind that 90% of the moderation that is done you never hear about it nor know that it is happening. This for instance you wouldn't have known unless Andy posted this. Also, keep in mind that we aren't going to be able to catch everything by ourselves - there's 14 admins/moderators trying to keep up with 800+ posts per day and ~15,000 active members. We catch what we can and modify what we're doing based on user input/need/new issues or problems. We try to be as lax as possible until things start becoming an issue (like this) and then we tighten the reigns.



HeavyHauler - All users that have been booted from the board (and there aren't very many) were given many opportunities to get in line with the guidelines. Usually we have many contacts with them before they are even given the first strike. Eventually if they are unwilling to cooperate we are forced to go to the strike system. On the 2nd strike they get a timeout and then when they come back if they still won't abide by the guidelines they are booted. We give them a LOT of rope. Nobody has been booted from the site lightly.

 

[HeavyHauler]

Steve - thanks for the reponse and I understand everything you've said. However, the certain person that does all the soliciting is not only replying when a product is asked about. For instance, I don't believe I've ever seen a post that has said "Hey ___________, do you have this in stock and how much is it?"



There are a few vendors on this board that interject on threads whenever possible and that's not a secret to you, me, or anyone else. You can't sit there and tell me that they are only responding when they are specifically asked, because they rarely (if ever) are.

 

[JL penner]

Personally, I think that that thread is fine. Somebody asked about the Juice and the thread is all about that including where you can buy one from. On topic and all about the Juice/Attitude.

The guy asked if any other members bought Juice. Not where he could get one.



JL

 

[nps]

The guy asked if any other members bought Juice. Not where he could get one.



JL

Yeah, but it would become a pretty boring world if the new rules state that you aren't allowed to inject any more into a thread than exactly what was first asked. The poster expected to see the boards burning with activity on a new product, and the vendor replied with an explanation of the shipping situation AFTER another member posted that they were waiting for delivery.



When I am ready to buy, I'm glad vendors can and do post about their products.



What would clean up the thread in question above is educating members to just PM the vendor directly for a price rather than using the thread for this purpose. And no more posting that a PM has been sent - you'll find out about a new PM far sooner than you will ever see the post in the thread.

 

[GFritsch]

A line has to be drawn somewhere. If we aren't going to allow people to put vendor information of products they bought in their signature lines at all then 90% of the signatures out there would have to go because people list the stuff they've put on their trucks there. Where we draw the line is if a person has something to gain by promoting a product. If it's a person that's bought something and is happy with it and is posting about it they don't stand to gain financially. If a vendor does the same they do. Same thing goes with for sale items - if a user posts a link to an eBay ad of something they saw that people might be interested that someone else is selling that's ok, if on the other hand a person posts a link to an eBay ad of something they are selling it isn't - because they have something to gain. Vendors are allowed to respond to posts when asked about products/availability, etc - they can't post unsolicited ads. They are required to put their vendor affiliation out there so that you guys know where they are coming from - we feel that is more important than the advertising they get out of it.



Keep in mind that 90% of the moderation that is done you never hear about it nor know that it is happening. This for instance you wouldn't have known unless Andy posted this. Also, keep in mind that we aren't going to be able to catch everything by ourselves - there's 14 admins/moderators trying to keep up with 800+ posts per day and ~15,000 active members. We catch what we can and modify what we're doing based on user input/need/new issues or problems. We try to be as lax as possible until things start becoming an issue (like this) and then we tighten the reigns.



HeavyHauler - All users that have been booted from the board (and there aren't very many) were given many opportunities to get in line with the guidelines. Usually we have many contacts with them before they are even given the first strike. Eventually if they are unwilling to cooperate we are forced to go to the strike system. On the 2nd strike they get a timeout and then when they come back if they still won't abide by the guidelines they are booted. We give them a LOT of rope. Nobody has been booted from the site lightly.

Steve,



I think you should back up a couple of steps and redraw the line. For a non-business individual who is looking to his fellow brother members to put out the word on his personal truck for sale via a quick link in his sig that takes you to another part of the same website to be not O. K. while members like Tommygun (I have absolutely nothing against him seems like a great guy) regularly makes business sales on this site is just plain wrong. :-{}



The TDR is a loosely knit group of friends helping friends. I do understand the need for members not to use this website for business purposes, but come on!



I have been a great supporter of the TDR, but these members do pay a yearly fee to belong (unlike other sites) and get to look at site sponsored advertisements at the top of each page, yet can't tell the other members there looking to sell there truck?



I hope you reconsider.



Greg

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

Greg - we've set these policies based on user input. Users have the same option that a vendor does - if someone specifically asks then they can post. Say for instance your selling your 98 quad cab 12v in the classifieds and someone asks if anyone knows where a 98 qc 12v is available for sale then you could post that. Vendors aren't allowed to make unsolicited posts either. Users have time after time told us they don't want to see for sale items on the forums. The classifieds do get a TON of traffic. Believe me, if we allow people to start posting for sale items here in the forums it WILL get out of hand. The classifieds were put there for specifically that purpose and anyone that's looking to buy knows that's the place to look. If we start allowing people to post links to there from here then everyone will have to do it because fewer people will look at the classifieds if they are getting it here as well. If you see a vendor making an unsolicited sales pitch on the boards that we don't catch please let us know and we'll pull that as well. We could eliminate vendors posting here at all but users don't want that either. Believe me it's a difficult job balancing the needs/wants of all the users on here but we do as best we can. Many of the policies we have got here because of experience of it going the wrong way in the past - sometimes a long time ago. Our policies regarding what vendors can/can't post and for sale items being posted or not on the forums fall into that category.