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Thread: Padding the forum?

  1. #21
    Senior Member Dane's Avatar
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    I've been out of the country and didn't log in for a while. I came back to see six pages of new posts. 90%+ are bogus new member introductions.
    XUV 550, engine replaced with Honda GX630, MBDiagman tuned primary clutch, all LED lighting, roof mounted Rigid LED lights, split no scratch wind screen, roof, home made rear panel & window and 1/2 doors, Super Winch 4500, set of CST Ancla tires & set of Carlisle All Trail tires

  2. #22
    Administrator WOEII's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bunky View Post
    Ok, I see how this works. During the overnight, new members are auto introduced and then you come behind in the morning to prune the spam.

    Do you mod for autopia.org?
    What are you talking about? There is no auto anything with new members except they have an auto into upon membership. Just checked out the site url you put up and I have never been there.

  3. #23
    Administrator WOEII's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dane View Post
    I've been out of the country and didn't log in for a while. I came back to see six pages of new posts. 90%+ are bogus new member introductions.
    Welcome back Dane.

    These are legit members that have answered correct questions and obviously have knowledge about Gators. Mid summer my IT man installed extra spam and new member filters and it has helped out.

    I am the owner of this site and have never tried to pull the wool over anyone's eyes. I built this site because there was no other Gator sites on the net. All this web building, IT work and server storage costs money but I enjoy you all enjoying the forum. Why all this trying to get away with something that's coming up is making me sick to my stomach, I have nothing to gain from this.

    If the wool is being pulled over my eyes I would like to know in a constructive manner and would like advise and guidance not finger pointing and shout outs of something shifty. All suggestions and ideas has come from the members and it's all documented throughout all the threads and I implemented them into the forum for your wants and needs.

    I am not understanding.

  4. #24
    Senior Member Bunky's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by WOEII View Post
    What are you talking about? There is no auto anything with new members except they have an auto into upon membership. Just checked out the site url you put up and I have never been there.
    Exactly what you said. There is an auto intro upon membership.
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  5. #25
    Senior Member Dane's Avatar
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    I've never said you were trying to pull the wool over our eyes. I asked if you were padding the site because I didn't want to go crazy reporting everything as spam as it appears to be a targeted marketing campaign.

    It appears there is a group purposefully creating the numerous and obviously bogus new member posts. While they are registering and answering security questions properly to access the site they are not legitimate members.

    1. The volume is highly suspicious for a site of this size.
    2. Most/all never return to post again.
    3. The body of their post often contain gross spelling or grammatical errors obvious to a native English speaker.
    4. Their posts are usually short phrases barely applicable to the site; "I have gator", "I have 2011 gator 825", "We have two gators on 23 acres of Condominiums".
    5. The higher volume of bogus introductions have a "beginning". There was a long period prior where you have a good history of how many valid introductions the site receives. It was very few.

    On the forums I moderate the smell test is the most reliable. When something seems "fishy" it most often is. A legitimate new member will often post in another part of the forum and usually asking where to find a product or how to fix a problem. They need something is what drives them to the site. Farmers, ranchers, hunters and most people that use Gators are not the fluffy type of people to make one post and just say "hi". They came because they can't find this part or want to know if this sound from their Gator is normal.

    Then there are the; short phrases, poor grammar, incorrect spelling and noticeably odd choice of words. Most posts are not 100% correct but true members says have a lot more to say than just 4 or 6 words. Can you picture a 60 year old rancher from Texas muddling through the registration process just to enter a short, nonsensical phrase.

    Take a look at new member Gavin M which is pretty marginal. He went to the trouble to type out "
    I have a 2004 Trail Gator HPX. It has 160 hrs, well kept and cleaned regularly, stored inside. I am having performance, acceleration and starting problems of late." This could possibly be a real person but it's highly unusual for that to be posted in the intro section. Most people jump into another part of the forum they found when Googling about the problem their having with their Gator.

    Since there is not flood of spam advertising following these registrations I assume a company is employed to boost traffic and new member enrollments to the site. It's a trick to boost a site's ranking in online searches. Basically a marketing campaign. So far it's basically benign as it's contained to the intro part of the forum. Still discouraging to a legitimate member who uses the "new posts" button. They may tire of checking the forum only to find mostly spam and they stop visiting and we've lost a valid member.
    XUV 550, engine replaced with Honda GX630, MBDiagman tuned primary clutch, all LED lighting, roof mounted Rigid LED lights, split no scratch wind screen, roof, home made rear panel & window and 1/2 doors, Super Winch 4500, set of CST Ancla tires & set of Carlisle All Trail tires

  6. #26
    Administrator WOEII's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bunky View Post
    Exactly what you said. There is an auto intro upon membership.
    Yes, as so they can hopefully get acclimated and join in the discussion instead of lurking. There is no auto making of a member. The site has a huge amount of lurkers and it was intention to get them involved.

  7. #27
    Administrator WOEII's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dane View Post
    I've never said you were trying to pull the wool over our eyes. I asked if you were padding the site because I didn't want to go crazy reporting everything as spam as it appears to be a targeted marketing campaign.

    It appears there is a group purposefully creating the numerous and obviously bogus new member posts. While they are registering and answering security questions properly to access the site they are not legitimate members.

    1. The volume is highly suspicious for a site of this size.
    2. Most/all never return to post again.
    3. The body of their post often contain gross spelling or grammatical errors obvious to a native English speaker.
    4. Their posts are usually short phrases barely applicable to the site; "I have gator", "I have 2011 gator 825", "We have two gators on 23 acres of Condominiums".
    5. The higher volume of bogus introductions have a "beginning". There was a long period prior where you have a good history of how many valid introductions the site receives. It was very few.

    On the forums I moderate the smell test is the most reliable. When something seems "fishy" it most often is. A legitimate new member will often post in another part of the forum and usually asking where to find a product or how to fix a problem. They need something is what drives them to the site. Farmers, ranchers, hunters and most people that use Gators are not the fluffy type of people to make one post and just say "hi". They came because they can't find this part or want to know if this sound from their Gator is normal.

    Then there are the; short phrases, poor grammar, incorrect spelling and noticeably odd choice of words. Most posts are not 100% correct but true members says have a lot more to say than just 4 or 6 words. Can you picture a 60 year old rancher from Texas muddling through the registration process just to enter a short, nonsensical phrase.

    Take a look at new member Gavin M which is pretty marginal. He went to the trouble to type out "
    I have a 2004 Trail Gator HPX. It has 160 hrs, well kept and cleaned regularly, stored inside. I am having performance, acceleration and starting problems of late." This could possibly be a real person but it's highly unusual for that to be posted in the intro section. Most people jump into another part of the forum they found when Googling about the problem their having with their Gator.

    Since there is not flood of spam advertising following these registrations I assume a company is employed to boost traffic and new member enrollments to the site. It's a trick to boost a site's ranking in online searches. Basically a marketing campaign. So far it's basically benign as it's contained to the intro part of the forum. Still discouraging to a legitimate member who uses the "new posts" button. They may tire of checking the forum only to find mostly spam and they stop visiting and we've lost a valid member.
    1.
    The volume is high because there are over 500,000 Gators out there and a lot of lurking is done. A lot of lurking is because the owners are farmers and self repairers and prefer to keep somewhat reserved and private. We are a meticulous group and I would compare us to Corvette owners and how they keep their machinery. Another is that all the John Deere dealerships are on here watching and listening to fixes they have not come across and ideas we like. JD IP is the same whether its a dealership in CA is on or NY.
    2.
    All forums have this.
    3. This site is world wide and grammar is not a requirement. If so I would be the first one booted off. Because of the internet, all global communications are melding together and an evolution is taking place right now of a world wide single grammar being made. So improper text communications are not going away but going to get worse. Kinda cool huh?
    4.
    "Just me "
    "2011 Gator 625i owner"
    "1996 gater owner "
    "Buying an old AMT 600.... just want to be in the know. Thanks>John Kish"
    "I'm think about buying a Gator"
    These are all expectable and have some sort of actual knowledge of Gators.
    5.
    There is no marketing company hired or employed by me to boost any kind of traffic or add fake members to the site. The midnight special edition Gator came out and I paid Facebook to throw the ad to people that like the Gator. Here are the results.
    28,848
    Paid Reach
    481
    Actions
    $100.00
    Budget Spent
    383
    Link Clicks
    21
    Page Likes
    77
    Post Likes
    7
    Comments
    14
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    Asking my IT guy to read this thread and see what he thinks.

  8. #28
    Senior Member Bunky's Avatar
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    Off and on I have welcomed some of these new members. If these are one visit wonders, they will miss it or if they do not automatically allow new messages or subscribed to threads, they will not get notified. None have ever acknowledged my welcome if I recall so I just gave up..until I tried again today.

    Does the forum send a welcome email and telling them how to post in threads?
    Last edited by Bunky; 10-06-2014 at 09:33 PM.
    Al


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  9. #29
    Administrator WOEII's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bunky View Post
    Off and on I have welcomed some of these new members. If these are one visit wonders, they will miss it or if they do not automatically allow new messages or subscribed to threads, they will not get notified. None have ever acknowledged my welcome if I recall so I just gave up..until I tried again today.

    Does the forum send a welcome email and telling them how to post in threads?
    Hi Bunky,
    I will find out if they get a conformation of a reply when someone welcomes them. Also we do not have a tutorial on how to use the forum but I can see if the forum company software has a youtube tutorial on how to start off. Good idea.

  10. #30
    Senior Member Dane's Avatar
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    Compared to other forums and the other Gator forum there is an insane number of one hit wonder new member posts here. I've seen it before but it's always been accompanied by an onslaught of spam requiring mass blocking of regions to get it under control. This number of new member posts without spam is something new to me.
    XUV 550, engine replaced with Honda GX630, MBDiagman tuned primary clutch, all LED lighting, roof mounted Rigid LED lights, split no scratch wind screen, roof, home made rear panel & window and 1/2 doors, Super Winch 4500, set of CST Ancla tires & set of Carlisle All Trail tires

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