Requirements for posters

[Sain Cai]

Seeing how my question was deleted not once, but twice, I will now post the "suggestion" here.

I feel that members, particularly hosts, should be required to make contributions to the forum/community or have some sort of periodic verification. Case in point is a certain host that seems to post quite regularly in terms of time, yet does not reply to questions or PMs. Such actions lead not only myself, but other longstanding members to believe this host of superior negative stature to be a bot.

Now should a bot be allowed to post? Personally I feel not, hence why members should be required to make some sort of contribution or verify they are indeed a person and not some sort of ad bot. As to what exactly should the verification be? Who knows, maybe a PM or post to ensure they are not a simple copy/paste bot. I am sure someone can come up with an easy system.

 

[wswd]

Many other forums won't allow you to post offers until you have so many posts in other categories. A bad side effect of that is that you get people posting useless nonsense just to build their posts. Of course with good moderation, that becomes a moot point.

I personally hate when hosts don't participate in the forums and simply advertise. But it is what it is.

 

[Peo]

Bots should not be allowed. The problem is when I contact hosts suspected of being bots, I do get replies. And should they really get banned if they don't reply to a pm?

As for a requirement to participate in discussions in order to post an ad, I'm against that idea. If a host just wish to post their weekly offer that's ok.

 

[sander k]

I don't know if there are any anti spam plugins installed, if not, you might want to take a look at this one: http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=248042

 

[Jan]

We have an antispam plugin. That will not stop genuine users from coming in to advertise every week.

 

[deanhills]

Is it possible to filter all of the offers that are made in the Free Hosting and Paid Hosting Offer Forums, so that a panel of dedicated FWS Staff could check the offers for quality first before they are publicly available? That would also help to decrease some of the acrimonious discussions that happen when the offers are submitted in those Forums. The staff energy could then be directed at culling bad offers right at their roots, instead of having to mop up battle zones and soothe ruffled feathers afterwards.